In 490 BC, the Athenian army defeated the invading Persian army in a battle on the plain of Marathon, roughly 26 miles north of Athens. According to legend, and brought down to us via the writings of Herodotus, Lucian and Plutarch, the Athenians then ordered the messenger Pheidippides to run ahead to Athens and announce the victory to the city. Pheidippides raced back to the city in the intense late summer heat. Upon reaching the Athenian agora, he exclaimed “Rejoice! We conquer” and then collapsed dead from exhaustion.
This trope, of the long distance chase to deliver vital news, we see again in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride (1860). This told the (highly embroidered) tale of Paul Revere’s valiant ride to Concord to warn the militia that the British were coming, thus promoting him in American culture to the status of hero and patriot of the American Revolution.
In the same spirit – though this time wholly imaginary – is Robert Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. The poem is a first-person narrative told, in breathless galloping meter, by one of three riders, only one of whose horses, the narrator’s brave Roland, survives to fulfil the epic quest. The midnight errand is urgent — “the news which alone could save Aix from her fate” — but what that good news actually is, is never revealed. The sequence of towns flashing by between Ghent and Aix-la-Chapelle is true to life, though they are characterised only by the associated times of night, dawn, and day (also a feature of Paul Revere’s Ride) as the narrator charges through them.
This poem is one of my earliest memories of poetry, from schooldays, and its rollicking movement and sense of adventure resonates with me now as it did then. There is a recording of Browning himself reciting the poem on an 1889 Edison cylinder, but it’s far too crackly for our purposes, and besides, he forgets the lines and gives up after the first verse (“I’m terribly sorry but I cannot remember me own verses”) so instead I offer this more modern and professional version!
I
I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.
II
Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.
III
’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 be;
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, ‘Yet there is time!’
IV
At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun,
And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:
V
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
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 anon
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.
VI
By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, ‘Stay spur!
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her,
We’ll remember at Aix’ — for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.
VII
So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
‘Neath our feet broke the brittle bright 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 dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red 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 hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood.
X
And all I remember is — friends flocking round
As I sat with his head ‘twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.
