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Quote of the Day: Love Among the Ruins
“Love Among the Ruins,” written in 1855 by Robert Browning:
Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.Now the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest
Twelve abreast.And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’er-spreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.Now—the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.
This poem inspired the title of one of my favorite movies, Love Among the Ruins. You can watch the entire movie for free here, on YouTube.
This was the only movie in which Kathryn Hepburn and Laurence Olivier appeared together. This 1975 movie is only an hour and a half long–it was made expressly for television. It never appeared in the movie theaters.
I caught it one night by chance. My middle-school-aged daughter was up all night sick, and I was keeping her company. We decided to watch some old movies, and this one caught our attention. We both loved it.
The writing, the sets, the scenery, and the acting alone are worth the time to see it. But the chemistry between Hepburn and Olivier is exciting and very real.
This is the closing scene, which readers should watch if they don’t want to watch the entire movie.
The picture below is of Hepburn and Olivier taking a stroll in between filming the scenes. (The photograph is in the public domain.)
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The poem has an interesting structure, as if, in its way, the sounds were echoing off the ancient stone ruins.
I’ve seen this movie twice – once to check it out, and again with my wife. Saves wear and tear on the car and the high cost of tickets for our “night out.” The link above didn’t work for me, so here’s my take on the end of the movie:
It’s a classic. I’m not a fan (per se) of the older Katherine, but Lawrence is amazing.
This conversation is an entry in our Quote of the Day Series. If you remember a great quote, we still have 4 openings left on the May Schedule. And we have more tips for finding quotes on our new June 2018 Sign-Up Sheet and Schedule.
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So here’s what happened: I mistakenly used an entire-movie link for my end-of-movie link. I have now fixed that. The end-of-movie clip is only about two minutes long.
When you posted an end-of-movie link to give me a link to fix mine, you also posted an entire-movie link. :-) We are funny around here. :-)
Thank you for letting me know so I could fix my link.
It’s a great clip. I really enjoyed the movie. It is pure fun. :-)
Unfortunately, for me, it doesn’t have CC. Amazon sells a DVD, but the CC are in Spanish and I’m as deficient in Spanish as in English. I’ll watch and get as much as possible. Thanks for putting it up.
I hope you can find it with the close captioning in English. Good grief. C’mon Brits. Make it happen! :-)
I love the story and the movie.
And these two great actors working together is really wonderful.
My daughter and I still remember how it got us through a dreadful night of her not feeling well. :-)
I checked it twice for the end of the movie. Now it doesn’t work.
Google does not like Ricochet or the reverse.
You’re right. Your clip is the just the end of the movie. When I first clicked it, it showed the time as an hour and a half. I just let it run, and it quickly adjusted the time to just the last two minutes.
Okay. We have lift off. :-)
Thank you. :-)