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Updated: May 9, 2025
The examples of abnormal passion are two that of the amorous homicide who would set on one perfect moment the seal of eternity, in Porphyria's Lover, and that of the other occupier of the mad-house cells, Johannes Agricola, whose passion of religion is pushed to the extreme of a mystical antinomianism.
The song snatches in Pippa Passes, "Through the Metidja," "The Lost Leader," "In a Gondola," "Earth's Immortalities," "Mesmerism," "Women and Roses," "Love Among the Ruins," "A Toccata of Galuppis," "Prospice," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," "Porphyria's Lover," "After," with scores of others, and the "Last Ride Together," the poet's most perfect thing, at the head of the list, are such poems as a very few Shakespeare, Shelley, Burns, Coleridge may surpass now and then in pure lyrical perfection, as Tennyson may excel in dreamy ecstasy, as some seventeenth century songsters may outgo in quaint and perfect fineness of touch, but such as are nowhere to be surpassed or equalled for a certain volume and variety of appeal, for fulness of life and thought, of action and passion.
'Porphyria's Lover' and 'Johannes Agricola in Meditation' were reprinted together in 'Bells and Pomegranates' under the heading of 'Madhouse Cells'. The fifth consisted of the Lines beginning 'Still ailing, Wind? wilt be appeased or no? afterwards introduced into the sixth section of 'James Lee's Wife'. The sonnet is not very striking, though hints of the poet's future psychological subtlety are not wanting in it; but his most essential dramatic quality reveals itself in the last three poems.
If one were to choose favourites from "The Defence of Guinevere," they would be the ballads of "Shameful Death," and of "The Sailing of the Sword," and "The Wind," which has the wind's wail in its voice, and all the mad regret of "Porphyria's Lover" in its burden. The use of "colour-words," in all these pieces, is very curious and happy.
One might say of him that there never was another poet in whom there was so much of the obsession of love and so little of the obsession of sex. Love was for him the crisis and test of a man's life. The disreputable lover has his say in Browning's monologues no less than Count Gismond. Porphyria's lover, mad and a murderer, lives in our imaginations as brightly as the idealistic lover of Cristina.
Browning's matter; for his manner, we hold Mr. Symons right in thinking him a master of all the arts of poetry. "These extraordinary little poems," says Mr. Symons of "Johannes Agricola" and "Porphyria's Lover"
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