Act V

Act V

NIGHT

LURIA and PUCCIO

Lur. I thought to do this, not to talk this: well, Such were my projects for the city's good, To help her in attack or by defence. Time, here as elsewhere, soon or late may take Our foresight by surprise through chance and change; But not a little we provide against --If you see clear on every point.

Puc. Most clear.

Lur. Then all is said--not much, if you count words, Yet to an understanding ear enough; And all that my brief stay permits, beside. Nor must you blame me, as I sought to teach My elder in command, or threw a doubt Upon the very skill, it comforts me To know I leave,--your steady soldiership Which never failed me: yet, because it seemed A stranger's eye might haply note defect That skill, through use and custom, over-looks-- I have gone into the old cares once more, As if I had to come and save again Florence--that May--that morning! 'T is night now. Well--I broke off with?...

Puc. Of the past campaign You spoke--of measures to be kept in mind For future use.

Lur. True, so ... but, time--no time! As well end here: remember this, and me! Farewell now!

Puc. Dare I speak?

Lur. South o' the river-- How is the second stream called ... no,--the third?

Puc. Pesa.

Lur. And a stone's-cast from the fording-place, To the east,--the little mount's name?

Puc. Lupo.

Lur. Ay! Ay--there the tower, and all that side is safe! With San Romano, west of Evola, San Miniato, Scala, Empoli, Five towers in all,--forget not!

Puc. Fear not me!

Lur.--Nor to memorialize the Council now, I' the easy hour, on those battalions' claim, Who forced a pass by Staggia on the hills, And kept the Sienese at check!

Puc. One word-- Sir, I must speak! That you submit yourself To Florence' bidding, howsoe'er it prove, And give up the command to me--is much, Too much, perhaps: but what you tell me now, Even will affect the other course you choose-- Poor as it may be, perils even that! Refuge you seek at Pisa: yet these plans All militate for Florence, all conclude Your formidable work to make her queen O' the country,--which her rivals rose against When you began it,--which to interrupt, Pisa would buy you off at any price! You cannot mean to sue for Pisa's help, With this made perfect and on record?

Lur. I-- At Pisa, and for refuge, do you say?

Puc. Where are you going, then? You must decide On leaving us, a silent fugitive, Alone, at night--you, stealing through our lines, Who were this morning's Luria,--you escape To painfully begin the world once more, With such a past, as it had never been! Where are you going?

Lur. Not so far, my Puccio, But that I hope to hear, enjoy and praise (If you mind praise from your old captain yet) Each happy blow you strike for Florence!

Puc. Ay, But ere you gain your shelter, what may come? For see--though nothing 's surely known as yet, Still--truth must out--I apprehend the worst. If mere suspicion stood for certainty Before, there 's nothing can arrest the step Of Florence toward your ruin, once on foot. Forgive her fifty times, it matters not! And having disbelieved your innocence, How can she trust your magnanimity? You may do harm to her--why then, you will! And Florence is sagacious in pursuit. Have you a friend to count on?

Lur. One sure friend.

Puc. Potent?

Lur. All-potent.

Puc. And he is apprised?

Lur. He waits me.

Puc. So!--Then I, put in your place, Making my profit of all done by you, Calling your labors mine, reaping their fruit, To this, the State's gift, now add yours beside-- That I may take as my peculiar store These your instructions to work Florence good. And if, by putting some few happily In practice, I should both advantage her And draw down honor on myself,--what then?

Lur. Do it, my Puccio! I shall know and praise!

Puc. Though so, men say, "mark what we gain by change --A Puccio for a Luria!"

Lur. Even so!

Puc. Then, not for fifty hundred Florences Would I accept one office save my own, Fill any other than my rightful post Here at your feet, my captain and my lord! That such a cloud should break, such trouble be, Ere a man settle, soul and body, down Into his true place and take rest forever! Here were my wise eyes fixed on your right hand, And so the bad thoughts came and the worse words, And all went wrong and painfully enough,-- No wonder,--till, the right spot stumbled on, All the jar stops, and there is peace at once! I am yours now,--a tool your right hand wields! God's love, that I should live, the man I am, On orders, warrants, patents and the like, As if there were no glowing eye i' the world To glance straight inspiration to my brain, No glorious heart to give mine twice the beats! For, see--my doubt, where is it?--fear? 't is flown! And Florence and her anger are a tale To scare a child! Why, half-a-dozen words Will tell her, spoken as I now can speak, Her error, my past folly--and all 's right, And you are Luria, our great chief again! Or at the worst--which worst were best of all-- To exile or to death I follow you!

Lur. Thanks, Puccio! Let me use the privilege You grant me: if I still command you,--stay! Remain here, my vicegerent, it shall be, And not successor: let me, as of old, Still serve the State, my spirit prompting yours-- Still triumph, one for both. There! Leave me now! You cannot disobey my first command? Remember what I spoke of Jacopo, And what you promised to concert with him! Send him to speak with me--nay, no farewell! You shall be by me when the sentence comes. [PUCCIO goes.

So, there 's one Florentine returns again! Out of the genial morning company. One face is left to take into the night

(Enter JACOPO.)

Jac. I wait for your command, sir.

Lur. What, so soon? I thank your ready presence and fair word. I used to notice you in early days As of the other species, so to speak, Those watchers of the lives of us who act-- That weigh our motives, scrutinize our thoughts. So, I propound this to your faculty As you would tell me, were a town to take ... That is, of old. I am departing hence Under these imputations; that is naught-- I leave no friend on whom they may rebound, Hardly a name behind me in the land, Being a stranger: all the more behooves That I regard how altered were the case With natives of the country, Florentines On whom the like mischance should fall: the roots O' the tree survive the ruin of the trunk-- No root of mine will throb, you understand. But I had predecessors, Florentines, Accused as I am now, and punished so-- The Traversari: you know more than I How stigmatized they are and lost in shame. Now Puccio, who succeeds me in command, Both served them and succeeded, in due time; He knows the way, holds proper documents, And has the power to lay the simple truth Before an active spirit, as I count yours: And also there 's Tiburzio, my new friend, Will, at a word, confirm such evidence, He being the great chivalric soul we know. I put it to your tact, sir--were 't not well, --A grace, though but for contrast's sake, no more,-- If you who witness, and have borne a share Involuntarily in my mischance, Should, of your proper motion, set your skill To indicate--that is, investigate The right or wrong of what mischance befell Those famous citizens, your countrymen? Nay, you shall promise nothing: but reflect, And if your sense of justice prompt you--good!

Jac. And if, the trial past, their fame stand clear To all men's eyes, as yours, my lord, to mine-- Their ghosts may sleep in quiet satisfied! For me, a straw thrown up into the air, My testimony goes for a straw's worth. I used to hold by the instructed brain, And move with Braccio as my master-wind; The heart leads surelier: I must move with you-- As greatest now, who ever were the best. So, let the last and humblest of your servants Accept your charge, as Braccio's heretofore, And tender homage by obeying you! [JACOPO goes.

Lur. Another!--Luria goes not poorly forth. If we could wait! The only fault 's with time; All men become good creatures: but so slow!

(Enter DOMIZIA.)

Lur. Ah, you once more?

Dom. Domizia, whom you knew, Performed her task, and died with it. 'T is I, Another woman, you have never known. Let the past sleep now!

Lur. I have done with it.

Dom. How inexhaustibly the spirit grows! One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach With her whole energies and die content,-- So like a wall at the world's edge it stood, With naught beyond to live for,--is that reached?-- Already are new undreamed energies Outgrowing under, and extending farther To a new object; there 's another world. See! I have told the purpose of my life; 'T is gained: you are decided, well or ill-- You march on Florence, or submit to her-- My work is done with you, your brow declares. But--leave you?--More of you seems yet to reach: I stay for what I just begin to see.

Lur. So that you turn not to the past!

Dom. You trace Nothing but ill in it--my selfish impulse, Which sought its end and disregarded yours?

Lur. Speak not against your nature: best, each keep His own--you, yours--most, now that I keep mine, --At least, fall by it, having too weakly stood. God's finger marks distinctions, all so fine, We would confound: the lesser has its use, Which, when it apes the greater, is foregone. I, born a Moor, lived half a Florentine; But, punished properly, can end, a Moor. Beside, there's something makes me understand Your nature: I have seen it.

Dom. Aught like mine?

Lur. In my own East ... if you would stoop and help My barbarous illustration! It sounds ill; Yet there's no wrong at bottom: rather, praise.

Dom. Well?

Lur. We have creatures there, which if you saw The first time, you would doubtless marvel at For their surpassing beauty, craft and strength. And though it were a lively moment's shock When you first found the purpose of forked tongues That seem innocuous in their lambent play, Yet, once made know such grace requires such guard, Your reason soon would acquiesce, I think, In wisdom which made all things for the best-- So, take them, good with ill, contentedly, The prominent beauty with the latent sting, I am glad to have seen you wondrous Florentines: Yet ...

Dom. I am here to listen. Lur. My own East! How nearer God we were! He glows above With scarce an intervention, presses close And palpitatingly, his soul o'er ours: We feel him, nor by painful reason know! The everlasting minute of creation Is felt there; now it is, as it was then; All changes at his instantaneous will, Not by the operation of a law Whose maker is elsewhere at other work. His hand is still engaged upon his world-- Man's praise can forward it, man's prayer suspend, For is not God all-mighty? To recast The world, erase old things and make them new, What costs it Him? So, man breathes nobly there. And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient--comes, and lo, is gone-- While Northern thought is slow and durable, Surely a mission was reserved for me, Who, born with a perception of the power And use of the North's thought for us of the East, Should have remained, turned knowledge to account, Giving thought's character and permanence To the too transitory feeling there-- Writing God's message plain in mortal words. Instead of which, I leave my fated field For this where such a task is needed least, Where all are born consummate in the art I just perceive a chance of making mine,-- And then, deserting thus my early post, I wonder that the men I come among Mistake me! There, how all had understood, Still brought fresh stuff for me to stamp and keep, Fresh instinct to translate them into law! Me, who ...

Dom. Who here the greater task achieve, More needful even: who have brought fresh stuff For us to mould, interpret and prove right,-- New feeling fresh from God, which, could we know O' the instant, where had been our need of it? --Whose life re-teaches us what life should be, What faith is, loyalty and simpleness, All, once revealed but taught us so long since That, having mere tradition of the fact,-- Truth copied falteringly from copies faint, The early traits all dropped away,--we said On sight of faith like yours, "So looks not faith We understand, described and praised before." But still, the feat was dared; and though at first It suffered from our haste, yet trace by trace Old memories reappear, old truth returns, Our slow thought does its work, and all's reknown. Oh noble Luria! What you have decreed I see not, but no animal revenge. No brute-like punishment of bad by worse-- It cannot be, the gross and vulgar way Traced for me by convention and mistake, Has gained that calm approving eye and brow! Spare Florence, after all! Let Luria trust To his own soul, he whom I trust with mine!

Lur. In time!

Dom. How, Luria?

Lur. It is midnight now, And they arrive from Florence with my fate.

Dom. I hear no step.

Lur. I feel one, as you say.

(Enter HUSAIN.)

Hus. The man returned from Florence!

Lur. As I knew.

Hus. He seeks thee.

Lur. And I only wait for him. Aught else?

Hus. A movement of the Lucchese troops Southward--

Lur. Toward Florence? Have out instantly ... Ah, old use clings! Puccio must care henceforth. In--quick--'tis nearly midnight! Bid him come!

(Enter TIBURZIO, BRACCIO, and PUCCIO.)

Lur. Tiburzio?--not at Pisa?

Tib. I return From Florence: I serve Pisa, and must think By such procedure I have served her best. A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all. Such man are you, and such a time is this, That your sole fate concerns a nation more Than much apparent welfare: that to prove Your rectitude, and duly crown the same, Imports us far beyond to-day's event, A battle's loss or gain: man's mass remains,-- Keep but God's model safe, new men will rise To take its mould, and other days to prove How great a good was Luria's glory. True-- I might go try my fortune as you urged, And, joining Lucca, helped by your disgrace, Repair our harm--so were to-day's work done; But where leave Luria for our sons to see? No, I look farther. I have testified (Declaring my submission to your arms) Her full success to Florence, making clear Your probity, as none else could: I spoke, And out it shone!

Lur. Ah--until Braccio spoke!

Brac. Till Braccio told in just a word the whole-- His lapse to error, his return to knowledge: Which told ... Nay, Luria, I should droop the head, I whom shame rests with! Yet I dare look up, Sure of your pardon how I sue for it, Knowing you wholly. Let the midnight end! 'Tis morn approaches! Still you answer not? Sunshine succeeds the shadow passed away; Our faces, which phantasmal grew and false, Are all that felt it: they change round you, turn Truly themselves now in its vanishing. Speak, Luria! Here begins your true career: Look up, advance! All now is possible, Fact's grandeur, no false dreaming! Dare and do! And every prophecy shall be fulfilled Save one--(nay, now your word must come at last) --That you would punish Florence!

Hus. [Pointing to LURIA'S dead body.] That is done.

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY

FLORENCE, 1850

CHRISTMAS-EVE

I

Out of the little chapel I burst Into the fresh night-air again. Five minutes full, I waited first In the doorway, to escape the rain That drove in gusts down the common's centre At the edge of which the chapel stands, Before I plucked up heart to enter. Heaven knows how many sorts of hands Reached past me, groping for the latch Of the inner door that hung on catch More obstinate the more they fumbled, Till, giving way at last with a scold Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled One sheep more to the rest in fold, And left me irresolute, standing sentry In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, Six feet long by three feet wide, Partitioned off from the vast inside-- I blocked up half of it at least. No remedy; the rain kept driving. They eyed me much as some wild beast, That congregation, still arriving, Some of them by the main road, white A long way past me into the night. Skirting the common, then diverging; Not a few suddenly emerging From the common's self through the paling-gaps, --They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, Where the road stops short with its safeguard border Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;-- But the most turned in yet more abruptly Prom a certain squalid knot of alleys, Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, Which now the little chapel rallies And leads into day again,--its priestliness Lending itself to hide their beastliness So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on Those neophytes too much in lack of it, That, where you cross the common as I did, And meet the party thus presided, "Mount Zion" with Love-lane at the back of it, They front you as little disconcerted As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, And her wicked people made to mind him, Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him.

II

Well, from the road, the lanes or the common, In came the flock: the fat weary woman, Panting and bewildered, down-clapping Her umbrella with a mighty report, Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, A wreck of whalebones; then, with a snort, Like a startled horse, at the interloper (Who humbly knew himself improper, But could not shrink up small enough) --Round to the door, and in,--the gruff Hinge's invariable scold Making my very blood run cold. Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered On broken clogs, the many-tattered Little old-faced peaking sister-turned-mother Of the sickly babe she tried to smother Somehow up, with its spotted face, From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place; She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping Already from my own clothes' dropping, Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on: Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, Planted together before her breast And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. Close on her heels, the dingy satins Of a female something past me flitted, With lips as much too white, as a streak Lay far too red on each hollow cheek; And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied All that was left of a woman once, Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, And eyelids screwed together tight, Led himself in by some inner light. And, except from him, from each that entered, I got the same interrogation-- "What, you the alien, you have ventured To take with us, the elect, your station? A carer for none of it, a Gallio!"-- Thus, plain as print, I read the glance At a common prey, in each countenance As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, The draught, it always sent in shutting, Made the flame of the single tallow candle In the cracked square lantern I stood under, Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting As it were, the luckless cause of scandal: I verily fancied the zealous light (In the chapel's secret, too!) for spite Would shudder itself clean off the wick, With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. There was no standing it much longer. "Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, "This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor When the weather sends you a chance visitor? You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you! But still, despite the pretty perfection To which you carry your trick of exclusiveness, And, taking God's word under wise protection, Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares,-- Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, If I should choose to cry, as now, 'Shares!'-- See if the best of you bars me my ration! I prefer, if you please, for my expounder Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder; Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest, Supposing I don the marriage vestiment: So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, And carve me my portion at your quickliest!" Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad With wizened face in want of soap, And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, (After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, And so avoid disturbing the preacher) --Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise, At the shutting door, and entered likewise, Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, And found myself in full conventicle, --To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, Which, calling its flock to their special clover, Found all assembled and one sheep over, Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine.

III

I very soon had enough of it. The hot smell and the human noises, And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it, Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure Of the preaching man's immense stupidity, As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, To meet his audience's avidity. You needed not the wit of the Sibyl To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling: No sooner our friend had got an inkling Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, (Whene'er 'twas the thought first struck him, How death, at unawares, might duck him Deeper than the grave, and quench The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, As to hug the book of books to pieces: And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see equipt yours,-- So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt: Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors Were help which the world could be saved without, 'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet A qualm or two at my spiritual diet, Or (who can tell?) perchance even mustered Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon: But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon With such content in every snuffle, As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. My old fat woman purred with pleasure, And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, While she, to his periods keeping measure, Maternally devoured the pastor. The man with the handkerchief untied it, Showed us a horrible wen inside it, Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, And rocked himself as the woman was doing. The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking! My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it; So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, "I wanted a taste, and now there's enough of it," I flung out of the little chapel.

IV

There was a lull in the rain, a lull In the wind too; the moon was risen, And would have shone out pure and full, But for the ramparted cloud-prison, Block on block built up in the West, For what purpose the wind knows best, Who changes his mind continually. And the empty other half of the sky Seemed in its silence as if it knew What, any moment, might look through A chance gap in that fortress massy:-- Through its fissures you got hints Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, Like furnace-smoke just ere flames bellow, All a-simmer with intense strain To let her through,--then blank again, At the hope of her appearance failing. Just by the chapel a break in the railing Shows a narrow path directly across; 'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss-- Besides, you go gently all the way up-hill. I stooped under and soon felt better; My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. My mind was full of the scene I had left, That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, --How this outside was pure and different! The sermon, now--what a mingled weft Of good and ill! Were either less, Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly; But alas for the excellent earnestness, And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, However to pastor and flock's contentment! Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, Till how could you know them, grown double their size In the natural fog of the good man's mind, Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, Haloed about with the common's damps? Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover; The zeal was good, and the aspiration; And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, Pharaoh received no demonstration, By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, Of the doctrine of the Trinity,-- Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, Apparently his hearers relished it With so unfeigned a gust--who knows if They did not prefer our friend to Joseph? But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them! These people have really felt, no doubt, A something, the motion they style the Call of them; And this is their method of bringing about, By a mechanism of words and tones, (So many texts in so many groans) A sort of reviving and reproducing, More or less perfectly, (who can tell?) The mood itself, which strengthens by using; And how that happens, I understand well. A tune was born in my head last week, Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester; And when, next week, I take it back again, My head will sing to the engine's clack again, While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, --Finding no dormant musical sprout In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 'Tis the taught already that profits by teaching; He gets no more from the railway's preaching Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I: Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on. Still, why paint over their door "Mount Zion," To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

V

But wherefore be harsh on a single case? After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, Does the self-same weary thing take place? The same endeavor to make you believe, And with much the same effect, no more: Each method abundantly convincing, As I say, to those convinced before, But scarce to be swallowed without wincing By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, I have my own church equally: And in this church my faith sprang first! (I said, as I reached the rising ground, And the wind began again, with a burst Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, I entered his church-door, nature leading me) --In youth I looked to these very skies, And probing their immensities, I found God there, his visible power; Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense Of the power, an equal evidence That his love, there too, was the nobler dower. For the loving worm within its clod Were diviner than a loveless god Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. You know what I mean: God's all, man's naught: But also, God, whose pleasure brought Man into being, stands away As it were a handbreadth off, to give Room for the newly-made to live, And look at him from a place apart, And use his gifts of brain and heart, Given, indeed, but to keep forever. Who speaks of man, then, must not sever Man's very elements from man, Saying, "But all is God's"--whose plan Was to create man and then leave him Able, his own word saith, to grieve him, But able to glorify him too, As a mere machine could never do, That prayed or praised, all unaware Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer. Made perfect as a thing of course. Man, therefore, stands on his own stock Of love and power as a pin-point rock: And, looking to God who ordained divorce Of the rock from his boundless continent, Sees, in his power made evident, Only excess by a million-fold O'er the power God gave man in the mould. For, note: man's hand, first formed to carry A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, --Advancing in power by one degree; And why count steps through eternity? But love is the ever-springing fountain: Man may enlarge or narrow his bed For the water's play, but the water-head-- How can he multiply or reduce it? As easy create it, as cause it to cease; He may profit by it, or abuse it, But 't is not a thing to bear increase As power does: be love less or more In the heart of man, he keeps it shut Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but Love's sum remains what it was before. So, gazing up, in my youth, at love As seen through power, ever above All modes which make it manifest, My soul brought all to a single test-- That he, the Eternal First and Last, Who, in his power, had so surpassed All man conceives of what is might,-- Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, --Would prove as infinitely good; Would never, (my soul understood,) With power to work all love desires, Bestow e'en less than man requires; That he who endlessly was teaching, Above my spirit's utmost reaching, What love can do in the leaf or stone, (So that to master this alone, This done in the stone or leaf for me, I must go on learning endlessly) Would never need that I, in turn, Should point him out defect unheeded, And show that God had yet to learn What the meanest human creature needed, --Not life, to wit, for a few short years, Tracking his way through doubts and fears, While the stupid earth on which I stay Suffers no change, but passive adds Its myriad years to myriads, Though I, he gave it to, decay, Seeing death come and choose about me, And my dearest ones depart without me. No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it. And I shall behold thee, face to face, O God, and in thy light retrace How in all I loved here, still wast thou! Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, I shall find as able to satiate The love, thy gift, as my spirit's wonder Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, With this sky of thine, that I now walk under And glory in thee for, as I gaze Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine-- Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI

For lo, what think you? suddenly The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky Received at once the full fruition Of the moon's consummate apparition. The black cloud-barricade was riven, Ruined beneath her feet, and driven Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, North and South and East lay ready For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, Sprang across them and stood steady. 'T was a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, From heaven to heaven extending, perfect As the mother-moon's self, full in face. It rose, distinctly at the base With its seven proper colors chorded, Which still, in the rising, were compressed, Until at last they coalesced, And supreme the spectral creature lorded In a triumph of whitest white,-- Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next, The second of a wondrous sequence, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Another rainbow rose, a mightier, Fainter, flushier and flightier,-- Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc?

