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The Patriot Summary & Analysis
by Robert Browning

The Patriot Summary & Analysis
by Robert Browning

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “The Patriot”

I

1It was roses, roses, all the way,

2With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:

3The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,

4The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,

5A year ago on this very day.

II

6The air broke into a mist with bells,

7The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.

8Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels—

9But give me your sun from yonder skies!"

10They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

III

11Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,

12To give it my loving friends to keep!

13Naught man could do have I left undone:

14And you see my harvest, what I reap

15This very day, now a year is run.

IV

16There's nobody on the house-tops now—

17Just a palsied few at the windows set;

18For the best of the sight is, all allow,

19At the Shambles' Gate—or, better yet,

20By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

V

21I go in the rain, and, more than needs,

22A rope cuts both my wrists behind;

23And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,

24For they fling, whoever has a mind,

25Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

VI

26Thus I entered, and thus I go!

27In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.

28"Paid by the World,—what dost thou owe

29Me?"—God might question; now instead,

30'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

  • “The Patriot” Introduction

    • "The Patriot" is English poet Robert Browning's reflection on human fickleness and frailty. Only a year before he tells his tale, this dramatic monologue's speaker was honored as a patriotic hero; now, he's on his way to his execution for unspecified crimes, as vilified as he was once idolized. The winds of public opinion, the poem suggests, can shift in a moment—and people are often both changeable and cruel. This poem first appeared in Browning's 1855 collection Men and Women.

  • “The Patriot” Summary

    • There were roses upon roses, all along the street—roses mingled with myrtle, all jumbled up like crazy in the road before me. The roofs themselves seemed to rock back and forth, and the church towers flew so many bright flags they blazed like bonfires. This happened exactly a year ago today.

      The sound of ringing bells was thick as a mist in the air, and the city's ancient walls shook with the crowd's happy shouts. If I'd said, "Kind people, all this noise is unpleasant—just give me the sun instead," they would have replied, "Sure! And what more can we do for you after that?"

      But alas, I was the one who reached for the sun, to try to bring it back for my adoring countrypeople. I did every heroic thing a person possibly could. And now, exactly a year later, you can see the fruits of all my labors.

      Now, there's nobody watching me from the roofs: just a few shaky old people looking out of their windows. That's because the best view today, everyone agrees, is right by the prison gates—or, even better, right at the foot of the gallows, I'd bet.

      I walk in the rain, and—though they really didn't need to—my captors tied my wrists behind my back, so tightly the rope cuts into me. And I get the feeling that my forehead is bleeding; anyone who feels like it can throw a rock at me in vengeance for the crimes I committed this year.

      I came into the city on these roads—and I'm leaving the same way! Right in the middle of triumphal parades like mine, people have fallen down dead. God might well ask me, "Since the world has given you this payment for your actions, what do you owe to me?" Now, God will be the one who pays me—and that's a much safer proposition than trusting in other people.

  • “The Patriot” Themes

    • Theme The Fickleness of Public Opinion

      The Fickleness of Public Opinion

      “The Patriot” reflects on just how quickly—and unjustly—public opinion can change. The poem’s speaker was once the man of the hour, honored as a great “patriot” and paraded in the streets for some heroic feat in service to his country. But now, exactly a year later, the very same people who cheered him throw rocks at him. The political winds have shifted, it seems, and the man so recently hailed as a hero is about to be executed as a traitor. This tale suggests that people’s memories are short and that people themselves are often merciless. Public opinion, the poem implies, has a lot more to do with the emotion of the moment than with sincere feeling or justice.

      Comparing his two different marches through the city, the speaker marvels at just how much has changed over the course of a year—and at just how cruelly his fellow citizens are treating him now. Once a hero in a parade, he’s now a convict being dragged to the gallows. His countrypeople, who once threw “roses” in his path, now hurl “stones” at him until his “forehead bleeds.” They’ve clearly forgotten all his past good works, and they show no flicker of kindness to their former idol.

      Because the poem never specifies what either the speaker’s heroic act or his crimes were, this change in the citizens’ behavior feels arbitrary. Both the crowd’s adoration and their rage seem feverish and groundless. It doesn’t seem as if these people are making reasoned judgments of the speaker’s actions, but as if they’re just getting caught up in the excitement of the moment. When they saw him as a hero, they’d have given him “the sun from yonder skies” if he asked for it; now that they see him as a villain, they do everything they can to hurt him, tying his wrists so tight the ropes “cut” him and ghoulishly jostling for the best view of the “scaffold” where he’ll die.

