Dramatic Romances

   SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE

   Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
                   Singing together.
   Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
                   Each in its tether
   Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
                   Cared-for till cock-crow:
   Look out if yonder be not day again
                   Rimming the rock-row!
   That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
                   Rarer, intenser,                               10
   Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
                   Chafes in the censer.
   Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
                   Seek we sepulture
   On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
                   Crowded with culture!
   All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
                   Clouds overcome it;
   No!  Yonder sparkle is the citadel's
                   Circling its summit.                           20
   Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
                   Wait ye the warning?
   Our low life was the level's and the night's;
                   He's for the morning.
   Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
                   'Ware the beholders!
   This is our master, famous calm and dead,
                   Borne on our shoulders.

   Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
                   Safe from the weather!                         30
   He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
                   Singing together,
   He was a man born with thy face and throat,
                   Lyric Apollo!

   Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
                   Winter would follow?
   Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
                   Cramped and diminished,
   Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
                   My dance is finished?"                         40
   No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
                   Make for the city!)
   He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
                   Over men's pity;
   Left play for work, and grappled with the world
                   Bent on escaping:
   "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
                   Show me their shaping
   Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,
                   Give!"—So, he gowned him,                     50
   Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
                   Learned, we found him.
   Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
                   Accents uncertain:
   "Time to taste life," another would have said,
                   "Up with the curtain!"
   This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
                   Patience a moment!
   Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
                   Still there's the comment.                     60
   Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
                   Painful or easy!
   Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
                   Ay, nor feel queasy."
   Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
                   When he had learned it,
   When he had gathered all books had to give!
                   Sooner, he spurned it.
   Image the whole, then execute the parts—
                   Fancy the fabric                               70
   Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
                   Ere mortar dab brick!

   (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place
                   Gaping before us.)
   Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
                   (Hearten our chorus!)
   That before living he'd learn how to live—
                   No end to learning:
   Earn the means first-God surely will contrive
                   Use for our earning.                           80
   Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes:
                   Live now or never!"
   He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
                   Man has Forever."
   Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:
                   Calculus racked him:

   Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
                   Tussis attacked him.
   "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he!
                   (Caution redoubled,                            90
   Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
                   Not a whit troubled
   Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
                   Fierce as a dragon
   He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
                   Sucked at the flagon.
   Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
                   Heedless of far gain,
   Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
                   Bad is our bargain!                           100
   Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
                   (He loves the burthen)
   God's task to make the heavenly period
                   Perfect the earthen?
   Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
                   Just what it all meant?
   He would not discount life, as fools do here,
                   Paid by instalment.
   He ventured neck or nothing-heaven's success
                   Found, or earth's failure:                    110
   "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes:
                   Hence with life's pale lure!"
   That low man seeks a little thing to do,
                   Sees it and does it:
   This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
                   Dies ere he knows it.
   That low man goes on adding one to one,
                   His hundred's soon hit:
   This high man, aiming at a million,
                   Misses an unit.                               120
   That, has the world here-should he need the next,
                   Let the world mind him!
   This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
                   Seeking shall find him.
   So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
                   Ground he at grammar;
   Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
                   While he could stammer
   He settled Hoti's business—let it be!—
                   Properly based Oun—                          130
   Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
                   Dead from the waist down.
   Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
                   Hail to your purlieus,
   All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
                   Swallows and curlews!
   Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
                   Live, for they can, there:

   This man decided not to Live but Know—
                   Bury this man there?                          140
   Here—here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
                   Lightnings are loosened,
   Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
                   Peace let the dew send!
   Lofty designs must close in like effects:
                   Loftily Iying,
   Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects,
                   Living and dying.

   NOTES:
   "A Grammarian's Funeral"  is an elegy of a typical pioneer
   scholar of the Renaissance period, sung by the leader of
   the chorus of disciples, and interspersed with parenthetical
   directions to them, while they all bear the body of
   their master to its appropriate burial-place on the highest
   mountain-peak.  A humorous sense of disproportion in
   the labors of devoted scholarship to its results heightens
   their exaltation of the dead humanist's indomitable trust
   in the supremacy of the immaterial.