VII

This sight was shown me, there and then,-- Me, one out of a world of men, Singled forth, as the chance might hap To another if, in a thunderclap Where I heard noise and you saw flame, Some one man knew God called his name. For me, I think I said, "Appear! Good were it to be ever here. If thou wilt, let me build to thee Service-tabernacles three, Where, forever in thy presence, In ecstatic acquiescence, Far alike from thriftless learning And ignorance's undiscerning, I may worship and remain!" Thus at the show above me, gazing With upturned eyes, I felt my brain Glutted with the glory, blazing Throughout its whole mass, over and under, Until at length it burst asunder And out of it bodily there streamed, The too-much glory, as it seemed, Passing from out me to the ground, Then palely serpentining round Into the dark with mazy error.

VIII

All at once I looked up with terror. He was there. He himself with his human air, On the narrow pathway, just before. I saw the back of him, no more-- He had left the chapel, then, as I. I forgot all about the sky. No face: only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, With a hem that I could recognize. I felt terror, no surprise; My mind filled with the cataract At one bound of the mighty fact. "I remember, he did say Doubtless that, to this world's end, Where two or three should meet and pray, He would be in the midst, their friend; Certainly he was there with them!" And my pulses leaped for joy Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw his very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; And I hastened, cried out while I pressed To the salvation of the vest, "But not so, Lord! It cannot be That thou, indeed, art leaving me-- Me, that have despised thy friends! Did my heart make no amends? Thou art the love of God--above His power, didst hear me place his love, And that was leaving the world for thee. Therefore thou must not turn from me As I had chosen the other part! Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. Our best is bad, nor bears thy test; Still, it should be our very best. I thought it best that thou, the spirit, Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, And in beauty, as even we require it-- Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, I left but now, as scarcely fitted For thee: I knew not what I pitied. But, all I felt there, right or wrong, What is it to thee, who curest sinning? Am I not weak as thou art strong? I have looked to thee from the beginning, Straight up to thee through all the world Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled To nothingness on either side: And since the time thou wast descried, Spite of the weak heart, so have I Lived ever, and so fain would die, Living and dying, thee before! But if thou leavest me"--

IX

Less or more, I suppose that I spoke thus. When,--have mercy, Lord, on us! The whole face turned upon me full. And I spread myself beneath it, As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it In the cleansing sun, his wool,-- Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness Some defiled, discolored web-- So lay I, saturate with brightness, And when the flood appeared to ebb, Lo, I was walking, light and swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake. Darkness and cold were cloven, as through I passed, upborne yet walking too. And I turned to myself at intervals,-- "So he said, so it befalls. God who registers the cup Of mere cold water, for his sake To a disciple rendered up, Disdains not his own thirst to slake At the poorest love was ever offered: And because my heart I proffered, With true love trembling at the brim, He suffers me to follow him Forever, my own way,--dispensed From seeking to be influenced By all the less immediate ways That earth, in worships manifold, Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"

X

And so we crossed the world and stopped. For where am I, in city or plain, Since I am 'ware of the world again? And what is this that rises propped With pillars of prodigious girth? Is it really on the earth, This miraculous Dome of God? Has the angel's measuring-rod Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, Meted it out,--and what he meted, Have the sons of men completed? --Binding, ever as he bade, Columns in the colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of ... what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice? Now I see; it is no dream; It stands there and it does not seem: Forever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books Often in England, leagues away, And wondered how these fountains play, Growing up eternally Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. Liar and dreamer in your teeth! I, the sinner that speak to you, Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew Both this and more. For see, for see, The dark is rent, mine eye is free To pierce the crust of the outer wall, And I view inside, and all there, all, As the swarming hollow of a hive, The whole Basilica alive! Men in the chancel, body and nave, Men on the pillars' architrave, Men on the statues, men on the tombs With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, All famishing in expectation Of the main altar's consummation. For see, for see, the rapturous moment Approaches, and earth's best endowment Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires Pant up, the winding brazen spires Heave loftier yet the baldachin; The incense-gaspings, long kept in, Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant Holds his breath and grovels latent, As if God's hushing finger grazed him, (Like Behemoth when he praised him) At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling On the sudden pavement strewed With faces of the multitude. Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when He who trod, Very man and very God, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, Dying the death whose signs remain Up yonder on the accursed tree,-- Shall come again, no more to be Of captivity the thrall, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As His servant John received the words, "I died, and live forevermore!"

XI

Yet I was left outside the door. "Why sit I here on the threshold-stone, Left till He return, alone Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold?" My reason, to my doubt, replied, As if a book were opened wide, And at a certain page I traced Every record undefaced, Added by successive years,-- The harvestings of truth's stray ears Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf Bound together for belief. Yes, I said--that he will go And sit with these in turn, I know. Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims Too giddily to guide her limbs, Disabled by their palsy-stroke From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, Her teaching is not so obscured By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Because himself discerns all ways Open to reach him: I, a man Able to mark where faith began To swerve aside, till from its summit Judgment drops her damning plummet, Pronouncing such a fatal space Departed from the founder's base: He will not bid me enter too, But rather sit, as now I do, Awaiting his return outside. --'T was thus my reason straight replied And joyously I turned, and pressed The garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried--"What has been abusing me That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? Do these men praise him? I will raise My voice up to their point of praise! I see the error; but above The scope of error, see the love.-- Oh, love of those first Christian days! --Fanned so soon into a blaze, From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, That the antique sovereign Intellect Which then sat ruling in the world, Like a change in dreams, was hurled From the throne he reigned upon: You looked up and he was gone. Gone, his glory of the pen! --Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, Bade her scribes abhor the trick Of poetry and rhetoric, And exult with hearts set free, In blessed imbecility Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet Leaving Sallust incomplete. Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter! --Love, while able to acquaint her While the thousand statues yet Fresh from chisel, pictures wet From brush, she saw on every side, Chose rather with an infant's pride To frame those portents which impart Such unction to true Christian Art. Gone, music too! The air was stirred By happy wings: Terpander's bird (That, when the cold came, fled away) Would tarry not the wintry day,-- As more-enduring sculpture must, Till filthy saints rebuked the gust With which they chanced to get a sight Of some dear naked Aphrodite They glanced a thought above the toes of, By breaking zealously her nose off. Love, surely, from that music's lingering, Might have filched her organ-fingering, Nor chosen rather to set prayings To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings. Love was the startling thing, the new: Love was the all-sufficient too; And seeing that, you see the rest: As a babe can find its mother's breast As well in darkness as in light, Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. True, the world's eyes are open now: --Less need for me to disallow Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled, Peevish as ever to be suckled, Lulled by the same old baby-prattle With intermixture of the rattle, When she would have them creep, stand steady Upon their feet, or walk already, Not to speak of trying to climb. I will be wise another time, And not desire a wall between us, When next I see a church-roof cover So many species of one genus, All with foreheads bearing lover Written above the earnest eyes of them; All with breasts that beat for beauty, Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, In noble daring, steadfast duty, The heroic in passion, or in action,-- Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction, To the mere outside of human creatures, Mere perfect form and faultless features. What? with all Rome here, whence to levy Such contributions to their appetite, With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding On the glories of their ancient reading, On the beauties of their modern singing, On the wonders of the builder's bringing, On the majesties of Art around them,-- And, all these loves, late struggling incessant, When faith has at last united and bound them, They offer up to God for a present? Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,-- And, only taking the act in reference To the other recipients who might have allowed it, I will rejoice that God had the preference."

XII

So I summed up my new resolves: Too much love there can never be. And where the intellect devolves Its function on love exclusively, I, a man who possesses both, Will accept the provision, nothing loth, --Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, That my intellect may find its share. And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest, And see thou applaud the great heart of the artist, Who, examining the capabilities Of the block of marble he has to fashion Into a type of thought or passion,-- Not always, using obvious facilities, Shapes it, as any artist can, Into a perfect symmetrical man, Complete from head to foot of the life-size, Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,-- But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate A Colossus by no means so easy to come at, And uses the whole of his block for the bust, Leaving the mind of the public to finish it, Since cut it ruefully short he must: On the face alone he expends his devotion, He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it, --Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion Of what a face may be! As for completing it In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!" All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it, A trunk and legs would perfect the statue, Could man carve so as to answer volition. And how much nobler than petty cavils, Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels, Some artist of another ambition, Who having a block to carve, no bigger, Has spent his power on the opposite quest, And believed to begin at the feet was best-- For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!

XIII

No sooner said than out in the night! My heart beat lighter and more light: And still, as before, I was walking swift, With my senses settling fast and steadying, But my body caught up in the whirl and drift Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying On, just before me, still to be followed, As it carried me after with its motion: What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed, And a man went weltering through the ocean, Sucked along in the flying wake Of the luminous water-snake.

XIV

Alone! I am left alone once more-- (Save for the garment's extreme fold Abandoned still to bless my hold) Alone, beside the entrance-door Of a sort of temple--perhaps a college, --Like nothing I ever saw before At home in England, to my knowledge. The tall old quaint irregular town! It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany; And this flight of stairs where I sit down, Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort, Or Göttingen, I have to thank for 't? It may be Göttingen,--most likely. Through the open door I catch obliquely Glimpses of a lecture-hall; And not a bad assembly neither, Ranged decent and symmetrical On benches, waiting what 's to see there; Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, I also resolve to see with them, Cautious this time how I suffer to slip The chance of joining in fellowship With any that call themselves his friends; As these folks do, I have a notion. But hist--a buzzing and emotion! All settle themselves, the while ascends By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, Step by step, deliberate Because of his cranium's over-freight, Three parts sublime to one grotesque, If I have proved an accurate guesser, The hawk-nosed, high-cheekboned Professor. I felt at once as if there ran A shoot of love from my heart to the man-- That sallow virgin-minded studious Martyr to mild enthusiasm, As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious That woke my sympathetic spasm, (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) And stood, surveying his auditory With a wan pure look, wellnigh celestial,-- Those blue eyes had survived so much! While, under the foot they could not smutch, Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, Till the auditory's clearing of throats Was done with, died into a silence; And, when each glance was upward sent, Each bearded mouth composed intent, And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,-- He pushed back higher his spectacles, Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells. And giving his head of hair--a hake Of undressed tow, for color and quantity-- One rapid and impatient shake, (As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie When about to impart, on mature digestion, Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) --The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse, Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

XV

And he began it by observing How reason dictated that men Should rectify the natural swerving, By a reversion, now and then, To the well-heads of knowledge, few And far away, whence rolling grew The life-stream wide whereat we drink, Commingled, as we needs must think, With waters alien to the source; To do which, aimed this eve's discourse; Since, where could be a fitter time For tracing backward to its prime, This Christianity, this lake, This reservoir, whereat we slake, From one or other bank, our thirst? So, he proposed inquiring first Into the various sources whence This Myth of Christ is derivable; Demanding from the evidence, (Since plainly no such life was livable) How these phenomena should class? Whether 't were best opine Christ was, Or never was at all, or whether He was and was not, both together-- It matters little for the name, So the idea be left the same. Only, for practical purpose' sake, 'T was obviously as well to take The popular story,--understanding How the ineptitude of the time, And the penman's prejudice, expanding Fact into fable fit for the clime, Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it Into this myth, this Individuum,-- Which when reason had strained and abated it Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, A Man!--a right true man, however, Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor: Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient To his disciples, for rather believing He was just omnipotent and omniscient, As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant Something entirely different From all that those who only heard it, In their simplicity thought and averred it, Had yet a meaning quite as respectable: For, among other doctrines delectable, Was he not surely the first to insist on The natural sovereignty of our race?-- Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. And while his cough, like a droughty piston, Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, The vesture still within my hand.

XVI

I could interpret its command. This time he would not bid me enter The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic When Papist struggles with Dissenter, Impregnating its pristine clarity, --One, by his daily fare's vulgarity, Its gust of broken meat and garlic; --One, by his soul's too-much presuming To turn the frankincense's fuming And vapors of the candle starlike Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, May poison it for healthy breathing-- But the Critic leaves no air to poison; Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity. Thus much of Christ does he reject? And what retain? His intellect? What is it I must reverence duly? Poor intellect for worship, truly, Which tells me simply what was told (If mere morality, bereft Of the God in Christ, be all that's left) Elsewhere by voices manifold; With this advantage, that the stater Made nowise the important stumble Of adding, he, the sage and humble, Was also one with the Creator. You urge Christ's followers' simplicity: But how does shifting blame evade it? Have wisdom's words no more felicity? The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it? How comes it that for one found able To sift the truth of it from fable, Millions believe it to the letter? Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better? Strange goodness, which upon the score Of being goodness, the mere due Of man to fellow-man, much more To God--should take another view Of its possessor's privilege, And bid him rule his race! You pledge Your fealty to such rule? What, all-- From heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,-- All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Göttingen, Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I, Are sheep of a good man! And why? The goodness,--how did he acquire it? Was it self-gained, did God inspire it? Choose which; then tell me, on what ground Should its possessor dare propound His claim to rise o'er us an inch? Were goodness all some man's invention, Who arbitrarily made mention What we should follow, and whence flinch,-- What qualities might take the style Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing Met with as general acquiescing As graced the alphabet erewhile, When A got leave an Ox to be, No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,-- For thus inventing thing and title Worship were that man's fit requital. But if the common conscience must Be ultimately judge, adjust Its apt name to each quality Already known,--I would decree Worship for such mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, I 'd say, for the world's sake-- Though some objected--"Had we seen The heart and head of each, what screen Was broken there to give them light, While in ourselves it shuts the sight, We should no more admire, perchance, That these found truth out at a glance, Than marvel how the bat discerns Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, Led by a finer tact, a gift He boasts, which other birds must shift Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,-- Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does not? No nearer something, by a jot, Rise an infinity of nothings Than one: take Euclid for your teacher: Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings, Make that creator which was creature? Multiply gifts upon man's head, And what, when all 's done, shall be said But--the more gifted he, I ween! That one 's made Christ, this other, Pilate, And this might be all that has been,-- So what is there to frown or smile at? What is left for us, save, in growth Of soul, to rise up, far past both, From the gift looking to the giver, And from the cistern to the river, And from the finite to infinity, And from man's dust to God's divinity?

XVII

Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him: And were no eye in us to tell, Instructed by no inner sense, The light of heaven from the dark of hell, That light would want its evidence,-- Though justice, good and truth were still Divine, if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. No mere exposition of morality Made or in part or in totality, Should win you to give it worship, therefore: And, if no better proof you will care for, --Whom do you count the worst man upon earth? Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more Of what right is, than arrives at birth In the best man's acts that we bow before: This last knows better--true, but my fact is, 'T is one thing to know, and another to practice. And thence I conclude that the real God-function Is to furnish a motive and injunction For practising what we know already. And such an injunction and such a motive As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady, High-minded," hang your tablet-votive Outside the fane on a finger-post? Morality to the uttermost, Supreme in Christ as we all confess, Why need we prove would avail no jot To make him God, if God he were not? What is the point where himself lays stress? Does the precept run "Believe in good, In justice, truth, now understood For the first time"?--or, "Believe in me, Who lived and died, yet essentially Am Lord of Life"? Whoever can take The same to his heart and for mere love's sake Conceive of the love,--that man obtains A new truth; no conviction gains Of an old one only, made intense By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside? Is the vesture left me to commune with? Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with Even at this lecture, if she tried? Oh, let me at lowest sympathize With the lurking drop of blood that lies In the desiccated brain's white roots Without throb for Christ's attributes, As the lecturer makes his special boast! If love's dead there, it has left a ghost. Admire we, how from heart to brain (Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) One instinct rises and falls again, Restoring the equilibrium. And how when the Critic had done his best, And the pearl of price, at reason's test, Lay dust and ashes levigable On the Professor's lecture-table,-- When we looked for the inference and monition That our faith, reduced to such condition, Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,-- He bids us, when we least expect it, Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole, Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly! "Go home and venerate the myth I thus have experimented with-- This man, continue to adore him Rather than all who went before him, And all who ever followed after!"-- Surely for this I may praise you, my brother! Will you take the praise in tears or laughter? That 's one point gained: can I compass another? Unlearned love was safe from spurning-- Can 't we respect your loveless learning? Let us at least give learning honor! What laurels had we showered upon her, Girding her loins up to perturb Our theory of the Middle Verb; Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar O'er anapæsts in comic-trimeter; Or curing the halt and maimed "Iketides," While we lounged on at our indebted ease: Instead of which, a tricksy demon Sets her at Titus or Philemon! When ignorance wags his ears of leather And hates God's word, 't is altogether; Nor leaves he his congenial thistles To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. --And you, the audience, who might ravage The world wide, enviably savage, Nor heed the cry of the retriever, More than Herr Heine (before his fever),-- I do not tell a lie so arrant As say my passion's wings are furled up, And, without plainest heavenly warrant, I were ready and glad to give the world up-- But still, when you rub brow meticulous, And ponder the profit of turning holy If not for God's, for your own sake solely, --God forbid I should find you ridiculous! Deduce from this lecture all that eases you, Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you, "Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,-- Go on, you shall no more move my gravity Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse, I find it in my heart to embarrass them By hinting that their stick 's a mock horse, And they really carry what they say carries them.

XIX

So sat I talking with my mind. I did not long to leave the door And find a new church, as before, But rather was quiet and inclined To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting From further tracking and trying and testing. "This tolerance is a genial mood!" (Said I, and a little pause ensued.) "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, And sees, each side, the good effects of it, A value for religion's self, A carelessness about the sects of it. Let me enjoy my own conviction, Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness, Still spying there some dereliction Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness! Better a mild indifferentism, Teaching that both our faiths (though duller His shine through a dull spirit's prism) Originally had one color! Better pursue a pilgrimage Through ancient and through modern times To many peoples, various climes, Where I may see saint, savage, sage Fuse their respective creeds in one Before the general Father's throne!"

XX

--'T was the horrible storm began afresh! The black night caught me in his mesh, Whirled me up, and flung me prone. I was left on the college-step alone. I looked, and far there, ever fleeting Far, far away, the receding gesture, And looming of the lessening vesture!-- Swept forward from my stupid hand, While I watched my foolish heart expand In the lazy glow of benevolence, O'er the various modes of man's belief. I sprang up with fear's vehemence. Needs must there be one way, our chief Best way of worship: let me strive To find it, and when found, contrive My fellows also take their share! This constitutes my earthly care: God's is above it and distinct, For I, a man, with men am linked And not a brute with brutes; no gain That I experience, must remain Unshared: but should my best endeavor To share it, fail--subsisteth ever God's care above, and I exult That God, by God's own ways occult, May--doth, I will believe--bring back All wanderers to a single track. Meantime, I can but testify God's care for me--no more, can I-- It is but for myself I know; The world rolls witnessing around me Only to leave me as it found me; Men cry there, but my ear is slow: Their races flourish or decay --What boots it; while yon lucid way Loaded with stars divides the vault? But soon my soul repairs its fault When, sharpening sense's hebetude, She turns on my own life! So viewed, No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense With witnessings of providence: And woe to me if when I look Upon that record, the sole book Unsealed to me, I take no heed Of any warning that I read! Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, God's own hand did the rainbow weave, Whereby the truth from heaven slid Into my soul?--I cannot bid The world admit he stooped to heal My soul, as if in a thunder-peal Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, I only knew he named my name: But what is the world to me, for sorrow Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow It drops the remark, with just-turned head, Then, on again, "That man is dead"? Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn, He has dipt into on a battle-dawn: Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,-- Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,-- With a rapid finger circled round, Fixed to the first poor inch of ground To fight from, where his foot was found; Whose ear but a minute since lay free To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry-- Summoned, a solitary man, To end his life where his life began, From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van! Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held By the hem of the vesture!--

XXI

And I caught At the flying robe, and unrepelled Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught With warmth and wonder and delight, God's mercy being infinite. For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, When, at a passionate bound, I sprung Out of the wondering world of rain, Into the little chapel again.

