5258. Walter Savage Landor to RB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 30, 271–273.
[Florence]
[Postmark: 16 July 1863]
Dear Browning,
When I was in bed last night, I began to fear that you perhaps might find it unpleasant to have anything to do with the publication of my Diogenes. If so, throw it away. I have written quite enough without it. Probably by this time you will have recieved my Hellenic Idyls. [1] I entrusted them to a friend [2] who I believed would have attended to the printing. It seems he was too occupied in things more important. Proofsheets were sent to me so full of Errata, for me to correct, that in my desperation, at the end of several months, I threw 732 letters with every leaf of paper, into the stove, lest in future they should find their way into the press. My Diogenes and two poems had reacht safe hands, and were returned to me. In the Diogenes I ought [to] have omitted one sentence: it is this—“In saying so he thought to compliment me, as folks in their jargon call it.” The word has no analogy in greek. This Dialogue, if printed, may be given to any publisher: I know none. It may come into a periodical if acceptable. At all events I will take nothing and give nothing for it. All my publishers had my several works on these conditions.–
I directed to our friend Twisleton a short poem which I now think worth the trouble of improving, I will transcribe it opposite. Endymion and the Moon are old subjects of scandal. I thought she might be called Phœbe, as being the sister of Phœbus,—but it wont do. Few of our people have heard of Selene but such is the proper name. Now for it.
Put it where you will. Some day or other Selene and Endymion may, appear without a blush.
Endymion and Selene.
Selene .. Endymion! thou art duller than erewhile.
I come to visit thee, I leave my home
Where all is cheerful and I find a face
If not averted yet almost as bad!
Rise; none are here to steal way the reeds.
Endymion, sleepest thou with upright knees
And listless arms athwart a vacant breast?
Young shepherd, thou art drowsier than thy sheep
And heedest me just as thou heedest them.
Endymion .. Thou art immortal, mortal is Endymion,
Nor sleeping but thro’ weariness and pain.
Selene .. What pains thee?
Endymion .. Love, the bitterest of pains.
Selene .. Hast thou not mine, ungrateful?
Endymion .. Thine I have ..
O how less warm than what a shepherdess
Gives to a shepherd not more fond than I!
Selene .. I give no other to the Blest above,
Yet even the brightest every day pursues
My path, and often listens to my praise,
And takes up his own harp and aids the song.
Few are the youths whose finger never tuned
An earthly reed or later lyre for me:
Haply thou too, Endymion, shalt be sung
Afar from Latmos, if thou meritest,
Nor thy name sever’d, as it is, from mine.
Silence is sweeter at the present hour
Than voice or pipe or sleep, so pay my due
Ere Morn come on, for Morn is apt to blush
When she sees kisses, let her not see ours
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Address: Angleterre / Robert Browning Esq / 19 Warwick Crescent / Westbourne Terrace / London.
Publication: BBIS-5, pp. 55–56.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.
1. i.e., Heroic Idyls, which was not published until 14 November 1863.
2. Arthur de Noé Walker (1820–1901).
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