   86.  Calculus:  the stone.

   88.  Tussis:  a cough.

   95.  Hydroptic:  dropsical.

   129.  Hoti:  Greek particle, conjunction, that.

   130.  Oun: Greek particle, then, now then.

   131.  Enclitic De:  Greek, concerning which Browning
   wrote to the Editor of The News, London, Nov. 21,
   1874:  "In a clever article you speak of 'the doctrine of
   the enclitic De—which, with all deference to Mr.
   Browning, in point of fact, does not exist.'  No, not to
   Mr. Browning, but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose
   fifth list of 'enclitics' ends with the inseparable De,'—
   or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning
   'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage).
   That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated
   'De, meaning but,' was the 'Doctrine' which the Grammarian
   bequeathed to those capable of receiving it."

   A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE

   ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
           A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
           CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS-BY-
           THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE,
           Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG
           AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS
           ERAM, Jessides.

           (It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning
   of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314,
   as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain,
   during the course of a couple of centuries.)

           [Molay was Grand Master of the Templars
   when that order was suppressed in 1312.]

   I

   PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

   The Lord, we look to once for all,
           Is the Lord we should look at, all at once:
   He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul,
           Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.
   See him no other than as he is!
           Give both the infinitudes their due—
   Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
           As infinite a justice too.

   [Organ: plagal-cadence.]

   As infinite a justice too.

   II

   [ONE SINGETH]
   John, Master of the Temple of God,                             10
           Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,
   What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,
           He sold it to Sultan Saladin:
   Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,
           Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive,
   And clipt of his wings in Paris square,
           They bring him now to be burned alive.
                           [And wanteth there grace of lute or
                                   clavicithern, ye shall say to
                                   confirm him who singeth—
           We bring John now to be burned alive.

   III

   In the midst is a goodly gallows built;
           'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck;                20
   But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,
           Make a trench all round with the city muck;
   Inside they pile log upon log, good store;
           Faggots no few, blocks great and small,
   Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,—
           For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.

   CHORUS.

           We mean he should roast in the sight of all.

   IV

   Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
           Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
   Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;                          30
           Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:
   They up they hoist me John in a chafe,
           Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
   Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
   Sing "Laudes" and bid clap-to the torch.

   CHORUS.

           Laus deo—who bids clap-to the torch.

   V

   John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
           Is burning alive in Paris square!
   How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
           Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?              40
   Or heave his chest, which a band goes round?
           Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
   Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
           —Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
                                   [Here one crosseth himself.]

   VI

   Jesus Christ—John had bought and sold,
           Jesus Christ—John had eaten and drunk;
   To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.
           (Salva reverentia.)
   Now it was, "Saviour, bountiful lamb,
           "I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me!       50
   "See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!
           "Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!"

   CHORUS.

          'Tis John the mocker cries, "Save thou me!"

   VII

   Who maketh God's menace an idle word?
           —Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,
   Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?
           For she too prattles of ugly names.
   —Saith, he knoweth but one thing—what he knows?
           That God is good and the rest is breath;
   Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose?                     60
           Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.

   CHORUS.

           O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!

   VIII

   Alack, there be roses and roses, John!
           Some, honied of taste like your leman's  tongue:
   Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!)
           Their tree struck root in devil's-dung.
   When Paul once reasoned of righteousness
           And of temperance and of judgment to come,
   Good Felix trembled, he could no less:
           John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb.            70

   CHORUS.

           What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?

   IX

   Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose
           To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
   Lo,—petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
           Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
   And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
           And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
   And lo, he is horribly in the toils
           Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!

   CHORUS.

           What maketh heaven, That maketh hell.                  80

   X

   So, as John called now, through the fire amain,
           On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life—
   To the Person, he bought and sold again—
           For the Face, with his daily buffets rife—
   Feature by feature It took its place:
           And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark,
   At the steady whole of the Judge's face—
           Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.

   SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

           God help all poor souls lost in the dark!

   NOTES:
   "The Heretic's Tragedy" is an Interlude imagined in the
   manner of the Middle Ages, and typically representing
   this period of human development in its quaint piety and
   prejudice, its childish delight in cruelty, and its cumulative
   legend-making during the course of two centuries as reflected
   through the Flemish nature.  It is supposed to be
   sung by an abbot, a choir-singer, and a chorus, in celebration
   of the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last
   Grand Master of the wealthy and powerful secular order
   of Knights Templar, which came into rivalry with the
   Church after the Crusades and was finally suppressed by
   Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, Molay's
   burning at Paris in 1314 being a final scene in their
   discomfiture and the Church's triumph.

   8.  Plagal-cadence: a closing progression of chords in
   which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of
   the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree
   of the scale.  The name arises from the modes used in
   early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a
   transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the
   fourth degree of the authentic modes.

   12.  Bought of... Aldabrod, etc.:  Clement's arraignment
   of Jacques or John being that the riches won piously
   by the order during the Crusades, he had not scrupled to
   sell again to Saladin, the Sultan, who is portrayed by
   Scott in "The Talisman.''

   14.  Pope Clement:  the fifth Clement (1305-1314).

   18.  Clavicithern:  a cithern with keys like a harpsichord.

   25.  Sing "Laudes":  Sing the seven Psalms of praise
   making up the service of the Church called Lauds.

   48.  Salvâ, etc. the bidding to greet here with a reverence,
   according to custom, the Host, or Christ's flesh,
   which had been mentioned.

   60.  Sharon's rose:  Solomon's Song 2.1.

   ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME

           [" Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord
   preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the
   merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least
   from her conspicuous table here in Rome should be, though but once
   yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon
   beneath the feet of the guests.  And a moving sight in truth, this, of
   so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now
   maternally brought-nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in') haled,
   as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts,
   to partake of the heavenly grace.  What awakening, what striving with
   tears, what working of a yeasty conscience!  Nor was my lord wanting
   to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions
   which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be
   altogether the glory."-Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.]

   What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather
   to this effect:—

   I

   Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
   Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
   Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
   Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff,
   Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
   Gives us the summons—'tis sermon-time!

   II

   Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you?
   Up stumps Solomon—bustling too?
   Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
   To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears?
   Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch?               10
   Stand on a line ere you start for the church!

   III

   Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,
   Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye,
   Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
   Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve.
   Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
   And buzz for the bishop—here he comes.

   IV

   Bow, wow, wow—a bone for the dog!
   I liken his Grace to an acorned hog.                           20
   What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass,
   To help and handle my lord's hour-glass!
   Didst ever behold so lithe a chine?
   His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.

   V

   Aaron's asleep—shove hip to haunch,
   Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch!
   Look at the purse with the tassel and knob
   And the gown with the angel and thingumbob!
   What's he at, quotha? reading his text!
   Now you've his curtsey—and what comes next?                   30

   VI

   See to our converts—you doomed black dozen—
   No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen!
   You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly;
   You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely;
   You took your turn and dipped in the hat,
   Got fortune—and fortune gets you; mind that!

   VII

   Give your first groan—compunction's at work
   And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
   Lo, Micah,—the selfsame beard on chin
   He was four times already converted in!                        40
   Here's a knife, clip quick—it's a sign of grace—
   Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.

   VIII

   Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?
   I know a point where his text falls pat.
   I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now
   Went to my heart and made me vow
   I meddle no more with the worst of trades—
   Let somebody else pay his serenades.

   IX

   Groan all together now, whee-hee-hee!
   It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me!                       50
   It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed,
   Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist;
   Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent
   To usher in worthily Christian Lent.