XXII

How else was I found there, bolt upright On my bench, as if I had never left it? --Never flung out on the common at night, Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, Or the laboratory of the Professor! For the Vision, that was true, I wist, True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall. She had slid away a contemptuous space: And the old fat woman, late so placable, Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. In short, a spectator might have fancied That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber, Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. But again, could such disgrace have happened? Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it; And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end? Unless I heard it, could I have judged it? Could I report as I do at the close, First, the preacher speaks through his nose: Second, his gesture is too emphatic: Thirdly, to waive what 's pedagogic, The subject-matter itself lacks logic: Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal, Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call Of making square to a finite eye The circle of infinity, And find so all-but-just-succeeding! Great news! the sermon proves no reading Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me, Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy! And now that I know the very worst of him, What was it I thought to obtain at first of him? Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks? Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, dispatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, Neglect the thing for which he sent, And return with another thing instead?-- Saying, "Because the water found Welling up from underground, Is mingled with the taints of earth, While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, And couldst, at wink or word, convulse The world with the leap of a river-pulse,-- Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, And bring thee a chalice I found, instead: See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy! One would suppose that the marble bled. What matters the water? A hope I have nursed: The waterless cup will quench my thirst." --Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. And here, is there water or not, to drink? I then, in ignorance and weakness, Taking God's help, have attained to think My heart does best to receive in meekness That mode of worship, as most to his mind, Where earthly aids being cast behind, His All in All appears serene With the thinnest human veil between, Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, The many motions of his spirit, Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. For the preacher's merit or demerit, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer In the earthen vessel, holding treasure Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? Heaven soon sets right all other matters!-- Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?-- Which an empire gained, were a loss without. May it be mine! And let us hope That no worse blessing befall the Pope, Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery, Of posturings and petticoatings, Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! Nor may the Professor forego its peace At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase, Prophesied of by that horrible husk-- When thicker and thicker the darkness fills The world through his misty spectacles, And he gropes for something more substantial Than a fable, myth or personification,-- May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, And stand confessed as the God of salvation! Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbors round, With none of my own made--I choose here! The giving out of the hymn reclaims me; I have done: and if any blames me, Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,-- Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, On the bounds of the holy and the awful,-- I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, And refer myself to THEE, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter, When frothy spume and frequent sputter Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest! May truth shine out, stand ever before us! I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, The last five verses of the third section Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitefield's Collection, To conclude with the doxology.

EASTER-DAY

I

How very hard it is to be A Christian! Hard for you and me, --Not the mere task of making real That duty up to its ideal, Effecting thus, complete and whole, A purpose of the human soul-- For that is always hard to do; But hard, I mean, for me and you To realize it, more or less, With even the moderate success Which commonly repays our strife To carry out the aims of life. "This aim is greater," you will say, "And so more arduous every way." --But the importance of their fruits Still proves to man, in all pursuits, Proportional encouragement. "Then, what if it be God's intent That labor to this one result Should seem unduly difficult?" Ah, that 's a question in the dark-- And the sole thing that I remark Upon the difficulty, this: We do not see it where it is, At the beginning of the race: As we proceed, it shifts its place, And where we looked for crowns to fall, We find the tug 's to come,--that 's all.

II

At first you say, "The whole, or chief Of difficulties, is belief. Could I believe once thoroughly, The rest were simple. What? Am I An idiot, do you think,--a beast? Prove to me, only that the least Command of God is God's indeed, And what injunction shall I need To pay obedience? Death so nigh, When time must end, eternity Begin,--and cannot I compute, Weigh loss and gain together, suit My actions to the balance drawn, And give my body to be sawn Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, Like any martyr of the list? How gladly!--if I make acquist, Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, Of God's eternity of joy."

III

--And certainly you name the point Whereon all turns: for could you joint This flexile finite life once tight Into the fixed and infinite, You, safe inside, would spurn what 's out, With carelessness enough, no doubt-- Would spurn mere life: but when time brings To their next stage your reasonings, Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink Nor see the path so well, I think.

IV

You say, "Faith may be, one agrees, A touchstone for God's purposes, Even as ourselves conceive of them. Could he acquit us or condemn For holding what no hand can loose, Rejecting when we can't but choose? As well award the victor's wreath To whosoever should take breath Duly each minute while he lived-- Grant heaven, because a man contrived To see its sunlight every day He walked forth on the public way. You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith be. Why, what but faith, do we abhor And idolize each other for-- Faith in our evil or our good, Which is or is not understood Aright by those we love or those We hate, thence called our friends or foes? Your mistress saw your spirit's grace, When, turning from the ugly face, I found belief in it too hard; And she and I have our reward. --Yet here a doubt peeps: well for us Weak beings, to go using thus A touchstone for our little ends, Trying with faith the foes and friends; --But God, bethink you! I would fain Conceive of the Creator's reign As based upon exacter laws Than creatures build by with applause. In all God's acts--(as Plato cries He doth)--he should geometrize. Whence, I desiderate" ...

V

I see! You would grow as a natural tree, Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. The world 's so perfect and entire, Quite above faith, so right and fit! Go there, walk up and down in it! No. The creation travails, groans-- Contrive your music from its moans, Without or let or hindrance, friend! That 's an old story, and its end As old--you come back (be sincere) With every question you put here (Here where there once was, and is still, We think, a living oracle, Whose answers you stand carping at) This time flung back unanswered flat,-- Beside, perhaps, as many more As those that drove you out before, Now added, where was little need. Questions impossible, indeed, To us who sat still, all and each Persuaded that our earth had speech, Of God's, writ down, no matter if In cursive type or hieroglyph,-- Which one fact freed us from the yoke Of guessing why He never spoke. You come back in no better plight Than when you left us,--am I right?

VI

So, the old process, I conclude, Goes on, the reasoning 's pursued Further. You own, "'T is well averred, A scientific faith 's absurd, --Frustrates the very end 't was meant To serve. So, I would rest content With a mere probability, But, probable; the chance must lie Clear on one side,--lie all in rough, So long as there be just enough To pin my faith to, though it hap Only at points: from gap to gap One hangs up a huge curtain so, Grandly, nor seeks to have it go Foldless and flat along the wall. What care I if some interval Of life less plainly may depend On God? I 'd hang there to the end; And thus I should not find it hard To be a Christian and debarred From trailing on the earth, till furled Away by death.--Renounce the world! Were that a mighty hardship? Plan A pleasant life, and straight some man Beside you, with, if he thought fit, Abundant means to compass it, Shall turn deliberate aside To try and live as, if you tried You clearly might, yet most despise. One friend of mine wears out his eyes, Slighting the stupid joys of sense, In patient hope that, ten years hence, 'Somewhat completer,' he may say, 'My list of coleoptera!' While just the other who most laughs At him, above all epitaphs Aspires to have his tomb describe Himself as sole among the tribe Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed A Grignon with the Regent's crest. So that, subduing, as you want, Whatever stands predominant Among my earthly appetites For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, I shall be doing that alone, To gain a palm-branch and a throne, Which fifty people undertake To do, and gladly, for the sake Of giving a Semitic guess, Or playing pawns at blindfold chess."

VII

Good: and the next thing is,--look round For evidence enough! 'T is found, No doubt: as is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: you 'll find What you desire, and that 's to be A Christian. What says history? How comforting a point it were To find some mummy-scrap declare There lived a Moses! Better still, Prove Jonah's whale translatable Into some quicksand of the seas, Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please, That faith might flap her wings and crow From such an eminence! Or, no-- The human heart 's best; you prefer Making that prove the minister To truth; you probe its wants and needs, And hopes and fears, then try what creeds Meet these most aptly,--resolute That faith plucks such substantial fruit Wherever these two correspond, She little needs to look beyond And puzzle out who Orpheus was, Or Dionysius Zagrias. You 'll find sufficient, as I say, To satisfy you either way; You wanted to believe; your pains Are crowned--you do: and what remains? "Renounce the world!"--Ah, were it done By merely cutting one by one Your limbs off, with your wise head last, How easy were it!--how soon past, If once in the believing mood! "Such is man's usual gratitude, Such thanks to God do we return, For not exacting that we spurn A single gift of life, forego One real gain,--only taste them so With gravity and temperance, That those mild virtues may enhance Such pleasures, rather than abstract-- Last spice of which, will be the fact Of love discerned in every gift; While, when the scene of life shall shift, And the gay heart be taught to ache, As sorrows and privations take The place of joy,--the thing that seems Mere misery, under human schemes, Becomes, regarded by the light Of love, as very near or quite As good a gift as joy before. So plain is it that, all the more A dispensation 's merciful, More pettishly we try and cull Briers, thistles, from our private plot, To mar God's ground where thorns are not!"

VIII

Do you say this, or I?--Oh, you! Then, what, my friend?--(thus I pursue Our parley)--you indeed opine That the Eternal and Divine Did, eighteen centuries ago, In very truth ... Enough! you know The all-stupendous tale,--that Birth, That Life, that Death! And all, the earth Shuddered at,--all, the heavens grew black Rather than see; all, nature's rack And throe at dissolution's brink Attested,---all took place, you think, Only to give our joys a zest, And prove our sorrows for the best? We differ, then! Were I, still pale And heartstruck at the dreadful tale, Waiting to hear God's voice declare What horror followed for my share, As implicated in the deed, Apart from other sins,--concede That if He blacked out in a blot My brief life's pleasantness, 't were not So very disproportionate! Or there might be another fate-- I certainly could understand (If fancies were the thing in hand) How God might save, at that day's price, The impure in their impurities, Give license formal and complete To choose the fair and pick the sweet. But there be certain words, broad, plain, Uttered again and yet again, Hard to mistake or overgloss-- Announcing this world's gain for loss, And bidding us reject the same: The whole world lieth (they proclaim) In wickedness,--come out of it! Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit, But I who thrill through every nerve At thought of what deaf ears deserve-- How do you counsel in the case?

IX

"I 'd take, by all means, in your place, The safe side, since it so appears: Deny myself, a few brief years, The natural pleasure, leave the fruit Or cut the plant up by the root. Remember what a martyr said On the rude tablet overhead! 'I was born sickly, poor and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price From Cæsar's envy; therefore twice I fought with beasts, and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At last my own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me This testimony on the wall-- For me, I have forgot it all.' You say right; this were not so hard! And since one nowise is debarred From this, why not escape some sins By such a method?"

X

Then begins To the old point revulsion new-- (For 't is just this I bring you to)-- If after all we should mistake, And so renounce life for the sake Of death and nothing else? You hear Each friend we jeered at, send the jeer Back to ourselves with good effect-- "There were my beetles to collect! My box--a trifle, I confess, But here I hold it, ne'ertheless!" Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart And answer) we, the better part Have chosen, though 't were only hope,-- Nor envy moles like you that grope Amid your veritable muck, More than the grasshoppers would truck, For yours, their passionate life away, That spends itself in leaps all day To reach the sun, you want the eyes To see, as they the wings to rise And match the noble hearts of them! Thus the contemner we contemn,-- And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, --Not struck enough to overturn Our faith, but shake it--make us learn What I began with, and, I wis, End, having proved,--how hard it is To be a Christian!

XI

"Proved, or not, Howe'er you wis, small thanks, I wot, You get of mine, for taking pains To make it hard to me. Who gains By that, I wonder? Here I live In trusting ease; and here you drive At causing me to lose what most Yourself would mourn for had you lost!"

XII

But, do you see, my friend, that thus You leave Saint Paul for Æschylus? --Who made his Titan's arch-device The giving men blind hopes to spice The meal of life with, else devoured In bitter haste, while lo, death loured Before them at the platter's edge! If faith should be, as I allege, Quite other than a condiment To heighten flavors with, or meant (Like that brave curry of his Grace) To take at need the victuals' place? If, having dined, you would digest Besides, and turning to your rest Should find instead ...

XIII

Now, you shall see And judge if a mere foppery Pricks on my speaking! I resolve To utter--yes, it shall devolve On you to hear as solemn, strange And dread a thing as in the range Of facts,--or fancies, if God will-- E'er happened to our kind! I still Stand in the cloud and, while it wraps My face, ought not to speak perhaps; Seeing that if I carry through My purpose, if my words in you Find a live actual listener, My story, reason must aver False after all--the happy chance! While, if each human countenance I meet in London day by day, Be what I fear,--my warnings fray No one, and no one they convert, And no one helps me to assert How hard it is to really be A Christian, and in vacancy I pour this story!

XIV

I commence By trying to inform you, whence It comes that every Easter-night As now, I sit up, watch, till light, Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, Give, through my window-pane, gray proofs That Easter-Day is breaking slow. On such a night, three years ago, It chanced that I had cause to cross The common, where the chapel was, Our friend spoke of, the other day-- You 've not forgotten, I dare say. I fell to musing of the time So close, the blessed matin-prime All hearts leap up at, in some guise-- One could not well do otherwise. Insensibly my thoughts were bent Toward the main point; I overwent Much the same ground of reasoning As you and I just now. One thing Remained, however--one that tasked My soul to answer; and I asked, Fairly and frankly, what might be That History, that Faith, to me --Me there--not me in some domain Built up and peopled by my brain, Weighing its merits as one weighs Mere theories for blame or praise, --The kingcraft of the Lucumons, Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons,-- But my faith there, or none at all. "How were my case, now, did I fall Dead here, this minute--should I lie Faithful or faithless?" Note that I Inclined thus ever!--little prone For instance, when I lay alone In childhood, to go calm to sleep And leave a closet where might keep His watch perdue some murderer Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir, As good authentic legends tell: "He might: but how improbable! How little likely to deserve The pains and trial to the nerve Of thrusting head into the dark!"-- Urged my old nurse, and bade me mark Beside, that, should the dreadful scout Really lie hid there, and leap out At first turn of the rusty key, Mine were small gain that she could see, Killed not in bed but on the floor, And losing one night's sleep the more. I tell you, I would always burst The door ope, know my fate at first. This time, indeed, the closet penned No such assassin: but a friend Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit For counsel, Common Sense, to wit, Who said a good deal that might pass,-- Heartening, impartial too, it was, Judge else: "For, soberly now,--who Should be a Christian if not you?" (Hear how he smoothed me down.) "One takes A whole life, sees what course it makes Mainly, and not by fits and starts-- In spite of stoppage which imparts Fresh value to the general speed. A life, with none, would fly indeed: Your progressing is slower--right! We deal with progress and not flight. Through baffling senses passionate, Fancies as restless,--with a freight Of knowledge cumbersome enough To sink your ship when waves grow rough, Though meant for ballast in the hold,-- I find, 'mid dangers manifold, The good bark answers to the helm Where faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm Than some stout peasant's heavenly guide, Whose hard head could not, if it tried, Conceive a doubt, nor understand How senses hornier than his hand Should 'tice the Christian off his guard. More happy! But shall we award Less honor to the hull which, dogged By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged, Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone And stanchions going, yet bears on,-- Than to mere lifeboats, built to save, And triumph o'er the breaking wave? Make perfect your good ship as these, And what were her performances!" I added--"Would the ship reach home! I wish indeed 'God's kingdom come'-- The day when I shall see appear His bidding, as my duty, clear From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day, Some future season; Easter may Prove, not impossibly, the time-- Yes, that were striking--fates would chime So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring The Judgment!--deeper in the spring Than now, however, when there 's snow Capping the hills; for earth must show All signs of meaning to pursue Her tasks as she was wont to do --The skylark, taken by surprise As we ourselves, shall recognize Sudden the end. For suddenly It comes; the dreadfulness must be In that; all warrants the belief-- 'At night it cometh like a thief.' I fancy why the trumpet blows; --Plainly, to wake one. From repose We shall start up, at last awake From life, that insane dream we take For waking now, because it seems. And as, when now we wake from dreams, We laugh, while we recall them, 'Fool, To let the chance slip, linger cool When such adventure offered! Just A bridge to cross, a dwarf to thrust Aside, a wicked mage to stab-- And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab!' So shall we marvel why we grudged Our labor here, and idly judged Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose! Lose? Talk of loss, and I refuse To plead at all! You speak no worse Nor better than my ancient nurse When she would tell me in my youth I well deserved that shapes uncouth Frighted and teased me in my sleep: Why could I not in memory keep Her precept for the evil's cure? 'Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure You 'll wake forthwith!'"

XV

And as I said This nonsense, throwing back my head With light complacent laugh, I found Suddenly all the midnight round One fire. The dome of heaven had stood As made up of a multitude Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack Of ripples infinite and black, From sky to sky. Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across, as if one said (The angry scribe of Judgment) "There-- Burn it!" And straight I was aware That the whole ribwork round, minute Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, Was tinted, each with its own spot Of burning at the core, till clot Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire As fanned to measure equable,-- Just so great conflagrations kill Night overhead, and rise and sink, Reflected. Now the fire would shrink And wither off the blasted face Of heaven, and I distinct might trace The sharp black ridgy outlines left Unburned like network--then, each cleft The fire had been sucked back into, Regorged, and out it surging flew Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, Till, tolerating to be tamed No longer, certain rays world-wide Shot downwardly. On every side Caught past escape, the earth was lit; As if a dragon's nostril split And all his famished ire o'erflowed; Then, as he winced at his lord's goad, Back he inhaled: whereat I found The clouds into vast pillars bound, Based on the corners of the earth, Propping the skies at top: a dearth Of fire i' the violet intervals, Leaving exposed the utmost walls Of time, about to tumble in And end the world.

XVI

I felt begin The Judgment-Day: to retrocede Was too late now. "In very deed," (I uttered to myself) "that Day!" The intuition burned away All darkness from my spirit too: There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew, Choosing the world. The choice was made; And naked and disguiseless stayed, And unevadable, the fact. My brain held all the same compact Its senses, nor my heart declined Its office; rather, both combined To help me in this juncture. I Lost not a second,--agony Gave boldness: since my life had end And my choice with it--best defend, Applaud both! I resolved to say, "So was I framed by thee, such way I put to use thy senses here! It was so beautiful, so near, Thy world,--what could I then but choose My part there? Nor did I refuse To look above the transient boon Of time; but it was hard so soon As in a short life, to give up Such beauty: I could put the cup, Undrained of half its fulness, by; But, to renounce it utterly, --That was too hard! Nor did the cry Which bade renounce it, touch my brain Authentically deep and plain Enough to make my lips let go. But thou, who knowest all, dost know Whether I was not, life's brief while, Endeavoring to reconcile Those lips (too tardily, alas!) To letting the dear remnant pass, One day,--some drops of earthly good Untasted! Is it for this mood, That thou, whose earth delights so well, Hast made its complement a hell?"

XVII

A final belch of fire like blood, Overbroke all heaven in one flood Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, Then ashes. But I heard no noise (Whatever was) because a voice Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done, Time ends, Eternity 's begun, And thou art judged forevermore."

XVIII

I looked up; all seemed as before; Of that cloud-Tophet overhead No trace was left: I saw instead The common round me, and the sky Above, stretched drear and emptily Of life. 'T was the last watch of night, Except what brings the morning quite; When the armed angel, conscience-clear, His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear And gazes on the earth he guards, Safe one night more through all its wards, Till God relieve him at his post. "A dream--a waking dream at most!" (I spoke out quick, that I might shake The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) "The world gone, yet the world is here? Are not all things as they appear? Is Judgment past for me alone? --And where had place the great white throne? The rising of the quick and dead? Where stood they, small and great? Who read The sentence from the opened book?" So, by degrees, the blood forsook My heart, and let it beat afresh; I knew I should break through the mesh Of horror, and breathe presently: When, lo, again, the voice by me!

XIX

I saw ... O brother, 'mid far sands The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, Leans o'er it, while the years pursue Their course, unable to abate Its paradisal laugh at fate! One morn,--the Arab staggers blind O'er a new tract of death, calcined To ashes, silence, nothingness,-- And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies And prostrate earth, he should surprise The imaged vapor, head to foot, Surveying, motionless and mute, Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt It vanish up again?--So hapt My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,-- I saw him. One magnific pall Mantled in massive fold and fall His head, and coiled in snaky swathes About his feet: night's black, that bathes All else, broke, grizzled with despair, Against the soul of blackness there. A gesture told the mood within-- That wrapped right hand which based the chin, That intense meditation fixed On his procedure,--pity mixed With the fulfilment of decree. Motionless, thus, he spoke to me, Who fell before his feet, a mass, No man now.

