Browning's Shorter Poems

XV

                                                              I say then,—my song
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever more strong,
Made a proffer of good to console him—he slowly resumed.
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes
210Of his turban, and see—the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,
He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before,
He is Saul, ye remember in glory,—ere error had bent
The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, tho' much spent
Be the life and bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,
To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.
So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the pile
Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, [page 215]
And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raise
220His bent head, and the other hung slack—till I touched on the praise
I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees
Which were thrust out each side around me, like oak roots which please
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know
If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro' my hair
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power—
230All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine—[page 216]
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned—"Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence.
As this moment,—had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!"

XVI

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more—no song more! outbroke—

XVII

"I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke;
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain
240And pronounced on the rest of his handwork—returned him again
His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw,[page 217]
Reported, as man may of God's work—all's love, yet all's law.
Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked
To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked.
Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?
I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less,
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God
250In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.
And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all complete,
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet.
Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known,[page 218]
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own,
There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,
I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think),
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
260E'en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst!
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
God's own speed in the one way of love; I abstain for love's sake.
—What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch; should the hundredth appal?
In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
Here, the creature surpass the creator,—the end, what began?
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,[page 210]
270And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?
Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower
Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?
And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest),
These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height
This perfection,—succeed with life's dayspring, death's minute of night?
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,
280Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake
From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set
Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet[page 220]
To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure!
The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure;
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,
And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.

XVIII

"I believe it! 'Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive;
In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe.
All's one gift: Thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my prayer,
290As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.
From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, Thy dread Sabaoth:
I will?—the mere atoms despise me! I Why am I not loath
To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?[page 221]
This;—'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
See the King—I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall through.
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak thro' me now!
300Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou—so wilt Thou!
So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,
Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!
As Thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!
He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak,[page 222]
'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
In the Godhead! I seek and I find it, O Saul, it shall be
310A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like to me,
Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!"

XIX

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got thro' them as hardly, as stragglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news—
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot[page 223]
320Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth—
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
330That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;[page 224]
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers;
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low.
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—"E'en so, it is so!"

ONE WORD MORE°

TO E.B.B.

I

There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together;
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II

°5Rafael° made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas;
These, the world might view—but one, the volume.[page 225]
°10Who that one,° you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving—
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's?

III

You and I would rather read that volume
(Taken to his beating bosom by it),
20Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas—
Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,
Her, that visits Florence in a vision,
Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre—
Seen by us and all the world in circle.

IV

You and I will never read that volume.
°27Guido Reni,° like his own eye's apple,
Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it.[page 226]
Guido Reni dying, all Bologna
30Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!"
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

V

°32Dante° once prepared to paint an angel:
°33Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."°
While he mused and traced it and retraced it
(Peradventure with a pen corroded
Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
°37When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,°
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
40Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Florence)—
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante, standing, studying his angel,—
°45In there broke the folk of his Inferno.°
Says he—"Certain people of importance"
(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)
"Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet."
Says the poet—"Then I stopped my painting."

VI

50You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,
Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno.

VII

You and I will never see that picture.
While he mused on love and Beatrice,
While he softened o'er his outlined angel,
In they broke, those "people of importance":
°57We and Bice° bear the loss forever.

VIII

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?
This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
60Once, and only once, and for one only,
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—
Using nature that's an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
None but would forego his proper dowry,—
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,—
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,[page 228]
70Once, and only once, and for one only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

IX

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement!
°74He who smites the rock° and spreads the water,
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
While he smites, how can he but remember,
80So he smote before, in such a peril,
When they stood and mocked—"Shall smiting help us?"
When they drank and sneered—"A stroke is easy!"
When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
Throwing him for thanks—"But drought was pleasant."
Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
Thus the doing savors of disrelish;
Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture.
90For he bears an ancient wrong about him,[page 229]
Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude—
"How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?"
Guesses what is like to prove the sequel—
°95"Egypt's flesh-pots°—nay, the drought was better."

X

Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
°97Theirs, the Sinai-forhead's cloven brilliance,°
Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat.
Never dares the man put off the prophet.

XI

100Did he love one face from out the thousands,
°101(Were she Jethro's daughter,° white and wifely,
Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave),
He would envy yon dumb, patient camel,
Keeping a reserve of scanty water
Meant to save his own life in the desert;
Ready in the desert to deliver
(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
Hoard and life together for his mistress.

XII

I shall never, in the years remaining,
110Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues.
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems; I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you;
Other heights in other lives, God willing;
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love.

XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails us—
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
120Lines I write the first time and the last time.
He who works in fresco steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets,
He who blows through bronze may breathe through silver,
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV

Love, you saw me gather men and women,
130Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,
Enter each and all, and use their service,
Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem.
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving:
I am mine and yours—the rest be all men's,
°136Karshish,° Cleon,° Norbert,° and the fifty.
Let me speak this once in my true person,
°138Not as Lippo,° Roland, or Andrea,
Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:
140Pray you, look on these my men and women,
Take and keep my fifty poems finished;
Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!
Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

XV

Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self!
Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with color,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.
°150Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,°[page 232]
Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,
Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs,
Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,
Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.

XVI

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
°160All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos),°
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman,—
°163Blank to Zoroaster° on his terrace,
°164Blind to Galileo° on his turret.
°165Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats°—him, even!
Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal—
When she turns round, comes again in heaven,
Opens out anew for worse or better!
Proves she like some portent of an iceberg
170Swimming full upon the ship it founders,
Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?
Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire,
Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?[page 233]
°174Moses,° Aaron,° Nadab,° and Abihu°
Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,
Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.
Like the bodied heaven in his clearness
Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,
When they ate and drank and saw God also!

XVII

180What were seen? None knows, none ever will know.
Only this is sure—the sight were other,
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,
Dying now impoverished here in London.
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
°186One to show a woman when he loves her.°

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you—yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
190Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you— [page 234]
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,
200Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!

NOTES

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN. (PAGE 1.)

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The poem is based on an old myth found in many forms, all turning upon the attempt to cheat a magician out of his promised reward. See Brewer's Reader's Handbook, Baring-Gould's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, Grimm's Deutsche Sagen, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. There are Persian and Chinese analogues.

The eldest son of William Macready, the actor, was confined to the house by illness, and Browning wrote this jeu d'esprit to amuse the boy and to give him a subject for illustrative drawings.

1. Hamelin. A town in Hanover, Prussia.

89. Cham, or Khan. The title of the rulers of Tartary.

91. Nizam. The title of the sovereign of Hyderabad, the principal state of India.

158. Claret, Moselle, etc. Names of wines.

179. Caliph. The title given to the successor of Mohammed, as head of the Moslem state, and defender of the faith. Century Dictionary.

TRAY. (PAGE 15.)

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The poem tells in detail an actual incident, and was written as a protest against vivisection.

3. Sir Olaf. A conventional name in romances of mediæval chivalry.

6. A satire upon Byronism. Manfred and Childe Harold are heroes of this type.

Note the abruptness and vigor of the style. Where does it seem effective? Where unduly harsh? Why does the poet welcome the third bard? What things does the poem satirize?

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP. (PAGE 17.)

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The incident is real, except that the actual hero was a man, not a boy.

1. Ratisbon (German Regensburg). A city in Austria, stormed by Napoleon in 1809.

11. Lannes. Duke of Montebello, a general in Napoleon's army.

20. This sentence is incomplete. The idea is begun anew in line 23.

What two ideals are contrasted in Napoleon and the boy? By what means is sympathy turned from one to the other? Show how rapidity and vividness are given to the story.

HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX. (PAGE 19.)

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Browning thus explains the origin of the poem: "There is no sort of historical foundation about Good News from Ghent. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast,[page 237] after I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse 'York,' then in my stable, at home." It would require a skilful imagination to create a set of circumstances which could give any other plausible reason for the ride to "save Aix from her fate."

14. Lokeren. Twelve miles from Ghent.

15. Boom. Sixteen miles from Lokeren.

16. Düffeld. Twelve miles from Boom.

17. 19, 31, etc. Mecheln (Fr. Malines), Aershot, Hasselt, etc. The reader may trace the direction and length of the ride in any large atlas. Minute examinations of the route are, however, of no special value.

Note the rapidity of narration and the galloping movement of the verse; the time of starting, and the anxious attention to the time as the journey proceeds. How are we given a sense of the effort and distress of the horses? How do we see Roland gradually emerging as the hero? Where is the climax of the story? Note, especially, the power or beauty of lines 2, 5, 7, 15, 23, 25, 39, 40, 47, 51-53, 54-56.

HERVÉ RIEL. (PAGE 22.)

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(Published in the Cornhill Magazine, 1871. Browning gave the £100 received for the poem to the fund for the relief of the people of Paris, who were starving after the siege of 1870.)

The cause of James II., who had been removed from the English throne in 1688, and succeeded by William and Mary, was taken up by the French. The story is strictly historical,[page 238] except that Hervé Riel asked a holiday for the rest of his life.

5. St. Malo on the Rance. On the northern coast of France, in Brittany. See any large atlas.

43. pressed. Forced to enter service in the navy.

44. Croisickese. A native of Croisic, in Brittany. Browning has used the legends of Croisic for poetic material in his Gold Hair of Pornic and in The Two Poets of Croisic.