   X

   It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds,
   Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds:
   It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed
   Which gutted my purse would throttle my creed:
   And it overflows when, to even the odd,
   Men I helped to their sins help me to their God.               60

   XI

   But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,
   And the rest sit silent and count the clock,
   Since forced to muse the appointed time
   On these precious facts and truths sublime,
   Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,
   In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.

   XII

   For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,
   Called sons and sons' sons to his side,
   And spoke, "This world has been harsh and strange;
   Something is wrong: there needeth change.                      70
   But what, or where? at the last or first?
   In one point only we sinned, at worst.

   XIII

   "The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,
   And again in his border see Israel set.
   When Judah beholds Jerusalem,
   The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:
   To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave.
   So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.

   XIV

   "Ay, the children of the chosen race
   Shall carry and bring them to their place:                     80
   In the land of the Lord shall lead the same
   Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame,
   When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er
   The oppressor triumph for evermore?

   XV

   "God spoke, and gave us the word to keep,
   Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
   'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward,
   Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.
   By His servant Moses the watch was set:
   Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet.                    90

   XVI

   "Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
   By the starlight, naming a dubious name!
   And if, too heavy with sleep—too rash
   With fear—O Thou, if that martyr-gash
   Fell on Thee coming to take thine own,
   And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne—

   XVII

   "Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
   But, the Judgment over,  join sides with us!
   Thine too is the cause! and not more thine
   Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine,               100
   Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!
   Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!

   XVIII

   "We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how
   At least we withstand Barabbas now!
   Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared,
   To have called these—Christians, had we dared!
   Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee,
   And Rome make amends for Calvary!

   XIX

   "By the torture, prolonged from age to age,
   By the infamy, Israel's heritage,                             110
   By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace,
   By the badge of shame, by the felon's place,
   By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,
   And the summons to Christian fellowship,—

   XX

   "We boast our proof that at least the Jew
   Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew.
   Thy face took never so deep a shade
   But we fought them in it, God our aid!
   A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band,
   South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!"                    120

   [Pope Gregory XVI abolished this bad business of the Sermon.
   —R. B.]

   NOTES:
   "Holy-Cross Day" reflects the attitude of the corrupt mediaeval
   Christians and Jews toward each other.  The prose
   preceding the poem gives the point of view of an imaginary
   Bishop's Secretary, who congratulates himself upon
   the good work the Church is doing in forcing its doctrine
   on the Jews in the Holy-Cross Day sermon, and effecting
   many conversions.  The poem shows that the Jews regard
   this solicitude on the part of the Christians with hatred
   and scorn, and that their conversions are in derision of
   their would-be converters. The sarcasm of the speaker
   reaches a pinnacle of bitterness when he accuses the
   Christian bishops of being men he had helped to their sins
   and who now help him to their God. From scorn toward
   such followers of Christ, he passes, in the contemplation
   of Rabbi Ben Ezra's death song, to a defence of Christ
   against these followers who profess but do not act his
   precepts, and a hope that if the Jews were mistaken in
   not accepting Christ, the tortures they now suffer will be
   received as expiation for their sin.

           Holy-Cross Day is September 14. The discovery of the
   true cross by Saint Helen inaugurated the festival, celebrated
   both by Latins and Greeks as early as the fifth or
   sixth century, under the title of the Exaltation of the
   Cross and later in commemoration of the alleged miraculous
   appearance of the Cross to Constantine in the sky
   at midday.  Though the particular incidents of the poem
   are not historical, it is a fact (see Milman's "History of the
   Jews'') that, by a Papal Bull issued by Gregory XIII in
   1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled
   to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian
   priest.

   52.  Corso:  a street in Rome

   67.  Rabbi Ben Ezra:  or Ibn Ezra, a mediaeval Jewish
   writer and thinker, born in Toledo, near the end of the
   eleventh century.

   III.  Ghetto:  the Jew's quarter.  Pope Paul IV first
   shut the Jews up in the Ghetto, and prohibited them from
   leaving it after sunset.