XX

"All is come to pass. Such shows are over for each soul They had respect to. In the roll Of Judgment which convinced mankind Of sin, stood many, bold and blind, Terror must burn the truth into: Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do With absolute omnipotence, Able its judgments to dispense To the whole race, as every one Were its sole object. Judgment done, God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled To nothingness for thee. This world, This finite life, thou hast preferred, In disbelief of God's plain word, To heaven and to infinity. Here the probation was for thee, To show thy soul the earthly mixed With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. The earthly joys lay palpable,-- A taint, in each, distinct as well; The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, Above them, but as truly were Taintless, so, in their nature, best. Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest 'T was fitter spirit should subserve The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve Beneath the spirit's play. Advance No claim to their inheritance Who chose the spirit's fugitive Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live Indeed, if rays, completely pure From flesh that dulls them, could endure,-- Not shoot in meteor-light athwart Our earth, to show how cold and swart It lies beneath their fire, but stand As stars do, destined to expand, Prove veritable worlds, our home!' Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, No nook of earth,--I shall not seek Its service further!' Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit; glut Thy sense upon the world: 't is thine Forever--take it!"

XXI

"How? Is mine, The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke Out in a transport.) "Hast thou spoke Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite Treasures of wonder and delight For me?"

XXII

The austere voice returned,-- "So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned What God accounteth happiness, Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess What hell may be his punishment For those who doubt if God invent Better than they. Let such men rest Content with what they judged the best. Let the unjust usurp at will: The filthy shall be filthy still: Miser, there waits the gold for thee! Hater, indulge thine enmity! And thou, whose heaven self-ordained Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained, Do it! Take all the ancient show! The woods shall wave, the rivers flow, And men apparently pursue Their works, as they were wont to do, While living in probation yet. I promise not thou shalt forget The past, now gone to its account; But leave thee with the old amount Of faculties, nor less nor more, Unvisited, as heretofore, By God's free spirit, that makes an end. So, once more, take thy world! Expend Eternity upon its shows Flung thee as freely as one rose Out of a summer's opulence, Over the Eden-barrier whence Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"

XXIII

I sat up. All was still again. I breathed free: to my heart, back fled The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said. I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, And recollected I might learn From books, how many myriad sorts Of fern exist, to trust reports, Each as distinct and beautiful As this, the very first I cull. Think, from the first leaf to the last! Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast Exhaustless beauty, endless change Of wonder! And this foot shall range Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?

XXIV

Then the voice: "Welcome so to rate The arras-folds that variegate The earth, God's antechamber, well! The wise, who waited there, could tell By these, what royalties in store Lay one step past the entrance-door. For whom, was reckoned, not too much, This life's munificence? For such As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one Was able, in a million, To feel that any marvel lay In objects round his feet all day; Scarce one, in many millions more, Willing, if able, to explore The secreter, minuter charm! --Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm Of power to cope with God's intent,-- Or scared if the south firmament With north-fire did its wings refledge! All partial beauty was a pledge Of beauty in its plenitude: But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, Retain it! plenitude be theirs Who looked above!"

XXV

Though sharp despairs Shot through me, I held up, bore on. "What matter though my trust were gone From natural things? Henceforth my part Be less with nature than with art! For art supplants, gives mainly worth To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth-- And I will seek his impress, seek The statuary of the Greek, Italy's painting--there my choice Shall fix!"

XXVI

"Obtain it!" said the voice, "The one form with its single act, Which sculptors labored to abstract, The one face, painters tried to draw, With its one look, from throngs they saw. And that perfection in their soul, These only hinted at? The whole, They were but parts of? What each laid His claim to glory on?--afraid His fellow-men should give him rank By mere tentatives which he shrank Smitten at heart from, all the more, That gazers pressed in to adore! 'Shall I be judged by only these?' If such his soul's capacities, Even while he trod the earth,--think, now. What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, With its new palace-brain where dwells Superb the soul, unvexed by cells That crumbled with the transient clay! What visions will his right hand's sway Still turn to forms, as still they burst Upon him? How will he quench thirst, Titanically infantine, Laid at the breast of the Divine? Does it confound thee,--this first page Emblazoning man's heritage?-- Can this alone absorb thy sight, As pages were not infinite,-- Like the omnipotence which tasks Itself to furnish all that asks The soul it means to satiate? What was the world, the starry state Of the broad skies,--what, all displays Of power and beauty intermixed, Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,-- What else than needful furniture For life's first stage? God's work, be sure. No more spreads wasted, than falls scant! He filled, did not exceed, man's want Of beauty in this life. But through Life pierce,--and what has earth to do, Its utmost beauty's appanage, With the requirement of next stage? Did God pronounce earth 'very good'? Needs must it he, while understood For man's preparatory state; Naught here to heighten nor abate; Transfer the same completeness here, To serve a new state's use,--and drear Deficiency gapes every side! The good, tried once, were bad, retried. See the enwrapping rocky niche, Sufficient for the sleep in which The lizard breathes for ages safe: Split the mould--and as light would chafe The creature's new world-widened sense, Dazzled to death at evidence Of all the sounds and sights that broke Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,-- So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff Was, neither more nor less, enough To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. Man reckoned it immeasurable? So thinks the lizard of his vault! Could God be taken in default, Short of contrivances, by you,-- Or reached, ere ready to pursue His progress through eternity? That chambered rock, the lizard's world, Your easy mallet's blow has hurled To nothingness forever; so, Has God abolished at a blow This world, wherein his saints were pent,-- Who, though found grateful and content, With the provision there, as thou, Yet knew he would not disallow Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,-- Unsated,--not unsatable, As paradise gives proof. Deride Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"

XXVII

I cried in anguish: "Mind, the mind, So miserably cast behind, To gain what had been wisely lost! Oh, let me strive to make the most Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped Of budding wings, else now equipped For voyage from summer isle to isle! And though she needs must reconcile Ambition to the life on ground, Still, I can profit by late found But precious knowledge. Mind is best-- I will seize mind, forego the rest, And try how far my tethered strength May crawl in this poor breadth and length. Let me, since I can fly no more, At least spin dervish-like about (Till giddy rapture almost doubt I fly) through circling sciences, Philosophies and histories! Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, Fining to music, shall asperse Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain Intoxicate, half-break my chain! Not joyless, though more favored feet Stand calm, where I want wings to beat The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"

XXVIII

Then (sickening even while I spoke): "Let me alone! No answer, pray, To this! I know what thou wilt say! All still is earth's,--to know, as much As feel its truths, which if we touch With sense, or apprehend in soul, What matter? I have reached the goal-- 'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn My eyes, too sure, at every turn! I cannot look back now, nor stake Bliss on the race, for running's sake. The goal's a ruin like the rest!" "And so much worse thy latter quest," (Added the voice,) "that even on earth-- Whenever, in man's soul, had birth Those intuitions, grasps of guess, Which pull the more into the less, Making the finite comprehend Infinity,--the bard would spend Such praise alone, upon his craft, As, when wind-lyres obey the waft, Goes to the craftsman who arranged The seven strings, changed them and rechanged-- Knowing it was the South that harped. He felt his song; in singing, warped; Distinguished his and God's part: whence A world of spirit as of sense Was plain to him, yet not too plain, Which he could traverse, not remain A guest in:--else were permanent Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant To sting with hunger for full light,-- Made visible in verse, despite The veiling weakness,--truth by means Of fable, showing while it screens,-- Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, Was ever fable on outside. Such gleams made bright the earth an age; Now the whole sun's his heritage! Take up thy world, it is allowed, Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"

XXIX

Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds, Catches no more at broken reeds,-- But lilies flower those reeds above: I let the world go, and take love! Love survives in me, albeit those I love be henceforth masks and shows, Not living men and women: still I mind how love repaired all ill, Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends With parents, brothers, children, friends! Some semblance of a woman yet With eyes to help me to forget, Shall look on me; and I will match Departed love with love, attach Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn The poorest of the grains of corn I save from shipwreck on this isle, Trusting its barrenness may smile With happy foodful green one day, More precious for the pains. I pray,-- Leave to love, only!"

XXX

At the word, The form, I looked to have been stirred With pity and approval, rose O'er me, as when the headsman throws Axe over shoulder to make end-- I fell prone, letting him expend His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice Smote me. "Is this thy final choice? Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late! And all thou dost enumerate Of power and beauty in the world, The mightiness of love was curled Inextricably round about. Love lay within it and without, To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul Still shrunk from him who made the whole, Still set deliberate aside His love!--Now take love! Well betide Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take The show of love for the name's sake, Remembering every moment who, Beside creating thee unto These ends, and these for thee, was said To undergo death in thy stead In flesh like thine: so ran the tale. What doubt in thee could countervail Belief in it? Upon the ground 'That in the story had been found Too much love! How could God love so?' He who in all his works below Adapted to the needs of man, Made love the basis of the plan,-- Did love, as was demonstrated: While man, who was so fit instead To hate, as every day gave proof,--Man thought man, for his kind's behoof, Both, could and did invent that scheme Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise, Not tally with God's usual ways!"

XXXI

And I cowered deprecatingly-- "Thou Love of God! Or let me die, Or grant what shall seem heaven almost! Let me not know that all is lost, Though lost it be--leave me not tied To this despair, this corpse-like bride! Let that old life seem mine--no more-- With limitation as before, With darkness, hunger, toil, distress: Be all the earth a wilderness! Only let me go on, go on, Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land!"

XXXII

Then did the form expand, expand-- I knew him through the dread disguise As the whole God within his eyes Embraced me.

XXXIII

When I lived again, The day was breaking,--the gray plain I rose from, silvered thick with dew. Was this a vision? False or true? Since then, three varied years are spent, And commonly my mind is bent To think it was a dream--be sure A mere dream and distemperature-- The last day's watching: then the night,-- The shock of that strange Northern Light Set my head swimming, bred in me A dream. And so I live, you see, Go through the world, try, prove, reject, Prefer, still struggling to effect My warfare; happy that I can Be crossed and thwarted as a man, Not left in God's contempt apart, With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. Thank God, she still each method tries To catch me, who may yet escape, She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape! Thank God, no paradise stands barred To entry, and I find it hard To be a Christian, as I said! Still every now and then my head Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear Spite of the sunshine, while I fear And think, "How dreadful to be grudged No ease henceforth, as one that's judged, Condemned to earth forever, shut From heaven!" But Easter-Day breaks! But Christ rises! Mercy every way Is infinite,--and who can say?

MEN AND WOMEN

LONDON AND FLORENCE, 184-185-

In making his final distribution of poems Browning gave the above title and dates to the thirteen poems which follow, but the title was originally given by him to two volumes published in 1855. The other poems are dispersed among the several groups already named, with the exception of In a Balcony, which appeared by itself.

"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"

Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak? 'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art: Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. --True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up! But why such long prolusion and display, Such turning and adjustment of the harp, And taking it upon your breast, at length, Only to speak dry words across its strings? Stark-naked thought is in request enough: Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears! The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark, Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp-- Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?

But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think; Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse: Boys seek for images and melody, Men must have reason--so, you aim at men. Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true; We see and hear and do not wonder much: If you could tell us what they mean, indeed! As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue, to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed-- Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind), We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss-- Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what roses say,-- Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt, John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about? He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, Over us, under, round us every side. Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,-- Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

So come, the harp back to your heart again! You are a poem, though your poem's naught. The best of all you showed before, believe, Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords Bent, following the cherub at the top That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY

I only knew one poet in my life: And this, or something like it, was his way. You saw go up and down Valladolid, A man of mark, to know next time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in face, An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves On the main promenade just at the wrong time: You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat, Making a peaked shade blacker than itself Against the single window spared some house Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,-- Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks Of some new shop a-building, French and fine. He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch. He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vender's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note; Yet stared at nobody,--you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you and expect as much. So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed, It marked the shameful and notorious fact, We had among us, not so much a spy, As a recording chief-inquisitor, The town's true master if the town but knew! We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of ... well, it was not wholly ease As back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in years a little,--such a brow His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint On either side the formidable nose Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw. Had he to do with A's surprising fate? When altogether old B disappeared And young C got his mistress,--was't our friend, His letter to the King, that did it all? What paid the bloodless man for so much pains? Our Lord the King has favorites manifold, And shifts his ministry some once a month; Our city gets new governors at whiles,-- But never word or sign, that I could hear, Notified to this man about the streets The King's approval of those letters conned The last thing duly at the dead of night. Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord, Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not! Too far above my people,--beneath me! I set the watch,--how should the people know? Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!" Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least-- That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace, You found he ate his supper in a room Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall, And twenty naked girls to change his plate! Poor man, he lived another kind of life In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat, Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back, Playing a decent cribbage with his maid (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears, Or treat of radishes in April. Nine, Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was, Would point him out to me a dozen times; "'St--'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor! I had been used to think that personage Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt, And feathers like a forest in his hat, Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news, Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn, And memorized the miracle in vogue! He had a great observance from us boys; We were in error; that was not the man.

I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid, To have just looked, when this man came to die, And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides And stood about the neat low truckle-bed, With the heavenly manner of relieving guard. Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief, Through a whole campaign of the world's life and death, Doing the King's work all the dim day long, In his old coat and up to knees in mud, Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,-- And, now the day was won, relieved at once! No further show or need for that old coat, You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I! A second, and the angels alter that. Well, I could never write a verse,--could you? Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES

Upon the first proof of this poem Browning wrote: "I had better say perhaps that the above is nearly all retained of a tragedy I composed much against my endeavor, while in bed with a fever two years ago--it went farther into the story of Hippolytus and Aricia; but when I got well, putting only thus much down at once, I soon forgot the remainder." The notes contain an interesting defence by Browning of the form of his Greek names.

I am a goddess of the ambrosial courts, And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed By none whose temples whiten this the world. Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace; On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness. Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem, Upon my image at Athenai here; And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above, Was dearest to me. He, my buskined step To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low, Neglected homage to another god: Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings, Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself The son of Theseus her great absent spouse. Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage Against the fury of the Queen, she judged Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart An Amazonian stranger's race should dare To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord: Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll The fame of him her swerving made not swerve. And Theseus read, returning, and believed, And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath, The man without a crime who, last as first, Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth. Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained That of his wishes should be granted three, And one he imprecated straight--"Alive May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!" Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car That give the feet a stay against the strength Of the Henetian horses, and around His body flung the rein, and urged their speed Along the rocks and shingles of the shore, When from the gaping wave a monster flung His obscene body in the coursers' path. These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed, Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast, Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein Which either hand directed; nor they quenched The frenzy of their flight before each trace, Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car, Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell, Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands On that detested beach, was bright with blood And morsels of his flesh: then fell the steeds Head-foremost, crashing in their moonèd fronts, Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed. His people, who had witnessed all afar, Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos. But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced (Indomitable as a man foredoomed) That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer, I, in a flood of glory visible, Stood o'er my dying votary and, deed By deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth. Then Theseus lay the woefullest of men, And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries, Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life; Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate Should dress my image with some faded poor Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object Such slackness to my worshippers who turn Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand, As they had climbed Olumpos to report Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne-- I interposed: and, this eventful night,-- (While round the funeral pyre the populace Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped O'er the dead body of their withered prince, And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab 'Twas bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief-- As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night, And the gay fire, elate with mastery, Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense, And splendid gums like gold,)--my potency Conveyed the perished man to my retreat In the thrice-venerable forest here. And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame, Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught The doctrine of each herb and flower and root, To know their secret'st virtue and express The saving soul of all: who so has soothed With lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks, Composed the hair and brought its gloss again, And called the red bloom to the pale skin back, And laid the strips and jagged ends of flesh Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot Of every tortured limb--that now he lies As if mere sleep possessed him underneath These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer, Divine presenter of the healing rod, Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye, Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer! Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies! And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs, Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves That strew the turf around the twain! While I Await, in fitting silence, the event.

AN EPISTLE

CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul) --To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term,-- And aptest in contrivance (under God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such:-- The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) Three samples of true snake-stone--rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) And writeth now the twenty-second time.

My journeyings were brought to Jericho: Thus I resume. Who studious in our art Shall count a little labor unrepaid? I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone On many a flinty furlong of this land. Also, the country-side is all on fire With rumors of a marching hitherward: Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear; Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, And once a town declared me for a spy; But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pass the night, This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence A man with plague-sores at the third degree Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here! 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. A viscid choler is observable In tertians, I was nearly bold to say; And falling-sickness hath a happier cure Than our school wots of: there's a spider here Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back; Take five and drop them ... but who knows his mind, The Syrian runagate I trust this to? His service payeth me a sublimate Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all-- Or I might add, Judæa's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry. In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy-- Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar-- But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.

Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully, Protesteth his devotion is my price-- Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal? I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, What set me off a-writing first of all. An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang! For, be it this town's barrenness--or else The Man had something in the look of him-- His case has struck me far more than 't is worth. So, pardon if--(lest presently I lose In the great press of novelty at hand The care and pains this somehow stole from me) I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, Almost in sight--for, wilt thou have the truth? The very man is gone from me but now, Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!

'T is but a case of mania--subinduced By epilepsy, at the turning-point Of trance prolonged unduly some three days: When, by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art Unknown to me and which 't were well to know, The evil thing out-breaking all at once Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,-- But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, Making a clear house of it too suddenly, The first conceit that entered might inscribe Whatever it was minded on the wall So plainly at that vantage, as it were, (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls The just-returned and new-established soul Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart That henceforth she will read or these or none. And first--the man's own firm conviction rests That he was dead (in fact they buried him) --That he was dead and then restored to life By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: --'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise. "Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. Not so this figment!--not, that such a fume, Instead of giving way to time and health, Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all! For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man--it is one Lazarus a Jew, Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, The body's habit wholly laudable, As much, indeed, beyond the common health As he were made and put aside to show. Think, could we penetrate by any drug And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep! Whence has the man the balm that brightens all? This grown man eyes the world now like a child. Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, Now sharply, now with sorrow,--told the case,-- He listened not except I spoke to him, But folded his two hands and let them talk, Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool. And that's a sample how his years must go. Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, Should find a treasure,--can he use the same With straitened habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth-- Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one: The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here--we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty-- Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little or be much. Discourse to him of prodigious armaments Assembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds-- 'T is one! Then take it on the other side, Speak of some trifling fact,--he will gaze rapt With stupor at its very littleness, (Far as I see) as if in that indeed He caught prodigious import, whole results; And so will turn to us the bystanders In ever the same stupor (note this point) That we too see not with his opened eyes. Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, Preposterously, at cross purposes. Should his child sicken unto death,--why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why--"'t is but a word," object-- "A gesture"--he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly recite Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alike Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life-- (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast distracting orb Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet-- The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, And not along, this black thread through the blaze-- "It should be" balked by "here it cannot be." And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes: then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed the especial marking of the man Is prone submission to the heavenly will-- Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last For that same death which must restore his being To equilibrium, body loosening soul Divorced even now by premature full growth: He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live So long as God please, and just how God please. He even seeketh not to please God more (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be, Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do: How can he give his neighbor the real ground, His own conviction? Ardent as he is-- Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old "Be it as God please" reassureth him. I probed the sore as thy disciple should: "How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out like a little spark thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?" He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The man is apathetic, you deduce? Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, Able and weak, affects the very brutes And birds--how say I? flowers of the field-- As a wise workman recognizes tools In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin-- And indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners, Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure--and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object--Why have I not ere this Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, Conferring with the frankness that befits? Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech Perished in a tumult many years ago, Accused--our learning's fate--of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone) Was wrought by the mad people--that's their wont! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help-- How could he stop the earthquake? That 's their way! The other imputations must be lies: But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, In mere respect for any good man's fame. (And after all, our patient Lazarus Is stark mad; should we count on what he says? Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech 'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.) This man so cured regards the curer, then, As--God forgive me! who but God himself, Creator and sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile! --'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith--but why all this of what he saith? Why write of trivial matters, things of price Calling at every moment for remark? I noticed on the margin of a pool Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, Which, now that I review it, needs must seem Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth! Nor I myself discern in what is writ Good cause for the peculiar interest And awe indeed this man has touched me with. Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus: I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came A moon made like a face with certain spots Multiform, manifold, and menacing: Then a wind rose behind me. So we met In this old sleepy town at unaware, The man and I. I send thee what is writ. Regard it as a chance, a matter risked To this ambiguous Syrian--he may lose, Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. Jerusalem's repose shall make amends For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine; Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too-- So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, But love I gave thee, with myself to love, And thou must love me who have died for thee!" The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION

First published with the signature Z in The Monthly Repository in 1836. A quotation from a Dictionary of all Religions followed the title on the first publication, but is here transferred to the notes.

