How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix

How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to   Aix past Robert Browning   performed by Robert Hardy

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I
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
'Proficient speed!'' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
'Speed!' echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind close the postern, the lights sank to residual,
And into the midnight we galloped beside.

II
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck past neck, footstep by pace, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
So shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

Three
'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear;
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see;
At Düffeld,'twas morning as plain as could exist;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So, Joris bankrupt silence with, 'Yet there is time!''

IV
At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the dominicus,
And confronting him the cattle stood black every ane,
To stare through the mist at the states galloping by,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each hutting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

V
And his low caput and crest, only one precipitous ear bent dorsum
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence, - ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and betimes
His violent lips shook up in galloping on.

VI
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, 'Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the error's non in her,
We'll call back at Aix' - for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible boost of the flank,
Equally down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

Vii
And so, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the heaven;
The broad lord's day above laughed a pitiless laugh,
'Neath our anxiety broke the brittle vivid stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And 'Gallop,' gasped Joris, 'for Aix is in sight!'

Viii
'How they'll greet us!' - and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay expressionless as a rock;
And there was my Roland to comport the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the skirt,
And with circles of scarlet for his eye-sockets' rim.

Ix
Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall,
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my easily, laughed and sang, whatsoever racket, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

10
And all I remember is - friends flocking circular
As I saturday with his head 'twixt my knees on the footing;

And no vox but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured downwardly his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by mutual consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

Interpretation by Martin Garrett

Remembered place-names – Aershot and Hasselt, Looz and Tongres -  mark the stages of the horsemen's desperate journeying.  But the poem is too most forgetting: the cocky-forgetfulness of the unnamed speaker who emphasises non his own heroism only that of his horse. Roland'southward galloping mattered more than, at the fourth dimension, than politics or war - we never larn what exactly the 'good news' was - and galloping anapaests (two unstressed syllables followed by 1 stressed) are insistently present. This makes 'How They Brought the Skilful News' an ideal piece for recitation. In one-time historic period, however, Browning faltered later speaking the commencement few lines into an early Edison phonograph; he is 'incredibly sorry', he can but be heard to say, that he has forgotten his ain verses. It is almost as if he wanted to depict attention to the importance of remembering and forgetting in the poem.

Martin Garrett is a scholar and writer and the author of volumes on Byron, Mary Shelley and both Elizabeth and Robert Browning.  He has taught on a number of undergraduate courses for the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London.

Source: https://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/poetryperformance/browning/poem2/browning2.html

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