46. Malouins. Inhabitants of St. Malo.

135. The Louvre. The great palace and art gallery of Paris.

Note the suggestion of the sea, and of eager hurry, in the movement of the verse. Compare the directness of the opening with that of the preceding poem: What is the advantage of such a beginning? How much is told of the hero? By what means is his heroism emphasized? How is Browning's departure from the legend a gain? Observe the abrupt energy of lines 39-40; the repetition, in 79-80; the picture of Hervé Riel in stanzas viii and x.

PHEIDIPPIDES. (PAGE 30.)

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The story is from Herodotus, told there in the third person. See Herodotus, VI., 105-106. The final incident and the reward asked by the runner are Browning's addition.

Χαίρετε, νικωμεν. Rejoice, we conquer.

4. Zeus. The chief of the Greek gods (Roman Jupiter). Her of the ægis and spear. These were the emblems of Athena (Roman Minerva), the goddess of wisdom and of [page 239] warfare.

5. Ye of the bow and the buskin. Apollo and Diana.

8. Pan. The god of nature, of the fields and their fruits.

9. Archons. Rulers. tettix, the grasshopper, whose image symbolized old age, and was worn by the senators of Athens. See the myth of Tithonus and Tennyson's poem of that name.

13. Persia attempted a conquest of Athens in 490 B.C. and was defeated by the Athenians in the famous battle of Marathon, under Miltiades.

18. To bring earth and water to an invading enemy was a symbol of submission.

19. Eretria. A city on the island of Eubœa, twenty-nine miles north of Athens.

20. Hellas. The Greek name for Greece.

21. The Greeks of the various provinces long regarded themselves as of one blood and quality, superior to the outer barbarians.

32. Phoibos, or Phœbus. Apollo, god of the sun and the arts. Artemis (Roman Diana), goddess of the moon and patroness of hunting.

33. Olumpos. Olympus. A mountain of Greece which was the abode of Zeus and the other gods.

52. Parnes. A mountain on the ridge between Attica and Bœotia, now called Ozia.

62. Erebos. The lower world; the place of night and the dead.

89. Miltiades (?-489 B.C.). The Greek general who won the[page 240] victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C.

106. Akropolis. The citadel of Athens, where stood the court of justice and the temple of the goddess Athene.

109. Fennel-field. The Greek name for fennel was 'ο Μαραθών (Marathon). Hence the prophetic significance of Pan's gift to the runner.

Compare the story in Herodotus (VI., 105-106) with Browning's more spirited and poetic version. Observe how the strong patriotism, the Greek love of nature, and the Greek reverence for the gods are brought to the fore. What imagery in the poem is especially effective? What is the claim of Pheidippides—as Browning presents him—to memory as a hero? What ideals are most prominent in the poem?

MY STAR. (PAGE 40.)

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4. angled spar. The Iceland spar has the power of polarizing light and producing great richness and variety of color.

11. Saturn. The planet next beyond Jupiter; here chosen, perhaps, for its changing aspects. See an encyclopedia or dictionary.

This dainty love lyric is said to have been written with Mrs. Browning in mind. It needs, however, no such narrow application for its interpretation. It is the simple declaration of the lover that the loved one reveals to him qualities of soul not revealed to others. Observe the "order of lyric progress" in speaking first of nature, then of the feelings.

EVELYN HOPE. (PAGE 41.)

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The lover denies the evanescence of human love. He implies that in some future time the love will reappear and be rewarded. Browning's optimism lays hold sometimes of the present, sometimes of the future, for the fulfilment of its hope. Especially strong is his "sense of the continuity of life." "There shall never be one lost good," he makes Abt Vogler say. The charm of this poem is more, perhaps, in its tenderness of tone and purity of atmosphere than in its doctrine of optimism.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. (PAGE 43.)

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This poem was written in Rome in the winter of 1853-1854. The scene is the Roman Campagna. The verse has a softness and a melody unusual in Browning. Compare its structure with that of Holmes's The Last Leaf. Note the elements of pastoral peace and gentleness in the opening, and in the coloring of the scene. What two scenes are brought into contrast? Note how the scenes alternate throughout the poem, and how each scene is gradually developed according to the ordinary laws of description. What ideals are thus compared? What does the poem mean?

MISCONCEPTIONS. (PAGE 47.)

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11. Dalmatic. A robe worn by mediæval kings on solemn occasions, and still worn by deacons at the mass in the Roman Catholic church.

NATURAL MAGIC. (PAGE 48.)

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5. Nautch. An Indian dancing-girl, to whom Browning ascribes the skill of a magician.

The poem celebrates the transforming and life-giving power of affection. Note the abrupt and excited manner of utterance, and how the speaker begins in the midst of things. He has already told his story once, when the poem opens. Note also the parallelism of structure, as in Misconceptions, the climax in each stanza, and the echo in the last line of each. Tell the story in the common order of prose narrative.