There 's heaven above, and night by night I look right through its gorgeous roof; No suns and moons though e'er so bright Avail to stop me; splendor-proof I keep the broods of stars aloof: For I intend to get to God, For 't is to God I speed so fast, For in God's breast, my own abode, Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed, I lay my spirit down at last. I lie where I have always lain, God smiles as he has always smiled; Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, Ere stars were thundergirt, or piled The heavens, God thought on me his child; Ordained a life for me, arrayed Its circumstances every one To the minutest; ay, God said This head this hand should rest upon Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun. And having thus created me, Thus rooted me, he bade me grow, Guiltless forever, like a tree That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know The law by which it prospers so: But sure that thought and word and deed All go to swell his love for me, Me, made because that love had need Of something irreversibly Pledged solely its content to be. Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend, No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop! I have God's warrant, could I blend All hideous sins, as in a cup, To drink the mingled venoms up; Secure my nature will convert The draught to blossoming gladness fast: While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt, And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast, As from the first its lot was cast. For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed By unexhausted power to bless, I gaze below on hell's fierce bed, And those its waves of flame oppress, Swarming in ghastly wretchedness; Whose life on earth aspired to be One altar-smoke, so pure!--to win If not love like God's love for me, At least to keep his anger in; And all their striving turned to sin. Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white With prayer, the broken-hearted nun, The martyr, the wan acolyte, The incense-swinging child,--undone Before God fashioned star or sun! God, whom I praise; how could I praise, If such as I might understand, Make out and reckon on his ways, And bargain for his love, and stand, Paying a price, at his right hand?

PICTOR IGNOTUS

FLORENCE, 15--

I could have painted pictures like that youth's Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No bar Stayed me--ah, thought which saddens while it soothes! --Never did fate forbid me, star by star, To outburst on your night with all my gift Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk To the centre, of an instant; or around Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan The license and the limit, space and bound, Allowed to truth made visible in man. And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw, Over the canvas could my hand have flung, Each face obedient to its passion's law. Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue; Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood, A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace, Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place; Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up, And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved,-- O human faces, hath it spilt, my cup? What did ye give me that I have not saved? Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!) Of going--I, in each new picture,--forth, As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell, To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North, Bound for the calmly satisfied great State, Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went, Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight, Through old streets named afresh from the event, Till it reached home, where learned age should greet My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!-- Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked With love about, and praise, till life should end, And then not go to heaven, but linger here, Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend,-- The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear! But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights Have scared me, like the revels through a door Of some strange house of idols at its rites! This world seemed not the world it was before: Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped ... Who summoned those cold faces that begun To press on me and judge me? Though I stooped Shrinking, as from the soldiery a nun, They drew me forth, and spite of me ... enough! These buy and sell our pictures, take and give, Count them for garniture and household-stuff, And where they live needs must our pictures live And see their faces, listen to their prate, Partakers of their daily pettiness, Discussed of,--"This I love, or this I hate, This likes me more, and this affects me less!" Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whiles My heart sinks, as monotonous I paint These endless cloisters and eternal aisles With the same series, Virgin, Babe and Saint, With the same cold calm beautiful regard,-- At least no merchant traffics in my heart; The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart: Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke, They moulder on the damp wall's travertine, 'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke. So, die my pictures! surely, gently die! O youth, men praise so,--holds their praise its worth? Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry? Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?

FRA LIPPO LIPPI

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face. Zooks, what 's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 't is past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine 's my cloister: hunt it up, Do,--harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, Weke, weke, that 's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! Then, you 'll take Your hand away that 's fiddling on my throat, And please to know me likewise. Who am I? Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend Three streets off--he 's a certain ... how d 'ye call? Master--a ... Cosimo of the Medici, I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best! Remember and tell me, the day you 're hanged, How you affected such a gullet's-gripe! But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves Pick up a manner nor discredit you: Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets And count fair prize what comes into their net? He 's Judas to a tittle, that man is! Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends. Lord, I 'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go Drink out this quarter-florin to the health Of the munificent House that harbors me (And many more beside, lads! more beside!) And all 's come square again. I 'd like his face-- His, elbowing on his comrade in the door With the pike and lantern,--for the slave that holds John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say) And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped! It 's not your chance to have a bit of chalk, A wood-coal or the like? or you should see! Yes, I 'm the painter, since you style me so. What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down, You know them and they take you? like enough! I saw the proper twinkle in your eye-- 'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. Let 's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch. Here 's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands To roam the town and sing out carnival, And I 've been three weeks shut within my mow, A-painting for the great man, saints and saints And saints again. I could not paint all night-- Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song,-- Flower o' the broom, Take away love, and our earth is a tomb! Flower o' the Quince, I let Lisa go, and what good in life since? Flower o' the thyme--and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titter Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight,--three slim shapes, And a face that looked up ... zooks, sir, flesh and blood, That 's all I 'm made of! Into shreds it went, Curtain and counterpane and coverlet, All the bed-furniture--a dozen knots, There was a ladder! Down I let myself, Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped, And after them. I came up with the fun Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met,-- Flower o' the rose, If I've been merry, what matter who knows? And so as I was stealing back again To get to bed and have a bit of sleep Ere I rise up to-morrow and go work On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast With his great round stone to subdue the flesh, You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see! Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head-- Mine's shaved--a monk, you say--the sting's in that! If Master Cosimo announced himself, Mum's the word naturally; but a monk! Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now! I was a baby when my mother died And father died and left me in the street. I starved there, God knows how, a year or two On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks, Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day, My stomach being empty as your hat, The wind doubled me up and down I went. Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand, (Its fellow was a stinger as I knew) And so along the wall, over the bridge, By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there, While I stood munching my first bread that month: "So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father, Wiping his own mouth, 'twas refection-time,-- "To quit this very miserable world? Will you renounce" ... "the mouthful of bread?" thought I; By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me; I did renounce the world, its pride and greed, Palace, farm, villa, shop, and banking-house, Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici Have given their hearts to--all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'Twas not for nothing--the good bellyful, The warm serge and the rope that goes all round, And day-long blessed idleness beside! "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"--that came next. Not overmuch their way, I must confess. Such a to-do! They tried me with their books; Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste! Flower o' the clove, All the Latin I construe is "amo," I love! But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets Eight years together, as my fortune was, Watching folk's faces to know who will fling The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires, And who will curse or kick him for his pains,-- Which gentleman processional and fine, Holding a candle to the Sacrament, Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch The droppings of the wax to sell again, Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,-- How say I?--nay, which dog bites, which lets drop His bone from the heap of offal in the street,-- Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike, He learns the look of things, and none the less For admonition from the hunger-pinch. I had a store of such remarks, be sure, Which, after I found leisure, turned to use. I drew men's faces on my copy-books, Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge, Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes, Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's, And made a string of pictures of the world Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun, On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black. "Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d'ye say? In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark. What if at last we get our man of parts, We Carmelites, like those Camaldolese And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine And put the front on it that ought to be!" And hereupon he bade me daub away. Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank, Never was such prompt disemburdening. First, every sort of monk, the black and white, I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church, From good old gossips waiting to confess Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,-- To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there With the little children round him in a row Of admiration, half for his beard and half For that white anger of his victim's son Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm, Signing himself with the other because of Christ (Whose sad face on the cross sees only this After the passion of a thousand years) Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head, (Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eve On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers (The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone. I painted all, then cried "'Tis ask and have; Choose, for more's ready!"--laid the ladder flat, And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall. The monks closed in a circle and praised loud Till checked, taught what to see and not to see. Being simple bodies,--"That's the very man! Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog! That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes To care about his asthma: it's the life!" But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked; Their betters took their turn to see and say: The Prior and the learned pulled a face And stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here? Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all! Faces, arms, legs, and bodies like the true As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game! Your business is not to catch men with show, With homage to the perishable clay, But lift them over it, ignore it all, Make them forget there 's such a thing as flesh. Your business is to paint the souls of men-- Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke ... no, it's not ... It's vapor done up like a new-born babe-- (In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth) It's ... well, what matters talking, it's the soul! Give us no more of body than shows soul! Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God, That sets us praising,--why not stop with him? Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head With wonder at lines, colors, and what not? Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms! Rub all out, try at it a second time. Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts, She's just my niece ... Herodias, I would say,-- Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off! Have it all out!" Now, is this sense, I ask? A fine way to paint soul, by painting body So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for white When what you put for yellow's simply black, And any sort of meaning looks intense When all beside itself means and looks naught. Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn, Left foot and right foot, go a double step, Make his flesh liker and his soul more like, Both in their order? Take the prettiest face, The Prior's niece ... patron-saint--is it so pretty You can't discover if it means hope, fear, Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these? Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue, Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash, And then add soul and heighten them threefold? Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-- (I never saw it?--put the case the same--) If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed, Within yourself, when you return him thanks. "Rub all out!" Well, well, there's my life, in short; And so the thing has gone on ever since. I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds: You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls. I'm my own master, paint now as I please-- Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house! Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front-- Those great rings serve more purposes than just To plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes Are peeping o'er my shoulder as I work, The heads shake still--"It's art's decline, my son! You 're not of the true painters, great and old; Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find; Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer: Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!" Flower o' the pine, You keep your mistr ... manners, and I'll stick to mine! I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! Don't you think they're the likeliest to know, They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage, Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint To please them--sometimes do and sometimes don't; For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints-- A laugh, a cry, the business of the world-- (Flower o' the peach, Death for us all, and his own life for each!) And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over, The world and life's too big to pass for a dream, And I do these wild things in sheer despite, And play the fooleries you catch me at, In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so, Although the miller does not preach to him The only good of grass is to make chaff. What would men have? Do they like grass or no-- May they or mayn't they? all I want's the thing Settled forever one way. As it is, You tell too many lies and hurt yourself: You don't like what you only like too much, You do like what, if given you at your word, You find abundantly detestable. For me, I think I speak as I was taught; I always see the garden and God there A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned, The value and significance of flesh, I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards.

You understand me: I'm a beast, I know. But see, now--why, I see as certainly As that the morning-star's about to shine, What will hap some day. We've a youngster here Comes to our convent, studies what I do, Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop: His name is Guidi--he'll not mind the monks-- They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk-- He picks my practice up--he'll paint apace, I hope so--though I never live so long, I know what's sure to follow. You be judge! You speak no Latin more than I, belike; However, you're my man, you've seen the world --The beauty and the wonder and the power, The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades, Changes, surprises,--and God made it all! --For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no, For this fair town's face, yonder river's line, The mountain round it and the sky above, Much more the figures of man, woman, child, These are the frame to? What's it all about? To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon, Wondered at? oh, this last of course!--you say. But why not do as well as say,--paint these Just as they are, careless what comes of it? God's works--paint anyone, and count it crime To let a truth slip. Don't object, "His works Are here already; nature is complete: Suppose you reproduce her--(which you can't) There's no advantage! you must beat her, then." For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted--better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now, Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk, And trust me but you should, though! How much more, If I drew higher things with the same truth! That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh, It makes me mad to see what men shall do And we in our graves! This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink. "Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!" Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain It does not say to folk--remember matins, Or, mind you fast next Friday!" Why, for this What need of art at all? A skull and bones, Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best, A bell to chime the hour with, does as well. I painted a Saint Laurence six months since At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style: "How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?" I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns-- "Already not one phiz of your three slaves Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side, But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content, The pious people have so eased their own With coming to say prayers there in a rage: We get on fast to see the bricks beneath. Expect another job this time next year, For pity and religion grow i' the crowd-- Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the fools!

--That is--you'll not mistake an idle word Spoke in a huff by a poor monk, God wot, Tasting the air this spicy night which turns The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine! Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! It's natural a poor monk out of bounds Should have his apt word to excuse himself: And hearken how I plot to make amends. I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece ... There's for you! Give me six months, then go, see Something in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns! They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint God in the midst, Madonna and her babe, Ringed by a bowery, flowery angel-brood, Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet As puff on puff of grated orris-root When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer. And then i' the front, of course a saint or two-- Saint John, because he saves the Florentines, Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white The convent's friends and gives them a long day, And Job, I must have him there past mistake, The man of Uz (and Us without the z, Painters who need his patience). Well, all these Secured at their devotion, up shall come Out of a corner when you least expect, As one by a dark stair into a great light, Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!-- Mazed, motionless, and moonstruck--I'm the man! Back I shrink--what is this I see and hear? I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake, My old serge gown and rope that goes all round, I, in this presence, this pure company! Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape? Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing Forward, puts out a soft palm--"Not so fast!" --Addresses the celestial presence, "nay-- He made you and devised you, after all, Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw-- His camel-hair make up a painting-brush? We come to brother Lippo for all that, Iste perfecit opus!" So, all smile-- I shuffle sideways with my blushing face Under the cover of a hundred wings Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut, Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops The hothead husband! Thus I scuttle off To some safe bench behind, not letting go The palm of her, the little lily thing That spoke the good word for me in the nick, Like the Prior's niece ... Saint Lucy, I would say. And so all's saved for me, and for the church A pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence! Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, no lights! The street's hushed, and I know my own way back, Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning, Zooks!

ANDREA DEL SARTO

CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER"

But do not let us quarrel any more, No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? I 'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, Treat his own subject after his own way, Fix his own time, accept too his own price, And shut the money into this small hand When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? Oh, I 'll content him,--but to-morrow, Love! I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seems As if--forgive now--should you let me sit Here by the window with your hand in mine And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole, Both of one mind, as married people use, Quietly, quietly the evening through, I might get up to-morrow to my work Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! Your soft hand is a woman of itself, And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside. Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve For each of the five pictures we require: It saves a model. So! keep looking so-- My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! --How could you ever prick those perfect ears, Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet-- My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, Which everybody looks on and calls his, And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less. You smile? why, there 's my picture ready made, There 's what we painters call our harmony! A common grayness silvers everything,-- All in a twilight, you and I alike --You, at the point of your first pride in me (That 's gone you know),--but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. There 's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything. Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. How strange now looks the life he makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie! This chamber for example--turn your head-- All that 's behind us! You don't understand Nor care to understand about my art, But you can hear at least when people speak: And that cartoon, the second from the door --It is the thing, Love! so such thing should be-- Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say. I can do with my pencil what I know, What I see, what at bottom of my heart I wish for, if I ever wish so deep-- Do easily, too--when I say, perfectly, I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, Who listened to the Legate's talk last week, And just as much they used to say in France. At any rate 't is easy, all of it! No sketches first, no studies, that 's long past: I do what many dream of all their lives, --Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-- Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)--so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that 's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world. My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. The sudden blood of these men! at a word-- Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. I, painting from myself and to myself, Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame Or their praise either. Somebody remarks Morello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? Speak as they please, what does the mountain care? Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what 's a heaven for? All is silver-gray Placid and perfect with my art: the worse! I know both what I want and what might gain, And yet how profitless to know, to sigh "Had I been two, another and myself, Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt. Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth The Urbinate who died five years ago. ('T is copied, George Vasari sent it me.) Well, I can fancy how he did it all, Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, Above and through his art--for it gives way; That arm is wrongly put--and there again-- A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, Its body, so to speak: its soul is right, He means right--that, a child may understand. Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: But all the play, the insight and the stretch-- Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, We might have risen to Rafael, I and you! Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think-- More than I merit, yes, by many times. But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow, And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare-- Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged "God and the glory! never care for gain. The present by the future, what is that? Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!" I might have done it for you. So it seems: Perhaps not. All is as God overrules. Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; The rest avail not. Why do I need you? What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will 's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power-- And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 'T is safer for me, if the award be strict, That I am something underrated here, Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. The best is when they pass and look aside; But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, In that humane great monarch's golden look,-- One finger in his beard or twisted curl Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, I painting proudly with his breath on me, All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,-- And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, This in the background, waiting on my work, To crown the issue with a last reward! A good time, was it not, my kingly days? And had you not grown restless ... but I know-- 'T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said; Too live the life grew, golden and not gray, And I 'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt Out of the grange whose four walls make his world. How could it end in any other way? You called me, and I came home to your heart. The triumph was--to reach and stay there; since I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! "Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; The Roman's is the better when you pray. But still the other's Virgin was his wife"-- Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows My better fortune, I resolve to think. For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, Said one day Agnolo, his very self, To Rafael ... I have known it all these years ... (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there 's a certain sorry little scrub Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, Who, were he set to plan and execute As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!--And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly dare ... yet, only you to see, Give the chalk here--quick, thus the line should go! Ay, but the soul! he 's Rafael! rub it out! Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? Do you forget already words like those?) If really there was such a chance, so lost,-- Is, whether you 're--not grateful--but more pleased. Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! This hour has been an hour! Another smile? If you would sit thus by me every night I should work better, do you comprehend? I mean that I should earn more, give you more. See, it is settled dusk now; there 's a star; Morello 's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. Come from the window, love,--come in, at last, Inside the melancholy little house We built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brick Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, That gold of his I did cement them with! Let us but love each other. Must you go? That Cousin here again? he waits outside? Must see you--you, and not with me? Those loans? More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? While hand and eye and something of a heart Are left me, work 's my ware, and what 's it worth? I 'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit The gray remainder of the evening out, Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly How I could paint, were I but back in France, One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face. Not yours this time! I want you at my side To hear them--that is, Michel Agnolo-- Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. I take the subjects for his corridor, Finish the portrait out of hand--there, there, And throw him in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, What 's better and what 's all I care about, Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. I regret little, I would change still less. Since there my past life lies, why alter it? The very wrong to Francis!--it is true I took his coin, was tempted and complied, And built this house and sinned, and all is said. My father and my mother died of want. Well, had I riches of my own? you see How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died: And I have labored somewhat in my time And not been paid profusely. Some good son Paint my two hundred pictures--let him try! No doubt, there 's something strikes a balance. Yes, You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night. This must suffice me here. What would one have? In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance-- Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me To cover--the three first without a wife, While I have mine! So--still they overcome Because there 's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH

ROME, 15--

This poem was first published in Hood's Magazine, March, 1845, with the title The Tomb at Saint Praxed's (Rome, 15--).

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews--sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well-- She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What 's done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since, And as she died so must we die ourselves, And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream. Life, how and what is it? As here I lie In this state-chamber, dying by degrees, Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask "Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all. Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace; And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care; Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South He graced his carrion with, God curse the same! Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where live The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there, And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, With those nine columns round me, two and two, The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone, Put me where I may look at him! True peach, Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! Draw close: that conflagration of my church --What then? So much was saved if aught were missed! My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood, Drop water gently till the surface sink, And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I! ... Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli, Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape, Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ... Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all, That brave Frascati villa with its bath, So, let the blue lump poise between my knees, Like God the Father's globe on both his hands Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he? Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black-- 'T was ever antique-black I meant! How else Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables ... but I know Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! 'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There 's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? --That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-- Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying: in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests, Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount, Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet, --Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend? No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart? Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick, They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase With grapes, and add a visor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, To comfort me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone-- Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through-- And no more lapis to delight the world! Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs --Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, And leave me in my church, the church for peace, That I may watch at leisure if he leers-- Old Gandolf--at me, from his onion-stone, As still he envied me, so fair she was!

BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY

No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk. A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith! We ought to have our Abbey back, you see. It's different, preaching in basilicas, And doing duty in some masterpiece Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart! I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes, Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere; It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh? These hot long ceremonies of our church Cost us a little--oh, they pay the price, You take me--amply pay it! Now, we'll talk.

So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs. No deprecation,--nay, I beg you, sir! Beside 'tis our engagement: don't you know, I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out, We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done, And body gets its sop and holds its noise And leaves soul free a little. Now's the time: Truth's break of day! You do despise me then. And if I say, "despise me,"--never fear! I know you do not in a certain sense-- Not in my arm-chair, for example: here, I well imagine you respect my place (Status, entourage, worldly circumstance) Quite to its value--very much indeed: --Are up to the protesting eyes of you In pride at being seated here for once-- You'll turn it to such capital account! When somebody, through years and years to come, Hints of the bishop,--names me--that's enough: "Blougram? I knew him"--(into it you slide) "Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day, All alone, we two; he's a clever man: And after dinner,--why, the wine you know,-- Oh, there was wine, and good!--what with the wine ... 'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk! He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen Something of mine he relished, some review: He's quite above their humbug in his heart, Half-said as much, indeed--the thing's his trade. I warrant, Blougram's skeptical at times: How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!" Che che, my dear sir, as we say at Rome, Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take; You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths: The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.

Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays-- You do despise me; your ideal of life Is not the bishop's; you would not be I. You would like better to be Goethe, now, Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still, Count D'Orsay,--so you did what you preferred, Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help, Believed or disbelieved, no matter what, So long as on that point, whate'er it was, You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself. --That, my ideal never can include, Upon that element of truth and worth Never be based! for say they make me Pope-- (They can't--suppose it for our argument!) Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached My height, and not a height which pleases you: An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say. It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world; Then, going in the tire-room afterward, Because the play was done, to shift himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, And whose part he presumed to play just now. Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!

