Meditation (row)

Speculative - a verse by Robert Browning announced in his latest volume Asolando: fancies and facts from 1889.

General characteristics

Meditation is a short piece, with only ten lines in two five-word stanzas. It belongs to the lyric poet's love letter. Others may need new life in Heaven— Man, Nature, Art—made new, assume! Man with new mind old sense to leaven, Nature—new light to clear old gloom, Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room. I shall pray: "Fugitive as precious— Minutes which passed,—-return, remain! Let earth's old life once more enmesh us, You with old pleasure, me—old pain, So we but meet nor part again! Shape

The stanzas of the song implement the ababb penta model, so the whole song rhymes with ababb cdcdd. It was written in a kanambic four-pointed. The rhymes are both masculine (assume - gloom - room, remain - pain - again), and feminine (Heaven - leaven, precious - enmesh us), with the latter consonance being a folded rhyme. Contents

Meditation is a directed poem, as one might suppose to the poet's deceased wife, Elizabeth (Elizabeth Barrett Browning), also a poet and faithful companion of life. He expresses the desire of a lyrical subject who would like to regain his beloved lover even at the cost of suffering. Robert Harvey Strachan writes: Even Browning, in his later work, in a short poem, written about the death of his wife. [Even Browning, in his later work, in a short poem probably written after the death of his wife, seems to demand in his perfect world to return to the expensive, concrete facts of existence here.] Translations

Browning's song was translated into Polish by Juliusz Żuławski and Wiktor Jarosław Darasz. Żuławski adopted the title Meditation, while Darasz decided on Guess. Both translators changed the arrangement of rhymes to ababa. Żuławski used a six-tone, essentially tonic poem, while the classical, thirteen-syllable Darasz medley with a seventh syllable poet.

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