I would like help on understanding the poem by Robert bRowning-:life in Love"

Life in Love

by Robert Browning


Escape me?
Never---
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again,---
So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me---
Ever
Removed!

Les



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2006 11:43PM by lg.

Perhaps Robert Browning read Dante Rossetti?

[rpo.library.utoronto.ca]

Nah, likely just coincidence.

Did 'chase' use to be 'chace'? Not sure, could be a typo, but the same meaning so no matter. Sounds to me like the speaker (not necessarily Browning) is writing one of those all-too-frequent angst poems to a lover (not nec. Elizabeth) who has spurned him. Stalking her, you say? Yeah, could be that too.

Note, for example, the lines:

Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.

Loth is similar to loathe, but not exactly the same. I am loth to eat grits is to say I am normally unwilling. If I loathe grits, I hate them.

The rhyme scheme is interesting, abba-type stanzas, with the first three and last three lines virtual mirror images.

A couple of points.

First chace=chase See the 1913 Webster's here: [machaut.uchicago.edu]

Secondly, I think it's very likely that Browning read Rossetti. The Rossetti's were very popular poets of their era and the fraternity of writers of English verse was still a relatively small circle at the time that Browning was writing.

Les