   Among these latter busts we count by scores,
   Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
   Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
   Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,
   One loves a baby face, with violets there,
   Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
   As those were all the little locks could bear.

   Now, read here. "Protus ends a period
   Of empery beginning with a god;
   Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,                        10
   Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
   And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire
   Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
   A fame that he was missing spread afar:
   The world from its four corners, rose in war,
   Till he was borne out on a balcony
   To pacify the world when it should see.
   The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
   Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
   And day by day more beautiful he grew                          20
   In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
   While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,
   Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled.
   Already sages laboured to condense
   In easy tomes a life's experience:
   And artists took grave counsel to impart
   In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art,
   To make his graces prompt as blossoming
   Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
   Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,                30
   For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
   And mortals love the letters of his name."

   —Stop! Have you turned two pages?  Still the same.
   New reign, same date.  The scribe goes on to say
   How that same year, on such a month and day,
   "John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
   A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
   The Empire from its fate the year before,
   Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
   The same for six years (during which the Huns                  40
   Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons
   Put something in his liquor"—and so forth.
   Then a new reign.  Stay—"Take at its just worth"
   (Subjoins an annotator) "what I give
   As hearsay.  Some think, John let Protus live
   And slip away.  'Tis said, he reached man's age
   At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
   Then tutor to the children; last, of use
   About the hunting-stables.  I deduce
   He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'                   50
   Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
   Is extant yet.  A Protus of the race
   Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,
   And if the same, he reached senility."

   Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head.  Great eye,
   Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
   To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

   NOTES:
   "Protus" sets in contrast the representations by artist and
   annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the
   baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently
   nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John,
   the blacksmith's bastard, predestined to usurp his throne
   and save the empire with his harder hand.

   There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
   And a statue watches it from the square,
   And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

   Ages ago, a lady there,
   At the farthest window facing the East
   Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"

   The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased;
   She leaned forth, one on either hand;
   They saw how the blush of the bride increased—

   They felt by its beats her heart expand—                      10
   As one at each ear and both in a breath
   Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand."

   That self-same instant, underneath,
   The Duke rode past in his idle way,
   Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.

   Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,
   Till he threw his head back—"Who is she?"
   "A bride the Riccardi brings home to-day."

   Hair in heaps lay heavily
   Over a pale brow spirit-pure—                                 20
   Carved like the heart of a coal-black tree,

   Crisped like a war-steed's encolure—
   And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes
   Of the blackest black our eyes endure.

   And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise
   Filled the fine empty sheath of a man—
   The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.

   He looked at her, as a lover can;
   She looked at him, as one who awakes:
   The past was a sleep, and her life began.                      30

   Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,
   A feast was held that selfsame night
   In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.

   (For Via Larga is three-parts light,
   But the palace overshadows one,
   Because of a crime which may God requite!

   To Florence and God the wrong was done,
   Through the first republic's murder there
   By Cosimo and his cursed son.)

   The Duke (with the statue's face in the square)                40
   Turned in the midst of his multitude
   At the bright approach of the bridal pair.

   Face to face the lovers stood
   A single minute and no more,
   While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued—

   Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor—
   For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
   As the courtly custom was of yore.

   In a minute can lovers exchange a word?
   If a word did pass, which I do not think,                      50
   Only one out of the thousand heard.

   That was the bridegroom.  At day's brink
   He and his bride were alone at last
   In a bedchamber by a taper's blink.

   Calmly he said that her lot was cast,
   That the door she had passed was shut on her
   Till the final catafalk repassed.

   The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,
   Through a certain window facing the East,
   She could watch like a convent's chronicler.                   60

   Since passing the door might lead to a feast
   And a feast might lead to so much beside,
   He, of many evils, chose the least.

   "Freely I choose too," said the bride—
   "Your window and its world suffice,"
   Replied the tongue, while the heart replied—

   "If I spend the night with that devil twice,
   May his window serve as my loop of hell
   Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

   "I fly to the Duke who loves me well,                          70
   Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow!
   Ere I count another ave-bell,

   "'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,
   And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim,
   And I save my soul—but not to-morrow"—

   (She checked herself and her eye grew dim)
   "My father tarries to bless my state:
   I must keep it one day more for him.

