Youth and Art

Youth and Art by Robert Browning

It once might have been, once only:
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

Your trade was with sticks and clay,
You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished,
Then laughed "They will see some day
Smith made, and Gibson demolished."

My business was song, song, song;
I chirped, cheeped, trilled and twittered,
"Kate Brown's on the boards ere long,
And Grisi's existence embittered!"

I earned no more by a warble
Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marble,
I needed a music-master.

We studied hard in our styles,
Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,
For air looked out on the tiles,
For fun watched each other's windows.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,
Cap and blouse--nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
With fingers the clay adhered to.

And I--soon managed to find
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind
And be safe in my corset-lacing.

No harm! It was not my fault
If you never turned your eye's tail up
As I shook upon E in alt,
Or ran the chromatic scale up:

For spring bade the sparrows pair,
And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street looked rare
With bulrush and watercresses.

Why did not you pinch a flower
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power
Of thanks in a look, or sing it?

I did look, sharp as a lynx,
(And yet the memory rankles,)
When models arrived, some minx
Tripped up-stairs, she and her ankles.

But I think I gave you as good!
"That foreign fellow,--who can know
How she pays, in a playful mood,
For his tuning her that piano?"

Could you say so, and never say
"Suppose we join hands and fortunes,
And I fetch her from over the way,
Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?"

No, no: you would not be rash,
Nor I rasher and something over:
You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I'm queen myself at bals-paré,
I've married a rich old lord,
And you're dubbed knight and an R.A.

Each life unfulfilled, you see;
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,--been happy.

And nobody calls you a dunce,
And people suppose me clever:
This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it for ever.

When I was choosing which poet to write about for my English paper I came across this poem by Robert Browning. While I decided on another poem and poet, I still really like this poem. The poem describes two people who fell in love, but could never be together. When they meet and fall in love they are both very poor and very much involved in art. She was a musician, his business was "song, song, song." The man was a sculptor, her "trade was stick and clay." Browning also makes allusions to a famous sculptor, John Gibson, and a famous singer, Giulia Grisi. However, their relationship does not last. He becomes a knight and she marries a lord. The good thing about their love and their relationship is that they were not together for long, if at all, so they will never grow bored with each other. The woman in the poem, Kate, is comparing and contrasting her current life with the life she had when she was an aspiring singer. She is thinking of what her life could have been like if she had stayed with the other man. She knows now that it once could have happened, but now they have missed it, "and we missed it, lost for ever."

The end rhyme that Browning uses helps add to the light-hearted tone of the poem. Because Browning keeps the tone happier and lighter the reader gets the feeling that she is almost happy that the relationship did not last. Browning could have made the poem very somber and sad, but he decided to go a different way. Because it did not last they did not have to endure all the hardships that came with it. They did not have to experience the heartache of it ending. The fantasy provides her with something to think about when times are bad.

The poem contains man references to birds and other animals. Browning refers to the man and woman as birds, the man a sparrow and Kate a she-bird. He then goes on to describe Kate's singing as chirping and cheeping. The references continue throughout the poem. Birds and the singing of birds were often connected with love. The two people in the poem could be described as "love birds." In my opinion, when people think of birds they think of happiness and people in love and that seems to be what Browning was trying to evoke when he used this type of imagery.