      The poem thus suggests that it doesn’t take more than a shift in the political winds—or a compelling enough spectacle—for the public to decide that a person who they once considered a patriot is really a traitor (or that a bad man is a hero, for that matter). That makes patriotism itself a dangerous game. If fickle public opinion, not real justice, sways the fates and beliefs of countries and their citizens, it’s hard to know what being loyal to a country might even mean.

    • Theme Human Weakness and Divine Mercy

      Human Weakness and Divine Mercy

      “The Patriot” paints a melancholy picture of human frailty. While the poem’s speaker was once considered a heroic “patriot,” now he’s being executed as a traitor—and the same people who once cheered for him fling rocks at his head, mindlessly swept up in their emotions. Then again, perhaps the speaker himself has changed. As he’s led to his execution, he thinks of his “year’s misdeeds,” a phrase suggesting that he might have become just as villainous as he was once heroic. Human beings, the poem implies, are changeable and weak, and virtue is hard to find in this world. In the end, the poem suggests that only by turning to God can people hope to find real redemption and justice.

      While the crowd’s shift from adoration to hatred feels sudden and baseless, it’s also quite possible that the once-heroic speaker himself has made a shocking change for the worse. Without giving specifics, he refers to his “year’s misdeeds”—and hints that he might have gone a little power-crazy during his time as the man of the hour, ambitiously “leap[ing] at the sun” to capture even more glory. Just as the crowd can’t be relied upon for mercy, heroes can’t be relied upon for heroism.

      It’s a vanishingly rare human being, the poem thus suggests, who remains consistently good and just. And human frailty can tarnish the greatest victories. But that doesn’t mean there’s no hope in the world at all. At the end of the poem, the speaker feels it’s “safer” to put himself in the hands of “God”: God, perhaps, offers both an escape from the world’s injustices and a chance for the speaker to be forgiven for whatever crimes he might have committed. The speaker’s predicament might even mirror the Christian story of the Crucifixion, suggesting that he might find redemption through his suffering. God, the poem concludes, is the only source of real justice and real forgiveness; humans are often too changeable and weak to practice these virtues themselves.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Patriot”

    • Lines 1-5

      It was roses, roses, all the way,
      With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
      The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
      The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
      A year ago on this very day.

      "The Patriot" starts right in the middle of a vivid memory. Before telling the reader anything else, the speaker of this dramatic monologue begins:

      It was roses, roses, all the way,
      With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:

      The very first image of the poem is of a wild jumble of flowers and fragrant leaves carpeting the street where the speaker walks. The intense epizeuxis of "roses, roses" suggests that there were nothing but roses as far as the speaker could see.

      This luxurious, overwhelming vision is like something from a dream. And so is the imagery of the next lines:

      The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
      The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,

      The whole city where the speaker walks, in other words, seems practically to be dancing. It even seems to be on fire, metaphorically "flam[ing]" with bright "flags." Everything is energy, color, and movement.

      The sounds of the lines add to their intensity. Note the alliteration (of /m/ and /f/ sounds), assonance (of /ah/ and /ee/ sounds), and sibilance of lines 2-4:

      With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
      The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
      The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,

      By now, this imagery—in combination with the poem's title, "The Patriot"—might clue readers in that what the speaker is remembering here is a victory parade: his victory parade. He's the "Patriot" of the title, and he must have performed some heroic service to his country. Now, that country wildly celebrates him.

      And there is something wild about these celebrations—and perhaps a little dangerous. Those heaving roofs, bright spires, and carpets of roses are certainly festive. But buildings that "heave and sway" might be on the verge of falling; spires that burn, burn down; and carpets of red roses might also make the streets seem to run with blood.

      Even taken at face value, there's something not just joyful, but manic in all these festivities: roses running "all the way" through a city street is an awful lot of roses. There's a kind of crazed excess here, not just deeply-felt happiness or victory.

      From the beginning, then, as the speaker remembers the day of his greatest triumph, there's a little foreshadowing here. The city might be wildly celebrating the speaker at the moment, but perhaps all is not well.

      And the closing line of the stanza warns readers that something may well have changed since this parade. It was "a year ago on this very day" that the speaker made his procession over those roses, and these celebrations are only a memory now.

    • Lines 6-7

      The air broke into a mist with bells,
      The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.

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    • Lines 8-10

      Had I said, "Good folks, mere noise repels—
      But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
      They had answered, "And afterward, what else?"

    • Lines 11-12

      Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,
      To give it my loving friends to keep!

    • Lines 13-15

      Naught man could do have I left undone:
      And you see my harvest, what I reap
      This very day, now a year is run.

