My Star

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Title:     My Star
Author: Robert Browning [More Titles by Browning]

All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar) [A]
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. [B]
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

 

NOTE

A. =angled spar=. The Iceland spar has the power of polarizing light and producing great richness and variety of color.

B. =Saturn=. The planet next beyond Jupiter; here chosen, perhaps, for its changing aspects. See an encyclopaedia or dictionary.

This dainty love lyric is said to have been written with Mrs. Browning in mind. It needs, however, no such narrow application for its interpretation. It is the simple declaration of the lover that the loved one reveals to him qualities of soul not revealed to others. Observe the "order of lyric progress" in speaking first of nature, then of the feelings.

[The end]
Robert Browning's poem: My Star

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