ABSTRACT
First publ. B & P iii (DL), 26 Nov. 1842, with Incident, which preceded it, under the collective title Camp and Cloister, with the title ‘Cloister (Spanish)’. Repr. 1849 (when it was separated from Incident and given its present title), 1863 (when it was placed in Lyrics: see Appendix A, p. 464), 18632, 1868, 1880, 1888. In 1863 the poem was listed on the contents page as no. III of Garden-Fancies, but, though it immediately follows that poem in the text, it retains its separate identity. The contents page may be misprinted, or may contain the trace of a change which B. thought better of; the contents page of 1863, the revised reissue of 1863, lists the poem separately. The date of composition is unknown. J. U. Rundle (N& Q cxcvi[1951] 252) suggests a debt to Burns’s Holy Willie’s Prayer. G. Bornstein, in Poetic Remaking: The Art of Browning, Yeats and Pound (Pennsylvania 1988, p. 23) suggests that the poem ‘may glance at the debate over religious ritual stirred by the Oxford Movement’: see headnote to Tomb at St Praxed’s (p. 260). The setting is contemporary, but articulates a traditional Protestant attack on monastic life as a breeding-ground for petty feuds and religious hypocrisy; cp. the ‘old monk’ in Sordello i 299–308. False or perverted religious feeling, whether Protestant or Catholic, is a recurring topic of B.’s work; cp., in this period, Johannes and Tomb at St. Praxed’s. Spanish Catholicism in particular is further attacked in Confessional. Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! 5 What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims— Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames! At the meal we sit together: 10 Salve tibi! I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt: 15 What’s the Latin name for “parsley”? What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout? Phew! We’ll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf! With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished, 20 And a goblet for ourself, Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps— Marked with L. for our initial! (He, he! There his lily snaps!) 25 Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the Convent bank, With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 30—Can’t I see his dead eye grow Bright, as ‘twere a Barbary corsair’s? That is, if he’d let it show. When he finishes refection, Knife and fork across he lays 35 Never, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu’s praise. I, the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange-pulp; In three sips the Arian frustrate; 40 While he drains his at one gulp! Oh, those melons! If he’s able We’re to have a feast; so nice! One goes to the Abbot’s table, All of us get each a slice. 45 How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble, Keep ‘em close-nipped on the sly! There’s a great text in Galatians, 50 Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails. If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of Heaven as sure can be, 55 Spin him round and send him flying Off to Hell a Manichee? Or, my scrofulous French novel, On grey paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel 60 Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe. If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in’t? 65 Or, the Devil!—one might venture Pledge one’s soul yet slily leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he’d miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia 70 We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine… St, there’s Vespers! Plena gratiâ Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!