So, drawing comfortable breath again, You weigh and find, whatever more or less I boast of my ideal realized Is nothing in the balance when opposed To your ideal, your grand simple life, Of which you will not realize one jot. I am much, you are nothing; you would be all, I would be merely much: you beat me there.

No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why! The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is--not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be,--but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair Up to our means: a very different thing! No abstract intellectual plan of life Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws, But one, a man, who is man and nothing more, May lead within a world which (by your leave) Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise. Embellish Rome, idealize away, Make paradise of London if you can, You're welcome, nay, you're wise.

A simile! We mortals cross the ocean of this world Each in his average cabin of a life; The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room. Now for our six months' voyage--how prepare? You come on shipboard with a landsman's list Of things he calls convenient: so they are! An India screen is pretty furniture, A piano-forte is a fine resource, All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, The new edition fifty volumes long; And little Greek books, with the funny type They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next: Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes! And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add! 'Twere pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow Hang full in face of one where'er one roams, Since he more than the others brings with him Italy's self,--the marvellous Modenese!-- Yet was not on your list before, perhaps. --Alas, friend, here's the agent ... is't the name? The captain, or whoever's master here-- You see him screw his face up; what's his cry Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!" If you won't understand what six feet mean, Compute and purchase stores accordingly-- And if, in pique because he overhauls Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board Bare--why, you cut a figure at the first While sympathetic landsmen see you off; Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up from your utterly naked boards Into some snug and well-appointed berth, Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug-- Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!) And mortified you mutter, "Well and good; He sits enjoying his sea-furniture; 'Tis stout and proper, and there's store of it: Though I've the better notion, all agree, Of fitting rooms up. Hang the carpenter, Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances-- I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!" And meantime you bring nothing: never mind-- You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't You might bring, so despise me, as I say.

Now come, let's backward to the starting-place. See my way: we're two college friends, suppose. Prepare together for our voyage, then; Each note and check the other in his work,-- Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticise! What's wrong? why won't you be a bishop too?

Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't, (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly And absolutely and exclusively) In any revelation called divine. No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains But say so, like the honest man you are? First, therefore, overhaul theology! Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think, Must find believing every whit as hard: And if I do not frankly say as much, The ugly consequence is clear enough.

Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe-- If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed, Absolute and exclusive, as you say. You're wrong--I mean to prove it in due time. Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, So give up hope accordingly to solve-- (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then With both of us, though in unlike degree, Missing full credence--overboard with them! I mean to meet you on your own premise: Good, there go mine in company with yours!

And now what are we? unbelievers both, Calm and complete, determinately fixed To-day, to-morrow, and forever, pray? You'll guarantee me that? Not so, I think! In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief, As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, Confounds us like its predecessor. Where's The gain? how can we guard our unbelief, Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here. Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Hound the ancient idol, on his base again,-- The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. There the old misgivings, crooked questions are-- This good God,--what he could do, if he would, Would, if he could--then must have done long since: If so, when, where and how? some way must be,-- Once feel about, and soon or late you hit Some sense, in which it might be, after all. Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"

--That way Over the mountain, which who stands upon Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road; While, if he views it from the waste itself, Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or two Seen from the unbroken desert either side? And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) What if the breaks themselves should prove at last The most consummate of contrivances To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith? And so we stumble at truth's very test! All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,--we call it black.

"Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least; We've reason for both colors on the board: Why not confess then, where I drop the faith And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"

Because, friend, in the next place, this being so, And both things even,--faith and unbelief Left to a man's choice,--we'll proceed a step, Returning to our image, which I like.

A man's choice, yes--but a cabin-passenger's-- The man made for the special life o' the world-- Do you forget him? I remember though! Consult our ship's conditions and you find One and but one choice suitable to all; The choice, that you unluckily prefer, Turning things topsy-turvy--they or it Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief Bears upon life, determines its whole course, Begins at its beginning. See the world Such as it is,--you made it not, nor I; I mean to take it as it is,--and you, Not so you'll take it,--though you get naught else. I know the special kind of life I like, What suits the most my idiosyncrasy, Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days. I find that positive belief does this For me, and unbelief, no whit of this. --For you, it does, however?--that, we'll try! 'Tis clear, I cannot lead my life, at least, Induce the world to let me peaceably. Without declaring at the outset, "Friends, I absolutely and peremptorily Believe!"--I say, faith is my waking life: One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals, We know, but waking's the main point with us, And my provision's for life's waking part. Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends; And when night overtakes me, down I lie, Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it, The sooner the better, to begin afresh. What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith? You, the philosopher, that disbelieve, That recognize the night, give dreams their weight-- To be consistent you should keep your bed, Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man, For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares! And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream, Live through the day and bustle as you please. And so you live to sleep as I to wake, To unbelieve as I to still believe? Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you Bed-ridden,--and its good things come to me. Its estimation, which is half the fight, That's the first-cabin comfort I secure: The next ... but you perceive with half an eye! Come, come, it's best believing, if we may; You can't but own that!

Next, concede again, If once we choose belief, on all accounts We can't be too decisive in our faith, Conclusive and exclusive in its terms, To suit the world which gives us the good things. In every man's career are certain points Whereon he dares not be indifferent; The world detects him clearly, if he dare, As baffled at the game, and losing life. He may care little or he may care much For riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose. Since various theories of life and life's Success are extant which might easily Comport with either estimate of these; And whoso chooses wealth or poverty, Labor or quiet, is not judged a fool Because his fellow would choose otherwise: We let him choose upon his own account So long as he's consistent with his choice. But certain points, left wholly to himself, When once a man has arbitrated on, We say he must succeed there or go hang. Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need-- For he can't wed twice. Then, he must avouch, Or follow, at the least, sufficiently, The form of faith his conscience holds the best, Whate'er the process of conviction was: For nothing can compensate his mistake On such a point, the man himself being judge: He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.

Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith I happened to be born in--which to teach Was given me as I grew up, on all hands, As best and readiest means of living by; The same on examination being proved The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise And absolute form of faith in the whole world-- Accordingly, most potent of all forms For working on the world. Observe, my friend! Such as you know me, I am free to say, In these hard latter days which hamper one, Myself--by no immoderate exercise Of intellect and learning, but the tact To let external forces work for me, --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread; Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's, Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world And make my life an ease and joy and pride; It does so,--which for me's a great point gained, Who have a soul and body that exact A comfortable care in many ways. There's power in me and will to dominate Which I must exercise, they hurt me else: In many ways I need mankind's respect, Obedience, and the love that's born of fear: While at the same time, there's a taste I have, A toy of soul, a titillating thing, Refuses to digest these dainties crude. The naked life is gross till clothed upon: I must take what men offer, with a grace As though I would not, could I help it, take! An uniform I wear though over-rich-- Something imposed on me, no choice of mine; No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake And despicable therefore! now folk kneel And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand. Thus I am made, thus life is best for me, And thus that it should he I have procured; And thus it could not be another way, I venture to imagine.

You'll reply, So far my choice, no doubt, is a success; But were I made of better elements. With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you, I hardly would account the thing success Though it did all for me I say.

But, friend, We speak of what is; not of what might be, And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise. I am the man you see here plain enough: Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives! Suppose I own at once to tail and claws; The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes To dock their stump and dress their haunches up. My business is not to remake myself, But make the absolute best of what God made. Or--our first simile--though you prove me doomed To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, The sheep-pen or the pig-sty, I should strive To make what use of each were possible; And as this cabin gets upholstery, That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.

But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes Enumerated so complacently, On the mere ground that you forsooth can find In this particular life I choose to lead No fit provision for them. Can you not? Say you, my fault is I address myself To grosser estimators than should judge? And that's no way of holding up the soul, Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'-- Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that. I pine among my million imbeciles (You think) aware some dozen men of sense Eye me and know me, whether I believe In the last winking Virgin, as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in her And am a knave,--approve in neither case, Withhold their voices though I look their way: Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end (The thing they gave at Florence,--what's its name?) While the mad houseful's plaudits near out-bang His orchestra of salt-box, tongs, and bones, He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.

Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here-- That even your prime men who appraise their kind Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel, See more in a truth than the truth's simple self, Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street Sixty the minute; what's to note in that? You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack; Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands! Our interest 's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep That loves and saves her soul in new French books-- We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They 're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line Before your sages,--just the men to shrink From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad You offer their refinement. Fool or knave? Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave When there 's a thousand diamond weights between? So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you 'll find, Profess themselves indignant, scandalized At thus being held unable to explain How a superior man who disbelieves May not believe as well: that 's Schelling's way! It 's through my coming in the tail of time, Nicking the minute with a happy tact. Had I been born three hundred years ago They 'd say, "What 's strange? Blougram of course believes;" And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course." But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet How can he?" All eyes turn with interest. Whereas, step off the line on either side-- You, for example, clever to a fault, The rough and ready man who write apace, Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less-- You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares? Lord So-and-So--his coat bedropped with wax, All Peter's chains about his waist, his back Brave with the needlework of Noodledom-- Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares? But I, the man of sense and learning too, The able to think yet act, the this, the that, I, to believe at this late time of day! Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.

--Except it 's yours! Admire me as these may, You don 't. But whom at least do you admire? Present your own perfection, your ideal, Your pattern man for a minute--oh, make haste! Is it Napoleon you would have us grow? Concede the means; allow his head and hand, (A large concession, clever as you are) Good! In our common primal element Of unbelief (we can 't believe, you know-- We 're still at that admission, recollect!) Where do you find--apart from, towering o'er The secondary temporary aims Which satisfy the gross taste you despise-- Where do you find his star?--his crazy trust God knows through what or in what? it 's alive And shines and leads him, and that 's all we want. Have we aught in our sober night shall point Such ends as his were, and direct the means Of working out our purpose straight as his, Nor bring a moment's trouble on success With after-care to justify the same? --Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve-- Why, the man 's mad, friend, take his light away! What 's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare With comfort to yourself blow millions up? We neither of us see it! we do see The blown-up millions--spatter of their brains And writhing of their bowels and so forth, In that bewildering entanglement Of horrible eventualities Past calculation to the end of time! Can I mistake for some clear word of God (Which were my ample warrant for it all) His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk, "The State, that 's I," quack-nonsense about crowns, And (when one beats the man to his last hold) A vague idea of setting things to rights, Policing people efficaciously, More to their profit, most of all to his own; The whole to end that dismallest of ends By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church, And resurrection of the old régime? Would I, who hope to live a dozen years, Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such? No: for, concede me but the merest chance Doubt may be wrong--there 's judgment, life to come! With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right? This present life is all?--you offer me Its dozen noisy years, without a chance That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace, And getting called by divers new-coined names, Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine, Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like! Therefore I will not.

Take another case; Fit up the cabin yet another way. What say you to the poets? shall we write Hamlet, Othello--make the world our own, Without a risk to run of either sort? I can't!--to put the strongest reason first. "But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice; The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!" Spare my self-knowledge--there 's no fooling me! If I prefer remaining my poor self, I say so not in self-dispraise but praise. If I 'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone; Why should I try to be what now I am? If I 'm no Shakespeare, as too probable,-- His power and consciousness and self-delight And all we want in common, shall I find-- Trying forever? while on points of taste Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I Are dowered alike--I 'll ask you, I or he, Which in our two lives realizes most? Much, he imagined--somewhat, I possess. He had the imagination; stick to that! Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works Your world is worthless and I touch it not Lest I should wrong them"--I 'll withdraw my plea.

But does he say so? Look upon his life! Himself, who only can, gives judgment there. He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces To build the trimmest house in Stratford town; Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things, Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute; Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too, And none more, had he seen its entry once, Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal." Why then should I who play that personage, The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made, Be told that had the poet chanced to start From where I stand now (some degree like mine Being just the goal he ran his race to reach) He would have run the whole race back, forsooth, And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays? Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best! Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home And get himself in dreams the Vatican, Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, And English books, none equal to his own, Which I read, bound in gold (he never did). --Terni's fall, Naples' bay, and Gothard's top-- Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these; But, as I pour this claret, there they are: I 've gained them--crossed Saint Gothard last July With ten mules to the carriage and a bed Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that? We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself, And what I want, I have: he, gifted more, Could fancy he too had them when he liked, But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed, He would not have them also in my sense. We play one game; I send the ball aloft No less adroitly that of fifty strokes Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high Which sends them back to me: I wish and get. He struck balls higher and with better skill, But at a poor fence level with his head, And hit--his Stratford house, a coat of arms, Successful dealings in his grain and wool,-- While I receive heaven's incense in my nose And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess. Ask him, if this life 's all, who wins the game?

Believe--and our whole argument breaks up. Enthusiasm 's the best thing, I repeat; Only, we can't command it; fire and life Are all, dead matter 's nothing, we agree: And be it a mad dream or God's very breath, The fact 's the same,--belief's fire, once in us, Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself: We penetrate our life with such a glow As fire lends wood and iron--this turns steel, That burns to ash--all 's one, fire proves its power For good or ill, since men call flare success. But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn. Light one in me, I '11 find it food enough! Why, to be Luther--that 's a life to lead, Incomparably better than my own. He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says, Sets up God's rule again by simple means, Reopens a shut book, and all is done. He flared out in the flaring of mankind; Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine? If he succeeded, nothing 's left to do: And if he did not altogether--well, Strauss is the next advance. All Strauss should be I might be also. But to what result? He looks upon no future: Luther did. What can I gain on the denying side? Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts, Read the text right, emancipate the world-- The emancipated world enjoys itself With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first It could not owe a farthing,--not to him More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think? Then add there 's still that plaguy hundredth chance Strauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run-- For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured A real heaven in his heart throughout his life, Supposing death a little altered things.

"Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry, "You run the same risk really on all sides, In cool indifference as bold unbelief. As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him. It 's not worth having, such imperfect faith, No more available to do faith's work Than unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!"

Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point. Once own the use of faith, I '11 find you faith. We 're back on Christian ground. You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt. How I know it does? By life and man's free will, God gave for that! To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice: That 's our one act, the previous work 's his own. You criticise the soul? it reared this tree-- This broad life and whatever fruit it bears! What matter though I doubt at every pore, Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends, Doubts in the trivial work of every day, Doubts at the very bases of my soul In the grand moments when she probes herself-- If finally I have a life to show, The thing I did, brought out in evidence Against the thing done to me underground By hell and all its brood, for aught I know? I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt? All 's doubt in me; where 's break of faith in this? It is the idea, the feeling and the love, God means mankind should strive for and show forth Whatever be the process to that end,-- And not historic knowledge, logic sound, And metaphysical acumen, sure! "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all 's done and said, Like you this Christianity or not? It may be false, but will you wish it true? Has it your vote to be so if it can? Trust you an instinct silenced long ago That will break silence and enjoin you love What mortified philosophy is hoarse, And all in vain, with bidding you despise? If you desire faith--then you 've faith enough: What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves? You form a notion of me, we 'll suppose, On hearsay; it 's a favorable one: "But still" (you add), "there was no such good man, Because of contradiction in the facts. One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome, This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him I see he figures as an Englishman." Well, the two things are reconcilable. But would I rather you discovered that, Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be? Blougram concerns me naught, born here or there."

Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask! Naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, sears too much The sense of conscious creatures to be borne. It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare. Some think, Creation 's meant to show him forth: I say it 's meant to hide him all it can, And that 's what all the blessed evil 's for. Its use in Time is to environ us, Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough Against that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain And lidless eye and disemprisoned heart Less certainly would wither up at once Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. But time and earth case-harden us to live; The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child Feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, Plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means perpetual unbelief Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe. Or, if that 's too ambitious,--here 's my box-- I need the excitation of a pinch Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes. "Leave it in peace," advise the simple folk: Make it aware of peace by itching-fits, Say I--let doubt occasion still more faith!

You 'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child, In that dear middle-age these noodles praise. How you 'd exult if I could put you back Six hundred years, blot out cosmogony, Geology, ethnology, what not, (Greek endings, each the little passing-bell That signifies some faith 's about to die), And set you square with Genesis again,-- When such a traveller told you his last news, He saw the ark a-top of Ararat But did not climb there since 't was getting dusk And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot! How should you feel, I ask, in such an age, How act? As other people felt and did; With soul more blank than this decanter's knob, Believe--and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate, Full in belief's face, like the beast you 'd be!

No, when the fight begins within himself, A man 's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet--both tug-- He 's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! Never leave growing till the life to come! Here, we 've got callous to the Virgin's winks That used to puzzle people wholesomely: Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. What are the laws of nature, not to bend If the Church bid them?--brother Newman asks. Up with the Immaculate Conception, then-- On to the rack with faith!--is my advice. Will not that hurry us upon our knees, Knocking our breasts, "It can't be--yet it shall! Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope? Low things confound the high things!" and so forth. That 's better than acquitting God with grace As some folk do. He 's tried--no case is proved, Philosophy is lenient--he may go!

You 'll say, the old system 's not so obsolete But men believe still: ay, but who and where? King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yet The sacred flame, so Antonelli writes; But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint Believes God watches him continually, As he believes in fire that it will burn, Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law, Sin against rain, although the penalty Be just a singe or soaking? "No," he smiles; "Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."

The sum of all is--yes, my doubt is great, My faith 's still greater, then my faith 's enough. I have read much, thought much, experienced much. Yet would die rather than avow my fear The Naples' liquefaction may be false, When set to happen by the palace-clock According to the clouds or dinner-time. I hear you recommend, I might at least Eliminate, declassify my faith Since I adopt it; keeping what I must And leaving what I can--such points as this. I won't--that is, I can't throw one away. Supposing there's no truth in what I hold About the need of trial to man's faith, Still, when you bid me purify the same, To such a process I discern no end. Clearing off one excrescence to see two, There's ever a next in size, now grown as big, That meets the knife: I cut and cut again! First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last But Fichte's clever cut at God himself? Experimentalize on sacred things! I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike. The first step, I am master not to take.

You'd find the cutting-process to your taste As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, Nor see more danger in it,--you retort. Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise When we consider that the steadfast hold On the extreme end of the chain of faith Gives all the advantage, makes the difference With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule: We are their lords, or they are free of us, Just as we tighten or relax our hold. So, other matters equal, we'll revert To the first problem--which, if solved my way And thrown into the balance, turns the scale-- How we may lead a comfortable life, How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.

Of course you are remarking all this time How narrowly and grossly I view life, Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule The masses, and regard complacently "The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do. I act for, talk for, live for this world now, As this world prizes action, life and talk: No prejudice to what next world may prove, Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge To observe then, is that I observe these now, Shall do hereafter what I do meanwhile. Let us concede (gratuitously though) Next life relieves the soul of body, yields Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend, Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use May be to make the next life more intense?

Do you know, I have often had a dream (Work it up in your next month's article) Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still Losing true life forever and a day Through ever trying to be and ever being-- In the evolution of successive spheres-- Before its actual sphere and place of life, Halfway into the next, which having reached, It shoots with corresponding foolery Halfway into the next still, on and off! As when a traveller, bound from North to South, Scouts fur in Russia: what's its use in France? In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain? In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers! Linen goes next, and last the skin itself, A superfluity at Timbuctoo. When, through his journey, was the fool at ease? I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world, I take and like its way of life; I think My brothers, who administer the means, Live better for my comfort--that's good too; And God, if he pronounce upon such life, Approves my service, which is better still. If he keep silence,--why, for you or me Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times," What odds is't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?

You meet me at this issue: you declare,-- All special-pleading done with--truth is truth, And justifies itself by undreamed ways. You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt, To say so, act up to our truth perceived However feebly. Do then,--act away! 'Tis there I'm on the watch for you. How one acts Is, both of us agree, our chief concern: And how you'll act is what I fain would see If, like the candid person you appear, You dare to make the most of your life's scheme As I of mine, live up to its full law Since there's no higher law that counterchecks. Put natural religion to the test You've just demolished the revealed with--quick, Down to the root of all that checks your will, All prohibition to lie, kill and thieve, Or even to be an atheistic priest! Suppose a pricking to incontinence-- Philosophers deduce yon chastity Or shame, from just the fact that at the first Whoso embraced a woman in the field, Threw club down and forewent his brains beside, So, stood a ready victim in the reach Of any brother savage, club in hand; Hence saw the use of going out of sight In wood or cave to prosecute his loves: I read this in a French book t'other day. Does law so analyzed coerce you much? Oh, men spin clouds of fuzz where matters end, But you who reach where the first thread begins, You'll soon cut that!--which means you can, but won't, Through certain instincts, blind, unreasoned-out, You dare not set aside, you can't tell why, But there they are, and so you let them rule. Then, friend, you seem as much a slave as I, A liar, conscious coward and hypocrite, Without the good the slave expects to get, In case he has a master after all! You own your instincts? why, what else do I, Who want, am made for, and must have a God Ere I can be aught, do aught?--no mere name Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth, To wit, a relation from that thing to me, Touching from head to foot--which touch I feel, And with it take the rest, this life of ours! I live my life here; yours you dare not live.

--Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin) Disfigure such a life and call it names, While, to your mind, remains another way For simple men: knowledge and power have rights, But ignorance and weakness have rights too. There needs no crucial effort to find truth If here or there or anywhere about: We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, And if we can't, be glad we've earned at least The right, by one laborious proof the more, To graze in peace earth's pleasant pasturage. Men are not angels, neither are they brutes: Something we may see, all we cannot see. What need of lying? I say, I see all, And swear to each detail the most minute In what I think a Pan's face--you, mere cloud: I swear I hear him speak and see him wink, For fear, if once I drop the emphasis, Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all. You take the simple life--ready to see, Willing to see (for no cloud's worth a face)-- And leaving quiet what no strength can move, And which, who bids you move? who has the right? I bid you; but you are God's sheep, not mine: "Pastor est tui Dominus." You find In this the pleasant pasture of our life Much you may eat without the least offence, Much you don't eat because your maw objects, Much you would eat but that your fellow-flock Open great eyes at you and even butt, And thereupon you like your mates so well You cannot please yourself, offending them; Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep, You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleats And strike the balance. Sometimes certain fears Restrain you, real checks since you find them so; Sometimes you please yourself and nothing checks: And thus you graze through life with not one lie, And like it best.

But do you, in truth's name? If so, you beat--which means you are not I-- Who needs must make earth mine and feed my fill Not simply unbutted at, unbickered with, But motioned to the velvet of the sward By those obsequious wethers' very selves. Look at me, sir; my age is double yours: At yours, I knew beforehand, so enjoyed, What now I should be--as, permit the word, I pretty well imagine your whole range And stretch of tether twenty years to come. We both have minds and bodies much alike: In truth's name, don't you want my bishopric, My daily bread, my influence, and my state? You're young. I'm old; you must be old one day; Will you find then, as I do hour by hour, Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls From your fat lap-dog's ear to grace a brooch-- Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring-- With much beside you know or may conceive? Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I, Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me, While writing all the same my articles On music, poetry, the fictile vase Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon's Greek. But you--the highest honor in your life, The thing you'll crown yourself with, all your days, Is--dining here and drinking this last glass I pour you out in sign of amity Before we part forever. Of your power And social influence, worldly worth in short, Judge what's my estimation by the fact, I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech, Hint secrecy on one of all these words! You're shrewd and know that should you publish one The world would brand the lie--my enemies first, Who'd sneer--"the bishop's an arch-hypocrite And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool." Whereas I should not dare for both my ears Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, Before the chaplain who reflects myself-- My shade's so much more potent than your flesh. What's your reward, self-abnegating friend? Stood you confessed of those exceptional And privileged great natures that dwarf mine-- A zealot with a mad ideal in reach, A poet just about to print his ode, A statesman with a scheme to stop this war, An artist whose religion is his art-- I should have nothing to object: such men Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them, Their drugget's worth my purple, they beat me. But you,--you're just as little those as I-- You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age, Write statedly for Blackwood's Magazine, Believe you see two points in Hamlet's soul Unseized by the Germans yet--which view you'll print-- Meantime the best you have to show being still That lively lightsome article we took Almost for the true Dickens,--what's its name? "The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel life Limned after dark!" it made me laugh, I know, And pleased a month, and brought you in ten pounds. --Success I recognize and compliment, And therefore give you, if you choose, three words (The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough) Which whether here, in Dublin or New York, Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow's wink, Such terms as never you aspired to get In all our own reviews and some not ours. Go write your lively sketches! be the first "Blougram, or The Eccentric Confidence"-- Or better simply say, "The Outward-bound." Why, men as soon would throw it in my teeth As copy and quote the infamy chalked broad About me on the church-door opposite. You will not wait for that experience though, I fancy, howsoever you decide, To discontinue--not detesting, not Defaming, but at least--despising me!

* * * * *

Over his wine so smiled and talked his hour Sylvester Blougram, styled in partibus Episcopus, nec non--(the deuce knows what It's changed to by our novel hierarchy) With Gigadibs the literary man, Who played with spoons, explored his plate's design, And ranged the olive-stones about its edge, While the great bishop rolled him out a mind Long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.

For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. The other portion, as he shaped it thus For argumentatory purposes, He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. Some arbitrary accidental thoughts That crossed his mind, amusing because new, He chose to represent as fixtures there, Invariable convictions (such they seemed Beside his interlocutor's loose cards Flung daily down, and not the same way twice), While certain hell-deep instincts, man's weak tongue Is never bold to utter in their truth Because styled hell-deep ('tis an old mistake To place hell at the bottom of the earth), He ignored these,--not having in readiness Their nomenclature and philosophy: He said true things, but called them by wrong names. "On the whole," he thought, "I justify myself On every point where cavillers like this Oppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence, I close, he's worsted, that's enough for him. He's on the ground: if ground should break away I take my stand on, there's a firmer yet Beneath it, both of us may sink and reach. His ground was over mine and broke the first: So, let him sit with me this many a year!"

He did not sit five minutes. Just a week Sufficed his sudden healthy vehemence. Something had struck him in the "Outward-bound" Another way than Blougram's purpose was: And having bought, not cabin-furniture But settler's-implements (enough for three) And started for Australia--there, I hope, By this time he has tested his first plough, And studied his last chapter of Saint John.

CLEON

"As certain also of your own poets have said"--

Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea, And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps "Greece")-- To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!

They give thy letter to me, even now: I read and seem as if I heard thee speak. The master of thy galley still unlades Gift after gift; they block my court at last And pile themselves along its portico Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee: And one white she-slave from the group dispersed Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work Pavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves), One lyric woman, in her crocus vest Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands Commends to me the strainer and the cup Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.

Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence! For so shall men remark, in such an act Of love for him whose song gives life its joy, Thy recognition of the use of life; Nor call thy spirit barely adequate To help on life in straight ways, broad enough For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,-- Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth, Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect,-- Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake-- Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hope Of some eventual rest a-top of it, Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed, Thou first of men mightst look out to the East: The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun. For this, I promise on thy festival To pour libation, looking o'er the sea, Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak Thy great words, and describe thy royal face-- Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most, Within the eventual element of calm.

Thy letter's first requirement meets me here. It is as thou hast heard: in one short life I, Cleon, have effected all those things Thou wonderingly dost enumerate. That epos on thy hundred plates of gold Is mine,--and also mine the little chant, So sure to rise from every fishing-bark When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net The image of the sun-god on the phare, Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine; The Pœcile, o'er-storied its whole length, As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too. I know the true proportions of a man And woman also, not observed before; And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again. For music,--why, I have combined the moods, Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine; Thus much the people know and recognize, Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not. We of these latter days, with greater mind Than our forerunners, since more composite, Look not so great, beside their simple way, To a judge who only sees one way at once, One mind-point and no other at a time,-- Compares the small part of a man of us With some whole man of the heroic age, Great in his way--not ours, nor meant for ours. And ours is greater, had we skill to know: For, what we call this life of men on earth, This sequence of the soul's achievements here Being, as I find much reason to conceive, Intended to be viewed eventually As a great whole, not analyzed to parts, But each part having reference to all,-- How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, Endure effacement by another part? Was the thing done?--then, what's to do again? See, in the chequered pavement opposite, Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb, And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid-- He did not overlay them, superimpose The new upon the old and blot it out, But laid them on a level in his work, Making at last a picture; there it lies. So, first the perfect separate forms were made, The portions of mankind; and after, so, Occurred the combination of the same. For where had been a progress, otherwise? Mankind, made up of all the single men,-- In such a synthesis the labor ends. Now mark me! those divine men of old time Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point The outside verge that rounds our faculty; And where they reached, who can do more than reach? It takes but little water just to touch At some one point the inside of a sphere, And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest In due succession: but the finer air Which not so palpably nor obviously, Though no less universally, can touch The whole circumference of that emptied sphere, Fills it more fully than the water did; Holds thrice the weight of water in itself Resolved into a subtler element. And yet the vulgar pall the sphere first full Up to the visible height--and after, void; Not knowing air's more hidden properties. And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus To vindicate his purpose in our life: Why stay we on the earth unless to grow? Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out, That he or other god descended here And, once for all, showed simultaneously What, in its nature, never can be shown, Piecemeal or in succession;--showed, I say, The worth both absolute and relative Of all his children from the birth of time, His instruments for all appointed work. I now go on to image,--might we hear The judgment which should give the due to each, Show where the labor lay and where the ease, And prove Zeus' self, the latent everywhere! This is a dream:--but no dream, let us hope, That years and days, the summers and the springs, Follow each other with unwaning powers. The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock; The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe; The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet; The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers; That young and tender crescent-moon, thy slave, Sleeping above her robe as buoyed by clouds, Refines upon the women of my youth. What, and the soul alone deteriorates? I have not chanted verse like Homer, no-- Nor swept string like Terpander, no--nor carved And painted men like Phidias and his friend: I am not great as they are, point by point. But I have entered into sympathy With these four, running these into one soul, Who, separate, ignored each other's art. Say, is it nothing that I know them all? The wild flower was the larger; I have dashed Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, And show a better flower if not so large: I stand myself. Refer this to the gods Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext That such a gift by chance lay in my hand, Discourse of lightly or depreciate? It might have fallen to another's hand: what then? I pass too surely: let at least truth stay!

And next, of what thou followest on to ask. This being with me as I declare, O king, My works, in all these varicolored kinds, So done by me, accepted so by men-- Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men's hearts) I must not be accounted to attain The very crown and proper end of life? Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up, I face death with success in my right hand: Whether I fear death less than dost thyself The fortunate of men? "For" (writest thou) "Thou leavest much behind, while I leave naught. Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing, The pictures men shall study; while my life, Complete and whole now in its power and joy, Dies altogether with my brain and arm, Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself? The brazen statue to o'erlook my grave, Set on the promontory which I named. And that--some supple courtier of my heir Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps, To fix the rope to, which best drags it down. I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!"

Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind. Is this apparent, when thou turn'st to muse Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief, That admiration grows as knowledge grows? That imperfection means perfection hid, Reserved in part, to grace the after-time? If, in the morning of philosophy, Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived, Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage-- Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced The perfectness of others yet unseen. Conceding which,--had Zeus then questioned thee, "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Thou wouldst have answered, "Ay, by making each Grow conscious in himself--by that alone. All 's perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock, The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight, Till life's mechanics can no further go-- And all this joy in natural life is put Like fire from off thy finger into each, So exquisitely perfect is the same. But 't is pure fire, and they mere matter are; It has them, not they it: and so I choose For man, thy last premeditated work (If I might add a glory to the scheme), That a third thing should stand apart from both, A quality arise within his soul, Which, intro-active, made to supervise And feel the force it has, may view itself, And so be happy." Man might live at first The animal life: but is there nothing more? In due time, let him critically learn How he lives; and, the more he gets to know Of his own life's adaptabilities, The more joy-giving will his life become. Thus man, who hath this quality, is best.

But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said: "Let progress end at once,--man make no step Beyond the natural man, the better beast, Using his senses, not the sense of sense." In man there 's failure, only since he left The lower and inconscious forms of life. We called it an advance, the rendering plain Man's spirit might grow conscious of man's life, And, by new lore so added to the old, Take each step higher over the brute's head. This grew the only life, the pleasure-house, Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul, Which whole surrounding flats of natural life Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to; A tower that crowns a country. But alas, The soul now climbs it just to perish there! For thence we have discovered ('t is no dream-- We know this, which we had not else perceived) That there 's a world of capability For joy, spread round about us, meant for us, Inviting us; and still the soul craves all, And still the flesh replies, "Take no jot more Than ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad! Nay, so much less as that fatigue has brought Deduction to it." We struggle, fain to enlarge Our bounded physical recipiency, Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life, Repair the waste of age and sickness: no, It skills not! life 's inadequate to joy, As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take. They praise a fountain in my garden here Wherein a Naiad sends the water-bow Thin from her tube; she smiles to see it rise. What if I told her, it is just a thread From that great river which the hills shut up, And mock her with my leave to take the same? The artificer has given her one small tube Past power to widen or exchange--what boots To know she might spout oceans if she could? She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread: And so a man can use but a man's joy While he sees God's. Is it for Zeus to boast, "See, man, how happy I live, and despair-- That I may be still happier--for thy use!" If this were so, we could not thank our lord, As hearts beat on to doing; 't is not so-- Malice it is not. Is it carelessness? Still, no. If care--where is the sign? I ask, And get no answer, and agree in sum, O king, with thy profound discouragement, Who seest the wider but to sigh the more. Most progress is most failure: thou sayest well.

The last point now:--thou dost except a case-- Holding joy not impossible to one With artist-gifts--to such a man as I Who leave behind me living works indeed; For, such a poem, such a painting lives. What? dost thou verily trip upon a word, Confound the accurate view of what joy is (Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine) With feeling joy? confound the knowing how And showing how to live (my faculty) With actually living?--Otherwise Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king? Because in my great epos I display How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act-- Is this as though I acted? if I paint, Carve the young Phœbus, am I therefore young? Methinks I 'm older that I bowed myself The many years of pain that taught me art! Indeed, to know is something, and to prove How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more: But, knowing naught, to enjoy is something too. Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there, Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I. I can write lore-odes: thy fair slave 's an ode. I get to sing of love, when grown too gray For being beloved: she turns to that young man, The muscles all a-ripple on his back. I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king!

"But," sayest thou--(and I marvel, I repeat, To find thee trip on such a mere word) "what Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die: Sappho survives, because we sing her songs, And Æschylus, because we read his plays!" Why, if they live still, let them come and take Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup, Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive? Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, In this, that every day my sense of joy Grows more acute, my soul (intensified By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen; While every day my hairs fall more and more, My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase-- The horror quickening still from year to year, The consummation coming past escape, When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy-- When all my works wherein I prove my worth, Being present still to mock me in men's mouths, Alive still, in the praise of such as thou, I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man, The man who loved his life so over-much, Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible, I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus, Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy, --To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us: That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose to make prized the life at large-- Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, We burst there as the worm into the fly, Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no! Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, He must have done so, were it possible!

Live long and happy, and in that thought die: Glad for what was! Farewell. And for the rest, I cannot tell thy messenger aright Where to deliver what he bears of thine To one called Paulus; we have heard his fame Indeed, if Christus be not one with him-- I know not, nor am troubled much to know. Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew, As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised, Hath access to a secret shut from us? Thou wrongest our philosophy, O king, In stooping to inquire of such an one, As if his answer could impose at all! He writeth, doth he? well, and he may write. Oh, the Jew findeth scholars! certain slaves Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ; And (as I gathered from a bystander) Their doctrine could be held by no sane man.

RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI

Originally published in Bells and Pomegranates as the first of two poems, Cristina being the other, under the title Queen Worship.

I

I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves The world; and, vainly favored, it repays The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze By no change of its large calm front of snow. And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know, He cannot have perceived, that changes ever At his approach: and, in the lost endeavor To live his life, has parted, one by one, With all a flower's true graces, for the grace Of being but a foolish mimic sun, With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. Men nobly call by many a name the Mount As over many a land of theirs its large Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie, Each to its proper praise and own account: Men call the Flower the Sunflower, sportively.

II

Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look Across the waters to this twilight nook, --The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook!

III

Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed? Go!--saying ever as thou dost proceed, That I, French Rudel, choose for my device A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice Before its idol. See! These inexpert And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt The woven picture; 't is a woman's skill Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees On my flower's breast as on a platform broad: But, as the flower's concern is not for these But solely for the sun, so men applaud In vain this Rudel, he not looking here But to the East--the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!

ONE WORD MORE

TO E. B. B.

London, September, 1855

Originally appended to the collection of Poems called Men and Women, the greater portion of which has now been, more correctly, distributed under the other titles of this edition. R. 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

Rafael 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. Who 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) Lean 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. Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it, Guido Reni dying, all Bologna Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!" Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

V

Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom 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, When, 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, Loosed 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,-- In 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

You 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:" We and Bice hear the loss forever.

VIII

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture? This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not Once, 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, Once, 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! He 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, So 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. For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 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-- "Egypt's flesh-pots--nay, the drought was better."

X

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

XI

Did he love one face from out the thousands, (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, Paint 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, Lines 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, Live 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, Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. Let me speak this once in my true person, Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: Pray 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. Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 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), All her magic ('t is the old sweet mythos), She would turn a new side to her mortal, Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman, Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, Blind to Galileo on his turret, Dumb 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 Swimming 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? Moses, 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

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall 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, One 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, Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! There, in turn I stand with them and praise you-- 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, Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it, Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!

R. B.

IN A BALCONY

Written in 1853, partly at Bagni di Lucca, partly at Rome. It was included in the original series of Men and Women and there divided into three parts.

PERSONS

NORBERT. CONSTANCE. THE QUEEN.

CONSTANCE and NORBERT.

Norbert. Now!

Constance. Not now!

Nor. Give me them again, those hands: Put them upon my forehead, how it throbs! Press them before my eyes, the fire comes through! You cruellest, you dearest in the world, Let me! The Queen must grant whate'er I ask-- How can I gain you and not ask the Queen? There she stays waiting for me, here stand you; Some time or other this was to be asked; Now is the one time--what I ask, I gain: Let me ask now, Love!

Con. Do, and ruin us!

Nor. Let it be now, Love! All my soul breaks forth. How I do love you! Give my love its way! A man can have but one life and one death, One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate-- Grant me my heaven now! Let me know you mine, Prove you mine, write my name upon your brow, Hold you and have you, and then die away, If God please, with completion in my soul!

Con. I am not yours then? How content this man! I am not his--who change into himself, Have passed into his heart and beat its beats, Who give my hands to him, my eyes, my hair, Give all that was of me away to him-- So well, that now, my spirit turned his own, Takes part with him against the woman here, Bids him not stumble at so mere a straw As caring that the world be cognizant How he loves her and how she worships him. You have this woman, not as yet that world. Go on, I bid, nor stop to care for me By saving what I cease to care about, The courtly name and pride of circumstance-- The name you 'll pick up and be cumbered with Just for the poor parade's sake, nothing more; Just that the world may slip from under you-- Just that the world may cry, "So much for him-- The man predestined to the heap of crowns: There goes his chance of winning one, at least!"

Nor. The world!

Con. You love it! Love me quite as well, And see if I shall pray for this in vain! Why must you ponder what it knows or thinks?

Nor. You pray for--what, in vain?

Con. Oh my heart's heart, How I do love you, Norbert! That is right: But listen, or I take my hands away! You say, "let it be now:" you would go now And tell the Queen, perhaps six steps from us, You love me--so you do, thank God!

Nor. Thank God!

Con. Yes, Norbert,--but you fain would tell your love, And, what succeeds the telling, ask of her My hand. Now take this rose and look at it, Listening to me. You are the minister, The Queen's first favorite, nor without a cause. To-night completes your wonderful year's-work (This palace-feast is held to celebrate) Made memorable by her life's success, The junction of two crowns, on her sole head, Her house had only dreamed of anciently: That this mere dream is grown a stable truth, To-night's feast makes authentic. Whose the praise? Whose genius, patience, energy, achieved What turned the many heads and broke the hearts? You are the fate, your minute 's in the heaven. Next comes the Queen's turn. "Name your own reward!" With leave to clench the past, chain the to-come, Put out an arm and touch and take the sun And fix it ever full-faced on your earth, Possess yourself supremely of her life,-- You choose the single thing she will not grant; Nay, very declaration of which choice Will turn the scale and neutralize your work: At best she will forgive you, if she can. You think I 'll let you choose--her cousin's hand?

Nor. Wait. First, do you retain your old belief The Queen is generous,--nay, is just?

Con. There, there! So men make women love them, while they know No more of women's hearts than ... look you here, You that are just and generous beside. Make it your own case! For example now, I 'll say--I let you kiss me, hold my hands-- Why? do you know why? I 'll instruct you, then-- The kiss, because you have a name at court; This hand and this, that you may shut in each A jewel, if you please to pick up such. That 's horrible? Apply it to the Queen-- Suppose I am the Queen to whom you speak. "I was a nameless man; you needed me: Why did I proffer yon my aid? there stood A certain pretty cousin at your side. Why did I make such common cause with you? Access to her had not been easy else. You give my labor here abundant praise? 'Faith, labor, which she overlooked, grew play. How shall your gratitude discharge itself? Give me her hand!"

Nor. And still I urge the same. Is the Queen just? just--generous or no!