    • Lines 16-20

      There's nobody on the house-tops now—
      Just a palsied few at the windows set;
      For the best of the sight is, all allow,
      At the Shambles' Gate—or, better yet,
      By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

    • Lines 21-25

      I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
      A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
      And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
      For they fling, whoever has a mind,
      Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

    • Lines 26-27

      Thus I entered, and thus I go!
      In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.

    • Lines 28-30

      "Paid by the World,—what dost thou owe
      Me?"—God might question; now instead,
      'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

  • “The Patriot” Symbols

    • Symbol The Sun

      The Sun

      The sun, in this poem, is a symbol of unattainable glory.

      As he remembers his celebratory parade a year ago, the speaker feels sure that, if he'd asked the adoring crowds to present him with the sun itself, they would have done it. A moment later, he laments that he "leaped for the sun" himself. Giddy with triumph, the speaker believed for a moment that he could even make the sun his own.

      This image might put readers in mind of Icarus, the figure from classical mythology who used artificial wings to escape a prison—only to die when he flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that held his feathers together.

      In reaching for the sun, the speaker seems to want something that no person gets on earth: lasting, unshakeable glory. But, impossibly high and impossibly bright, the sun is the kind of prize that people just can't reach—and it's by "leap[ing]" for the symbolic sun that the speaker falls.

  • “The Patriot” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Irony

      "The Patriot" is built on a foundation of irony. As the poem begins, the speaker looks back to "a year ago on this very day," inviting readers to pay special attention to the contrast between then and now:

      • A year ago, the speaker was the absolute toast of the town, a hero who could do no wrong. The whole "city" came out to celebrate his victory, ringing bells and strewing flowers as he made a triumphant parade through the streets.
      • Now, the speaker is taking the exact same path. But this time, he's being treated as a villain and a pariah. Before, he was a hero; now, he's on his way to his execution.

      The bitter irony here is that what was once a "triumph," a victory parade, is now the scene of his utter defeat. And the crowd seems equally excited for a celebration or an execution, suggesting that public opinion is often driven more by unthinking (and overpowering) emotion than by reason.

    • Imagery

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    • Hyperbole

    • Repetition

    • Metaphor

    • Enjambment

    • Alliteration

    • Assonance

  • “The Patriot” 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.

    • Myrtle
    • Church-spires
    • Repels
    • Yonder skies
    • They had answered
    • Alack
    • Naught
    • Reap
    • Palsied
    • Shambles' Gate
    • Scaffold
    • I trow
    • More than needs
    • Fling
    • Misdeeds
    • Triumphs
    • What dost thou
    • 'Tis God shall repay
    Myrtle

    • A kind of fragrant plant.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Patriot”

    • Form

      "The Patriot" is one of Browning's famous dramatic monologues, poems in which the writer takes on the voice of a particular character, like an actor playing a part. This one uses an unusual (and uneasy) form that reflects the speaker's tension and suffering. The poem is broken into six cinquains, stanzas of five lines apiece:

      • The first two stanzas describe the speaker's life exactly a year before this poem takes place, when he was paraded through the streets and hailed as a hero.
      • The last three stanzas tell the tale of what he's come to now: treated like a common criminal, he's being hauled through those same streets to his execution.
      • In between, a single rueful stanza hints at what happened between then and now.

      The poem thus feels imbalanced: the speaker's memory of his past glory seems overwhelmed by his present suffering.

      The cinquains also help to give the poem its harrowing flavor. Cinquains are a pretty unusual stanza form in English-language poetry, especially when there's an alternating ABABA rhyme scheme in play; readers might well feel that these stanzas are missing a closing sixth line, cut as short as the speaker's life.

    • Meter

      "The Patriot" uses rhythmic accentual meter to tell its story. That means that each line contains a certain number of strong stresses (or beats), with varying numbers of unstressed beats.

      Accentual meter turns up in a lot of nursery rhymes and folk songs, giving this poem the flavor of an old tale. (And that's fitting: Browning cynically gave this poem the subtitle "An Old Story," suggesting that this hero's fall is the kind of thing that has happened since time immemorial.)

      This particular poem mostly uses accentual tetrameter—that is, lines with four stresses apiece. Most often, it turns to iambs (metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm) and anapests (metrical feet with a da-da-DUM rhythm) to create a march-like momentum. Listen to how that sounds in the first couple of lines:

      It was ro- | ses, ro- | ses, all | the way,
      With myr- | tle mixed | in my path | like mad:

      Those four regular stresses give the lines a steady, drumbeat rhythm, while the changing feet keep the speaker's voice sounding natural.

      And the poem can get all kinds of different effects by changing where each line's stresses fall. Take the first line of the final stanza, for instance:

      Thus I entered, and thus I go!

