When I came to the third stanza
I leaped to my feet-- the thing seemed incredible, but here
before my eyes was actually Browning's prophetic message to
America in regard to the submarine sinkings.
"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not so sunk that
moments--etc." It is an extraordinary evidence of the man's
genius that in 1840 he should have perhaps foreseen prophetically
the happenings of seventy-six years later! Not only did Browning
seem to know what was bound to happen, but he told us the remedy.
I sat right down and wrote to my good friend the president,
enclosing a marked copy of the poem. On the sixth of April, 1917,
war was declared.
May 7, 1912, was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of
Robert Browning. On that memorable date I was traveling to Ohio
at the request of my dear friend Miss Jones to deliver an address
at the Columbus School for Girls. Curiously enough the name of
my Pullman car was Pauline. Not only did that strike me as
remarkable, but I occupied upper berth number 9 in car 11, two
numbers which, added together, produced the exact age at which
Browning published the poem of that name. At once I recited the
opening lines, "Pauline, mine own, bend o'er me--thy soft breast
shall pant to mine--bend o'er me," to the porter.
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