“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Summary

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Themes

• 

  Hatred, Hypocrisy, and Self-Loathing

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• 

  False Piety and Empty Religious Ritual

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

• Lines 1-8

  Gr-r-r—there go, my heart's abhorrence!
  Water your damned flowerpots, do!
  If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
  God's blood, would not mine kill you!
  What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
  Oh, that rose has prior claims—
  Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
  Hell dry you up with its flames!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-16

  At the meal we sit together;
  Salve tibi!
   I must hear
  Wise talk of the kind of weather,
  Sort of season, time of year:
  Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely
  Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;
  What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
  What's the Greek name for "Swine's Snout"?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-24

  Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
  Laid with care on our own shelf!
  With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
  And a goblet for ourself,
  Rinsed like something sacrificial
  Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps—
  Marked with L. for our initial!
  (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 25-32

  Saint,
   forsooth! While brown Dolores
  Squats outside the Convent bank
  With Sanchicha, telling stories,
  Steeping tresses in the tank,
  Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
  —Can't I see his dead eye glow,
  Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
  (That is, if he'd let it show!)

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 33-40

  When he finishes refection,
  Knife and fork he never lays
  Cross-wise, to my recollection,
  As do I, in Jesu's praise.
  I the Trinity illustrate,
  Drinking watered orange pulp—
  In three sips the Arian frustrate;
  While he drains his at one gulp!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 41-48

  Oh, those melons? If he's able
  We're to have a feast! so nice!
  One goes to the Abbot's table,
  All of us get each a slice.
  How go on your flowers? None double?
  Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
  Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble,
  Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 49-56

  There's a great text in Galatians,
  Once you trip on it, entails
  Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
  One sure, if another fails;
  If I trip him just a-dying,
  Sure of heaven as sure can be,
  Spin him round and send him flying
  Off to hell, a Manichee?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 57-64

  Or, my scrofulous French novel
  On grey paper with blunt type!
  Simply glance at it, you grovel
  Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;
  If I double down its pages
  At the woeful sixteenth print,
  When he gathers his greengages,
  Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 65-72

  Or, there's Satan!—one might venture
  Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
  Such a flaw in the indenture
  As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
  Blasted lay that rose-acacia
  We're so proud of! 
  Hy, Zy, Hine
  'St, there's Vespers! 
  Plena gratia
  Ave, Virgo!
   Gr-r-r—you swine!

  

  

  

  

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“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Symbols

• 

  Brother Lawrence's Garden

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“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Onomatopoeia

  

  

  

  

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• Irony

  

  

  

  

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• Allusion

  

  

  

  

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• Simile

  

  

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Abhorrence
• God's blood
• Salve tibi
• Plenteous
• Cork
• Oak-galls
• Swine's Snout
• Burnished
• Fire-new
• Furnished
• Ere 'tis fit
• Chaps
• Forsooth
• Steeping tresses in the tank
• Lustrous
• As 'twere
• Barbary corsair
• Refection
• Jesu's
• In three sips the Arian frustrate
• Fruit-sort
• Close-nipped
• Galatians
• Manichee
• Scrofulous
• French novel
• Grovel
• Belial's gripe
• Sixteenth print
• Greengages
• Ope a sieve and slip it in't
• Indenture
• Blasted
• Hy, Zy, Hine
• 'St
• Vespers
• Plena gratia, ave, Virgo!

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Speaker

“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”

More “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Aloud — Watch a staged performance of the poem.

  • The Mystery of "Hy, Zy, Hine" — Read some of the many theories about what on earth Browning might have meant by the nonsense words "Hy, Zy, Hine" at the end of the poem.

  • Dramatic Lyrics — Learn more about Dramatic Lyrics, the important collection in which this poem was first published.

  • A Brief Biography — Learn more about Browning's life via the British Library.

  • More Browning Resources — Visit the Victorian Web to find a trove of Browning lore.

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