      Here, the speaker lands hard on the word "Thus" at the very beginning of the line. It's a dramatic moment: it's as if the speaker is demanding that the reader look hard at how splendid his life once was, and how degraded it's become in his last moments.

      The poem's meter is thus perfectly suited to a dramatic monologue: it's flexible, colorful, and, well, dramatic.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      "The Patriot" uses a rhyme scheme that manages to feel both familiar and unsettling. Each stanza's rhymes run like this:

      ABABA

      Alternating rhyme schemes like this are common. But in English-language poetry, at least, they tend to appear most often in stanzas with an even number of lines. By using five-line cinquains for his stanzas, the speaker makes the reader feel a little wrong-footed. There's the sense that the stanzas might have been cut short—that there's still another B rhyme to come.

      That fits right in with the speaker's awful reversal of fortune: no sooner does he think he's on top of the world than he finds himself a miserable prisoner. The rhyme scheme seems to say, You might think this story has a happy ending—but keep reading, it's not over yet.

  • “The Patriot” Speaker

    • This dramatic monologue's speaker is the "Patriot" of the title: a man who has done some heroic act in his country's service. In a shockingly brief time, he's gone from being the hero of the hour to a pariah. As the poem takes place, he's being marched to his execution along just the same streets that he once walked in a glorious parade. The poem hints that his fall probably wasn't his fault: he might have committed some "misdeeds," but it's changeable public opinion that dooms him.

      These experiences seem to have given the speaker a grim, clear-eyed perspective on human nature. He knows now that he can't rely on other people for justice or mercy. (And maybe he can't even rely on himself—perhaps he really did commit some "misdeed.") It's "safer" by far, he believes, to seek forgiveness and healing from God.

  • “The Patriot” Setting

    • The poem is set in an unnamed city—one that, judging by its multiple "church-spires" and its "crowds," might be pretty big and important. But this city really represents any city, anywhere: the poem's larger point is that, wherever people come together in groups, it's all too easy for them to form mindless mobs.

      That becomes clear in the way the city changes its opinion of the speaker in only one year. At the beginning of the poem, the city is bright with celebratory "roses" and "myrtle," honoring the speaker as a hero; by the end, the same city only has "stones" to throw at the selfsame man as he's marched to the "scaffold" where he'll be executed.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “The Patriot”

      Literary Context

      Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a poet ahead of his time. A lot of his contemporaries—even those, like Oscar Wilde, who admired him—saw him as a novelist working in the wrong genre; Wilde famously said that "[George] Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning."

      In part, this was because Browning's most distinctive works were dramatic monologues, poems that could have been taken straight out of the dialogue of a play. His characters ranged from selfish bishops to honest soldiers to murderous dukes, and the poems they inhabited often explored the ways that people excuse and justify their own worst behavior. (Browning wasn't above pointing out the failings of real people, either: his "The Lost Leader" is a barely-veiled attack on William Wordsworth, his one-time hero.)

      "The Patriot" first appeared in Browning's 1855 collection Men and Women, alongside many other dramatic monologues. All these earthy stories were rather different from the dominant Victorian poetry of the day: the lyrical beauty of Tennyson, for instance, or the passionate elegance of Browning's (much more famous) wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. So it wasn't until the Modernist poets came along in the early 20th century that Browning got his due as a poet. Writers like Ezra Pound admired Browning for his wit, his punchy language, and his vivid characters. Browning inspires writers to this day: contemporary novelist A.S. Byatt's acclaimed Possession was partly based on Browning's life and work.

      Historical Context

      When "The Patriot" was published in 1855, Browning's native England was at the peak of its own intensely patriotic moment: the Victorian era. Under the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain had become a massive world power; it was often proverbially said that the "sun never set on the British Empire." With colonial footholds across the globe, that Empire saw itself as a force for good, spreading cultural and scientific advances. The colonized countries, understandably, took a very different perspective on the matter, and the period was marked not only by prosperity in Britain but by discord pretty much everywhere else.

      By 1855, Browning was living in Italy with his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and he might well have cast a skeptical eye on some of his native land's more feverish patriotism. In particular, he had serious doubts about the Crimean War, a bloody and unpopular conflict that ran from 1853-1856, during which Britain (as part of an allegiance with France and the Ottoman Empire) fought Russia over religious and territorial disputes.

      The Crimean War was notoriously ill-managed. Browning's contemporary Tennyson even wrote a famous poem about one of its disasters, in which hundreds of men rode directly to their deaths in a bungled cavalry charge. Well-meaning "patriots" like the one in this poem, Browning might well have reflected, often end up dying senselessly in the name of an untrustworthy, fickle, and corruptible country.

  • More “The Patriot” Resources

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