Two in the Campagna
Robert Browning
Robert Browning is also one of the greatest poets of the early Victorian age.
His works have depth, thought and originality.
Browning's recognition came with his publication of Dramatic lyrics.
Browning’s poem had a ray of romanticism,
Yet he becomes a convention in itself.
He was more influenced by the poems of Shelley.
Browning believed that “the best is yet to be”
He believed that ‘truth lies hidden in the evil as well as the good’.
He advocated the triumph of the individual will over the obstacles.
There is robust optimism reflected in his poetry.
In his opinion, “self is not subordinate but supreme”.
Browning is the most stimulating poet in the English language.
His strength, joy of life, and faith is seen vividly in his works.
In his work Paracelsus, Browning uses the hero as his mouthpiece.
He uses it as his own ideas and aspirations.
Browning is the poet of love, of life and the will to live here and beyond the grave.
Two in the Campagna
Two in the Campagna is one of Browning’s abstract poems.
It is a poem where the speaker is unable to reach his beloved.
- Through it seems nature would be a guide and help in taking
the poem to his beloved.
But the lovers cannot meet.
- Though there is desperation yearnings.
- But all ends in pain and
- This is perhaps a human imitation that the poet feels.
This is a poem with a five-lined stanza.
The first 4 lines are tetrameter.
The fifth one in trimeter.
The rhyming scheme is (ab aba). Campagna refers to the countryside around Rome.
It had swampy areas full of meshy plants, and leaves.
Campagna was a place where no rules and regulations were applied.
The poet feels the place where is tricky.
Here he is more melancholy than ever.
- Each time the poet remembers his beloved, there is a
desperation to meet.
But unfortunately, he cannot.
The poet seems to say that as he cannot meet his beloved.
So he is equally unable to put his thought in words in the form of poetry.
Experience lies beyond the grasp of the language.
The poet addresses his beloved here.
He asks her as she is feeling the same as he is feeling.
He yearns to help him to hold his feeling.
But like the creeper, it escapes.
He recalls how at Rome they had sat together.
He wanted her to be with him but now she is, “just so much, no more”.
The poet wishes to be as pure as his beloved, taking in her pure thoughts.
- this union, he feels would take the poet “upward” to his
heavenly realm.
- but this is not possible as she is no more in the world.
- “The good minute goes”, the focus of the poet moves.
- and this also becomes one cause whereby the poet fails to
meet his beloved.
Then there is the point, it is not “our control to love or not to love”.
The poem shows the inability to meet her.
He wanted to immortalize his moments.
- sitting in the campana with his beloved
- the poet once saw “such miracles performed in the play” will sooner fall prey to nature.
The only thing constant is changes.
The poet glimpses a wonderful possibility that is never the loss is possible to capture.
Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern—
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
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