The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-11-14
SOME GUESSES AT BROWNING.

My attention is called to the fact that in
his lifetime Browning peremptorily denied
any willful or designed obscurity in his
writings. Let us by all means give him the
benefit of these denials. And yet the fact
remains that his last volume, "Asalando,"
is, if anything, more obscure than those
written forty years before 1t is also of
record that on several occasions, when con-
fronted with his more mysterious passages,
he frankly confessed that he did not know
what they meant that is, that their mean
ing, although clear to him once was lost.
" 'Tis true: it's true tbs pity; and pity It's
it's true for this same obscurity limits his
audiences to thousands where it might have
been millions. 1t is said that the psyche
logical and abstract questions in which he
dealt could not be clearly expressed in
poetry. Then why did he not, as in his
essay on Shelley, use prose? But here,
again, the proposition is not true Shak-
speare has treated the same class of ques-
tons in meter, and so treated them that a
child can understand his crystalline words
and lmpid lines. In this article, suppose
we take guess at some of his best-known
poems. Child Roland to the Dark Tower
Came" This queer poem has excited no
end of conjectures. 1t is long, vivid series
of pictures of the trials and tribulations of
a man purporting to be on a journey
through an outlandish country (worse, if
possible, than sheoD who, at the end of
his travels, comes upon
1.-THE round squat tower-blind as the FOOLS
heart,
Built of brown stone without counterpart
In the whole world. The tempests mock
ing elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen
shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start"
The heroic and undaunted traveller with
gibbering ghosts all round him,
'Of all the lost adventurers-ny peers
How such an one was strong and such
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost! Lost! one moment knelled the word
of years.
There they stood ranged along the hillside,
met
To view the last of me, living frame,
For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
I saw them and l knew them all. and yet
Dauntless, the slug horn to my lips set
And blew Child Roland to the Dark
Tower Came"
The majority of Browning students re-
gard this weird production as an allegory.
Some think it represents a brave mans
search for truth, others that it is the
Quest of the Holy Grail, while Arlo Bates
insists that it is brave although hopeless
attempt to realize an ideal But it seems to
me there il a fatal objection to all these
solutions, and that is the total absence of
anything pleasurable or beautiful in the
journey from start to finish. This of itself
negatives such solution The search for
truth, instead of being Via Dolorosa, with
disappointment at the end. is usually Sc
ries OF triumphs and of joys such as mix
men with heaven, each, no doubt. alter
mating with bitter disappointment and Bit
ing malice. True, at the end comes death
but in the majority OF cases it is that death
described by Sir Isaac Newton, who a;
life's close represents himself as a child
picking up pebbles upon the seashore while
the shoreless ocean Of truth lay spread out