   "Is one day more so long to wait?
   Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;                          80
   We shall see each other, sure as fate."

   She turned on her side and slept. Just so!
   So we resolve on a thing and sleep:
   So did the lady, ages ago.

   That night the Duke said, "Dear or cheap
   As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove
   To body or soul, I will drain it deep."

   And on the morrow, bold with love,
   He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,
   As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove)                        90

   And smiled, "'Twas a very funeral,
   Your lady will think, this feast of ours,
   A shame to efface, whate'er befall!

   "What if we break from the Arno bowers,
   And try if Petraja, cool and green,
   Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?"

   The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen
   On his steady brow and quiet mouth,
   Said, "Too much favour for me so mean!

   "But, alas! my lady leaves the South;                         100
   Each wind that comes from the Apennine
   Is a menace to her tender youth:

   "Nor a way exists, the wise opine,
   If she quits her palace twice this year,
   To avert the flower of life's decline."

   Quoth the Duke, "A sage and a kindly fear.
   Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:
   Be our feast to-night as usual here!"

   And then to himself—"Which night shall bring
   Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool—                     110
   Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

   "Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool—
   For to-night the Envoy arrives from France
   Whose heart I unlock with thyself my tool.

   "I need thee still and might miss perchance.
   To-day is not wholly lost, beside,
   With its hope of my lady's countenance:

   "For I ride—what should I do but ride?
   And passing her palace, if I list,
   May glance at its window-well betide!"                        120

   So said, so done: nor the lady missed
   One ray that broke from the ardent brow,
   Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

   Be sure that each renewed the vow,
   No morrow's sun should arise and set
   And leave them then as it left them now.

   But next day passed, and next day yet,
   With still fresh cause to wait one day more
   Ere each leaped over the parapet.

   And still, as love's brief morning wore,                      130
   With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,
   They found love not as it seemed before.

   They thought it would work infallibly,
   But not in despite of heaven and earth:
   The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

   Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth
   By store of fruits that supplant the rose:
   The world and its ways have a certain worth:

   And to press a point while these oppose
   Were simple policy; better wait:                              140
   We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

   Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate
   Who daily may ride and pass and look
   Where his lady watches behind the grate!

   And she—she watched the square like a book
   Holding one picture and only one,
   Which daily to find she undertook:

   When the picture was reached the book was done,
   And she turned from the picture at night to scheme
   Of tearing it out for herself next sun.                       150

   So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
   The glory dropped from their youth and love,
   And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

   Which hovered as dreams do, still above:
   But who can take a dream for a truth?
   Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

   One day as the lady saw her youth
   Depart, and the silver thread that streaked
   Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

   The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,                     160
   And wondered who the woman was,
   Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

   Fronting her silent in the glass—
   "Summon here," she suddenly said,
   "Before the rest of my old self pass,

   "Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,
   Who fashions the clay no love will change
   And fixes a beauty never to fade.

   "Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange
   Arrest the remains of young and fair,                         170
   And rivet them while the seasons range.

   "Make me a face on the window there,
   Waiting as ever, mute the while,
   My love to pass below in the square!

   "And let me think that it may beguile
   Dreary days which the dead must spend
   Down in their darkness under the aisle,

   "To say, 'What matters it at the end?
   'I did no more while my heart was warm
   Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'                  180

   "Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
   The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
   And the blood that blues the inside arm—

   "Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
   The earthly gift to an end divine?
   A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

   But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine,
   With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,
   Was set where now is the empty shrine—

   (And, leaning out of a bright blue space,                     190
   As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,
   The passionate pale lady's face—

   Eyeing ever, with earnest eye
   And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,
   Some one who ever is passing by)

   The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch
   In Florence, "Youth—my dream escapes!
   Will its record stay?"  And he bade them fetch

   Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes—
   "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man                     200
   Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

   "John of Douay shall effect my plan,
   Set me on horseback here aloft,
   Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

   "In the very square I have crossed so oft:
   That men may admire, when future suns
   Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

   "While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze—
   Admire and say, 'When he was alive
   How he would take his pleasure once!'                         210

   "And it shall go hard but I contrive
   To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
   At idleness which aspires to strive."

    ————————————————

   So!  While these wait the trump of doom,
   How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
   Nights and days in the narrow room?

   Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
   What a gift life was, ages ago,
   Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

   Only they see not God, I know,                                220
   Nor all that chivalry of his,
   The soldier-saints who, row on row,

   Burn upward each to his point of bliss—
   Since, the end of life being manifest,
   He had burned his way thro' the world to this.

   I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,
   For their end was a crime."  Oh, a crime will do
   As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

   As a virtue golden through and through,
   Sufficient to vindicate itself                                230
   And prove its worth at a moment's view!

   Must a game be played for the sake of pelf
   Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram
   To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

   The true has no value beyond the sham:
   As well the counter as coin, I submit,
   When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

   Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
   Venture as warily, use the same skill,
   Do your best, whether winning or losing it,                   240

   If you choose to play!—is my principle.
   Let a man contend to the uttermost
   For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

   The counter our lovers staked was lost
   As surely as if it were lawful coin:
   And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

   Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
   Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
   You of the virtue (we issue join)
   How strive you?  De te, fabula!                               250

   NOTES:
   "The Statue and the Bust" creates the characters and the
   situation, and dramatically represents a story which is based
   on a Florentine tradition that Duke Ferdinand I placed
   his equestrian statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata so that
   he might gaze forever towards the old Riccardi Palace,
   where a lady he loved was imprisoned by her jealous husband.
   The bride and her ducal lover are seen exchanging
   their first looks, through which they perceive the genuineness
   of their love; and the temporizing of each is presented,
   through which, for the sake of petty conveniences,
   they submit to be thwarted by the wary husband, and to
   have the end they count supreme delayed until love and
   youth have gone, and the best left them is the artificial
   gaze interchanged by a bronze statue in the square and a
   clay face at the window.  The closing stanzas point the
   moral against the palsy of the will, whose strenuous exercise
   is life's main gift.

   I.  There's a palace in Florence:  refers to the old
   Riccardi Palace, now the Palazzo Antinori, in the square
   of the Annunziata, where the statue still stands.

   22.  encolure:  neck and shoulder of a horse

   33.  The pile which the mighty shadow makes:  refers to
   another palace in the Via Larga where the duke (not the
   lady) lived, and which is to-day known as the Riccardi
   Palace.  Cooke's "Browning Guide Book" and Berdoe's
   "Browning Cyclopaedia" both confuse the two, attributing
   error to Browning in spite of his letter about it.  This
   confusion was cleared up by Harriet Ford (Poet-lore, Dec.
   1891, vol. iii. p. 648, "Browning right about the Riccardi Palace'').

   36.  Because of a crime, etc.:  refers to the destroying of
   the liberties of the Florentine republic by Cosimo dei
   Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo, who lived in the then
   Medici (now Riccardi) Palace, whose darkening of the
   street with its bulk symbolizes the crime which took the
   light from Florence.

   57.  catafalk:  the stage or scaffolding for a coffin whilst in the church

   94.  Arno bowers:  the palace by the Arno, the river
   flowing through Florence.

   95.  Petraja:  a Florentine suburb.

   169.  Robbia's craft:  the Robbia family were skilled in
   shaping the bisque known as Della Robbia ware which
   was long one of the Florentine manufactures, and traces
   of which, when Browning wrote, still adorned the outer
   cornice of the palace.

   202.  John of Douay [Giovanni of Bologna], sculptor (1524-1608).
   The statue is one of his finest works.

   250.  De te, fabula! Concerning thee, this fable!