Con. Yes, just. You love a rose: no harm in that: But was it for the rose's sake or mine You put it in your bosom? mine, you said-- Then, mine you still must say or else be false. You told the Queen you served her for herself; If so, to serve her was to serve yourself, She thinks, for all your unbelieving face! I know her. In the hall, six steps from us, One sees the twenty pictures: there 's a life Better than life, and yet no life at all. Conceive her born in such a magic dome, Pictures all round her! why, she sees the world, Can recognize its given things and facts, The fight of giants or the feast of gods, Sages in senate, beauties at the bath, Chases and battles, the whole earth's display, Landscape and sea-piece, down to flowers and fruit-- And who shall question that she knows them all, In better semblance than the things outside? Yet bring into the silent gallery Some live thing to contrast in breath and blood, Some lion, with the painted lion there-- You think she 'll understand composedly? --Say, "that 's his fellow in the hunting-piece Yonder, I 've turned to praise a hundred times?" Not so. Her knowledge of our actual earth, Its hopes and fears, concerns and sympathies, Must be too far, too mediate, too unreal. The real exists for us outside, not her: How should it, with that life in these four walls, That father and that mother, first to last No father and no mother--friends, a heap, Lovers, no lack--a husband in due time, And every one of them alike a lie! Things painted by a Rubens out of naught Into what kindness, friendship, love should be; All better, all more grandiose than the life, Only no life; mere cloth and surface-paint, You feel, while you admire. How should she feel? Yet now that she has stood thus fifty years The sole spectator in that gallery, You think to bring this warm real struggling love In to her of a sudden, and suppose She 'll keep her state untroubled? Here 's the truth-- She 'll apprehend truth's value at a glance, Prefer it to the pictured loyalty? You only have to say, "So men are made, For this they act; the thing has many names, But this the right one: and now, Queen, be just!" Your life slips back; you lose her at the word: You do not even for amends gain me. He will not understand! oh, Norbert, Norbert, Do you not understand?

Nor. The Queen 's the Queen, I am myself--no picture, but alive In every nerve and every muscle, here At the palace-window o'er the people's street, As she in the gallery where the pictures glow: The good of life is precious to us both. She cannot love; what do I want with rule? When first I saw your face a year ago I knew my life's good, my soul heard one voice-- "The woman yonder, there 's no use of life But just to obtain her! heap earth's woes in one And bear them--make a pile of all earth's joys And spurn them, as they help or help not this; Only, obtain her!" How was it to be? I found you were the cousin of the Queen; I must then serve the Queen to get to you. No other way. Suppose there had been one, And I, by saying prayers to some white star With promise of my body and my soul, Might gain you,--should I pray the star or no? Instead, there was the Queen to serve! I served, Helped, did what other servants failed to do. Neither she sought nor I declared my end. Her good is hers, my recompense be mine,-- I therefore name you as that recompense. She dreamed that such a thing could never be? Let her wake now. She thinks there was more cause In love of power, high fame, pure loyalty? Perhaps she fancies men wear out their lives Chasing such shades. Then, I 've a fancy too; I worked because I want you with my soul: I therefore ask your hand. Let it be now!

Con. Had I not loved you from the very first, Were I not yours, could we not steal out thus So wickedly, so wildly, and so well, You might become impatient. What 's conceived Of us without here, by the folk within? Where are you now? immersed in cares of state-- Where am I now? intent on festal robes-- We two, embracing under death's spread hand! What was this thought for, what that scruple of yours Which broke the council up?--to bring about One minute's meeting in the corridor! And then the sudden sleights, strange secrecies, Complots inscrutable, deep telegraphs, Long-planned chance-meetings, hazards of a look, "Does she know? does she not know? saved or lost?" A year of this compression's ecstasy All goes for nothing! you would give this up For the old way, the open way, the world's, His way who beats, and his who sells his wife! What tempts you?--their notorious happiness Makes you ashamed of ours? The best you 'll gain Will be--the Queen grants all that you require, Concedes the cousin, rids herself of you And me at once, and gives us ample leave To live like our five hundred happy friends. The world will show us with officious hand Our chamber-entry, and stand sentinel Where we so oft have stolen across its traps! Get the world's warrant, ring the falcons' feet, And make it duty to be bold and swift, Which long ago was nature. Have it so! We never hawked by rights till flung from fist? Oh, the man's thought! no woman's such a fool.

Nor. Yes, the man's thought and my thought, which is more-- One made to love you, let the world take note! Have I done worthy work? be love's the praise, Though hampered by restrictions, barred against By set forms, blinded by forced secrecies! Set free my love, and see what love can do Shown in my life--what work will spring from that! The world is used to have its business done On other grounds, find great effects produced For power's sake, fame's sake, motives in men's mouth. So, good: but let my low ground shame their high! Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true! And love's the truth of mine. Time prove the rest! I choose to wear you stamped all over me, Your name upon my forehead and my breast, You, from the sword's blade to the ribbon's edge, That men may see, all over, you in me-- That pale loves may die out of their pretence In face of mine, shames thrown on love fall off. Permit this, Constance! Love has been so long Subdued in me, eating me through and through, That now 't is all of me and must have way. Think of my work, that chaos of intrigues, Those hopes and fears, surprises and delays, That long endeavor, earnest, patient, slow, Trembling at last to its assured result: Then think of this revulsion! I resume Life after death, (it is no less than life, After such long unlovely laboring days,) And liberate to beauty life's great need O' the beautiful, which, while it prompted work, Suppressed itself erewhile. This eve's the time, This eve intense with yon first trembling star We seem to pant and reach; scarce aught between The earth that rises and the heaven that bends; All nature self-abandoned, every tree Flung as it will, pursuing its own thoughts And fixed so, every flower and every weed, No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat; All under God, each measured by itself. These statues round us stand abrupt, distinct, The strong in strength, the weak in weakness fixed, The Muse forever wedded to her lyre, Nymph to her fawn, and Silence to her rose: See God's approval on his universe! Let us do so--aspire to live as these In harmony with truth, ourselves being true! Take the first way, and let the second come! My first is to possess myself of you; The music sets the march-step--forward, then! And there 's the Queen, I go to claim you of, The world to witness, wonder and applaud. Our flower of life breaks open. No delay!

Con. And so shall we be ruined, both of us. Norbert, I know her to the skin and bone: You do not know her, were not born to it, To feel what she can see or cannot see. Love, she is generous,--ay, despite your smile, Generous as you are: for, in that thin frame Pain-twisted, punctured through and through with cares, There lived a lavish soul until it starved, Debarred of healthy food. Look to the soul-- Pity that, stoop to that, ere you begin (The true man's--way) on justice and your rights, Exactions and acquittance of the past! Begin so--see what justice she will deal! We women hate a debt as men a gift. Suppose her some poor keeper of a school Whose business is to sit through summer months And dole out children leave to go and play, Herself superior to such lightness--she In the arm-chair's state and pædagogic pomp-- To the life, the laughter, sun and youth outside: We wonder such a face looks black on us? I do not bid you wake her tenderness, (That were vain truly--none is left to wake,) But, let her think her justice is engaged To take the shape of tenderness, and mark If she 'll not coldly pay its warmest debt! Does she love me, I ask you? not a whit: Yet, thinking that her justice was engaged To help a kinswoman, she took me up-- Did more on that bare ground than other loves Would do on greater argument. For me, I have no equivalent of such cold kind To pay her with, but love alone to give If I give anything. I give her love: I feel I ought to help her, and I will. So, for her sake, as yours, I tell you twice That women hate a debt as men a gift. If I were you, I could obtain this grace-- Could lay the whole I did to love's account, Nor yet be very false as courtiers go-- Declaring my success was recompense; It would be so, in fact: what were it else? And then, once loose her generosity,-- Oh, how I see it! then, were I but you To turn it, let it seem to move itself, And make it offer what I really take, Accepting just, in the poor cousin's hand, Her value as the next thing to the Queen's-- Since none love Queens directly, none dare that, And a thing's shadow or a name's mere echo Suffices those who miss the name and thing! You pick up just a ribbon she has worn, To keep in proof how near her breath you came. Say, I 'm so near I seem a piece of her-- Ask for me that way--(oh, you understand,) You 'd find the same gift yielded with a grace, Which, if you make the least show to extort ... --You 'll see! and when you have ruined both of us, Dissertate on the Queen's ingratitude!

Nor. Then, if I turn it that way, you consent? 'T is not my way; I have more hope in truth: Still, if you won't have truth--why, this indeed, Were scarcely false, as I 'd express the sense. Will you remain here?

Con. O best heart of mine, How I have loved you! then, you take my way? Are mine as you have been her minister, Work out my thought, give it effect for me, Paint plain my poor conceit and make it serve? I owe that withered woman everything-- Life, fortune, you, remember! Take my part-- Help me to pay her! Stand upon your rights? You, with my rose, my hands, my heart on you? Your rights are mine--you have no rights but mine.

Nor. Remain here. How you know me!

Con. Ah, but still--

[He breaks from her; she remains. Dance-music from within.

(Enter the QUEEN.)

Queen. Constance? She is here as he said. Speak quick! Is it so? Is it true or false? One word!

Con. True.

Queen. Mercifullest Mother, thanks to thee!

Con. Madam?

Queen. I love you, Constance, from my soul. Now say once more, with any words you will, 'T is true, all true, as true as that I speak.

Con. Why should you doubt it?

Queen. Ah, why doubt? why doubt? Dear, make me see it! Do you see it so? None see themselves; another sees them best. You say "why doubt it?"--you see him and me. It is because the Mother has such grace That if we had but faith--wherein we fail-- Whate'er we yearn for would be granted us; Yet still we let our whims prescribe despair, Our fancies thwart and cramp our will and power, And while accepting life, abjure its use. Constance, I had abjured the hope of love And being loved, as truly as yon palm The hope of seeing Egypt from that plot.

Con. Heaven!

Queen. But it was so, Constance, it was so! Men say--or do men say it? fancies say-- "Stop here, your life is set, you are grown old. Too late--no love for you, too late for love-- Leave love to girls. Be queen: let Constance love!" One takes the hint--half meets it like a child, Ashamed at any feelings that oppose. "Oh love, true, never think of love again! I am a queen: I rule, not love, forsooth." So it goes on; so a face grows like this, Hair like this hair, poor arms as lean as these, Till,--nay, it does not end so, I thank God!

Con. I cannot understand--

Queen. The happier you! Constance, I know not how it is with men: For women (I am a woman now like you) There is no good of life but love--but love! What else looks good, is some shade flung from love; Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me, Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love, Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest! O Constance, how I love you!

Con. I love you.

Queen. I do believe that all is come through you. I took you to my heart to keep it warm When the last chance of love seemed dead in me; I thought your fresh youth warmed my withered heart. Oh, I am very old now, am I not? Not so! it is true and it shall be true!

Con. Tell it me: let me judge if true or false.

Queen. Ah, but I fear you! you will look at me And say, "she 's old, she 's grown unlovely quite Who ne'er was beauteous: men want beauty still." Well, so I feared--the curse! so I felt sure!

Con. Be calm. And now you feel not sure, you say?

Queen. Constance, he came,--the coming was not strange-- Do not I stand and see men come and go? I turned a half-look from my pedestal Where I grow marble--"one young man the more! He will love some one; that is naught to me: What would he with my marble stateliness?" Yet this seemed somewhat worse than heretofore; The man more gracious, youthful, like a god, And I still older, with less flesh to change-- We two those dear extremes that long to touch. It seemed still harder when he first began To labor at those state-affairs, absorbed The old way for the old end--interest. Oh, to live with a thousand beating hearts Around you, swift eyes, serviceable hands, Professing they 've no care but for your cause, Thought but to help you, love but for yourself,-- And you the marble statue all the time They praise and point at as preferred to life, Yet leave for the first breathing woman's smile, First dancer's, gypsy's, or street baladine's! Why, how I have ground my teeth to hear men's speech Stifled for fear it should alarm my ear, Their gait subdued lest step should startle me, Their eyes declined, such queendom to respect, Their hands alert, such treasure to preserve, While not a man of them broke rank and spoke, Wrote me a vulgar letter all of love. Or caught my hand and pressed it like a hand! There have been moments, if the sentinel Lowering his halbert to salute the queen, Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees, I would have stooped and kissed him with my soul.

Con. Who could have comprehended?

Queen. Ay, who--who? Why, no one, Constance, but this one who did. Not they, not you, not I. Even now perhaps It comes too late--would you but tell the truth.

Con. I wait to tell it.

Queen. Well, you see, he came, Outfaced the others, did a work this year Exceeds in value all was ever done, You know--it is not I who say it--all Say it. And so (a second pang and worse) I grew aware not only of what he did, But why so wondrously. Oh, never work Like his was done for work's ignoble sake-- Souls need a finer aim to light and lure! I felt, I saw, he loved--loved somebody. And Constance, my dear Constance, do you know, I did believe this while 't was you he loved.

Con. Me, madam?

Queen. It did seem to me, your face Met him where'er he looked: and whom but you Was such a man to love? It seemed to me, You saw he loved you, and approved his love, And both of you were in intelligence. You could not loiter in that garden, step Into this balcony, but I straight was stung And forced to understand. It seemed so true, So right, so beautiful, so like you both, That all this work should have been done by him Not for the vulgar hope of recompense, But that at last--suppose, some night like this-- Borne on to claim his due reward of me, He might say, "Give her hand and pay me so." And I (O Constance, you shall love me now!) I thought, surmounting all the bitterness, --"And he shall have it. I will make her blest, My flower of youth, my woman's self that was, My happiest woman's self that might have been! These two shall have their joy and leave me here." Yes--yes!

Con. Thanks!

Queen. And the word was on my lips When he burst in upon me. I looked to hear A mere calm statement of his just desire For payment of his labor. When--O heaven, How can I tell you? lightning on my eyes And thunder in my ears proved that first word Which told 't was love of me, of me, did all-- He loved me--from the first step to the last, Loved me!

Con. You hardly saw, scarce heard him speak Of love: what if you should mistake?

Queen. No, no-- No mistake! Ha, there shall be no mistake! He had not dared to hint the love he felt-- You were my reflex--(how I understood!) He said you were the ribbon I had worn, He kissed my hand, he looked into my eyes, And love, love came at end of every phrase. Love is begun; this much is come to pass: The rest is easy. Constance, I am yours! I will learn, I will place my life on you, Teach me but how to keep what I have won! Am I so old? This hair was early gray; But joy ere now has brought hair brown again, And joy will bring the cheek's red back, I feel. I could sing once too; that was in my youth. Still, when men paint me, they declare me ... yes, Beautiful--for the last French painter did! I know they flatter somewhat; you are frank-- I trust you. How I loved you from the first! Some queens would hardly seek a cousin out And set her by their side to take the eye: I must have felt that good would come from you. I am not generous--like him--like you! But he is not your lover after all: It was not you he looked at. Saw you him? You have not been mistaking words or looks? He said you were the reflex of myself. And yet he is not such a paragon To you, to younger women who may choose Among a thousand Norberts. Speak the truth! You know you never named his name to me: You know, I cannot give him up--ah God, Not up now, even to you!

Con. Then calm yourself.

Queen. See, I am old--look here, you happy girl! I will not play the fool, deceive--ah, whom? 'T is all gone: put your cheek beside my cheek And what a contrast does the moon behold! But then I set my life upon one chance, The last chance and the best--am I not left, My soul, myself? All women love great men If young or old; it is in all the tales: Young beauties love old poets who can love-- Why should not he, the poems in my soul, The passionate faith, the pride of sacrifice, Life-long, death-long? I throw them at his feet. Who cares to see the fountain's very shape, Whether it be a Triton's or a Nymph's That pours the foam, makes rainbows all around? You could not praise indeed the empty conch; But I 'll pour floods of love and hide myself. How I will love him! Cannot men love love? Who was a queen and loved a poet once Humpbacked, a dwarf? ah, women can do that! Well, but men too; at least, they tell you so. They love so many women in their youth, And even in age they all love whom they please; And yet the best of them confide to friends That 't is not beauty makes the lasting love-- They spend a day with such and tire the next: They like soul,--well then, they like phantasy, Novelty even. Let us confess the truth, Horrible though it be, that prejudice, Prescription ... curses! they will love a queen. They will, they do: and will not, does not--he?

Con. How can he? You are wedded: 't is a name We know, but still a bond. Your rank remains, His rank remains. How can he, nobly souled As you believe and I incline to think, Aspire to be your favorite, shame and all?

Queen. Hear her! There, there now--could she love like me? What did I say of smooth-cheeked youth and grace? See all it does or could do! so youth loves! Oh, tell him, Constance, you could never do What I will--you, it was not born in! I Will drive these difficulties far and fast As yonder mists curdling before the moon. I 'll use my light too, gloriously retrieve My youth from its enforced calamity, Dissolve that hateful marriage, and be his, His own in the eyes alike of God and man.

Con. You will do--dare do ... pause on what you say!

Queen. Hear her! I thank you, sweet, for that surprise. You have the fair face: for the soul, see mine! I have the strong soul: let me teach you, here. I think I have borne enough and long enough, And patiently enough, the world remarks, To have my own way now, unblamed by all. It does so happen (I rejoice for it) This most unhoped-for issue cuts the knot. There 's not a better way of settling claims Than this; God sends the accident express: And were it for my subjects' good, no more, 'T were best thus ordered. I am thankful now, Mute, passive, acquiescent. I receive, And bless God simply, or should almost fear To walk so smoothly to my ends at last. Why, how I baffle obstacles, spurn fate! How strong I am! Could Norbert see me now!

Con. Let me consider. It is all too strange.

Queen. You, Constance, learn of me; do you, like me! You are young, beautiful: my own, best girl, You will have many lovers, and love one-- Light hair, not hair like Norbert's, to suit yours, Taller than he is, since yourself are tall. Love him, like me! Give all away to him; Think never of yourself; throw by your pride, Hope, fear,--your own good as you saw it once, And love him simply for his very self. Remember, I (and what am I to you?) Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life. Do all but just unlove him! He loves me.

Con. He shall.

Queen. You, step inside my inmost heart! Give me your own heart: let us have one heart! I 'll come to you for counsel; "this he says, This he does; what should this amount to, pray? Beseech you, change it into current coin! Is that worth kisses? Shall I please him there?" And then we 'll speak in turn of you--what else? Your love, according to your beauty's worth, For you shall have some noble love, all gold: Whom choose you? we will get him at your choice. --Constance, I leave you. Just a minute since, I felt as I must die or be alone Breathing my soul into an ear like yours: Now, I would face the world with my new life, Wear my new crown. I 'll walk around the rooms, And then come back and tell you how it feels. How soon a smile of God can change the world! How we are made for happiness--how work Grows play, adversity a winning fight! True, I have lost so many years: what then? Many remain: God has been very good. You, stay here! 'T is as different from dreams, From the mind's cold calm estimate of bliss, As these stone statues from the flesh and blood. The comfort thou hast caused mankind, God's moon! [She goes out, leaving CONSTANCE. Dance-music from within.

(NORBERT enters.)

Nor. Well? we have but one minute and one word!

Con. I am yours, Norbert!

Nor. Yes, mine.

Con. Not till now! You were mine. Now I give myself to you.

Nor. Constance?

Con. Your own! I know the thriftier way Of giving--haply, 't is the wiser way. Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole Coin after coin out (each, as that were all, With a new largess still at each despair) And force you keep in sight the deed, preserve Exhaustless till the end my part and yours, My giving and your taking; both our joys Dying together. Is it the wiser way? I choose the simpler; I give all at once. Know what you have to trust to, trade upon! Use it, abuse it,--anything but think Hereafter, "Had I known she loved me so, And what my means, I might have thriven with it." This is your means. I give you all myself.

Nor. I take you and thank God.

Con. Look on through years! We cannot kiss, a second day like this; Else were this earth no earth.

Nor. With this day's heat We shall go on through years of cold.

Con. So, best! --I try to see those years--I think I see. You walk quick and new warmth comes; you look back And lay all to the first glow--not sit down Forever brooding on a day like this While seeing embers whiten and love die. Yes, love lives best in its effect; and mine, Full in its own life, yearns to live in yours.

Nor. Just so. I take and know you all at once. Your soul is disengaged so easily. Your face is there, I know you; give me time, Let me be proud and think you shall know me. My soul is slower: in a life I roll The minute out whereto you condense yours-- The whole slow circle round you I must move, To be just you. I look to a long life To decompose this minute, prove its worth. 'T is the sparks' long succession one by one Shall show you, in the end, what fire was crammed In that mere stone you struck: how could you know, If it lay ever unproved in your sight, As now my heart lies? your own warmth would hide Its coldness, were it cold.

Con. But how prove, how?

Nor. Prove in my life, you ask?

Con. Quick, Norbert--how?

Nor. That 's easy told. I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve As with the body--he who hurls a lance Or heaps up stone on stone, shows strength alike: So must I seize and task all means to prove And show this soul of mine, you crown as yours, And justify us both.

Con. Could you write books, Paint pictures! One sits down in poverty And writes or paints, with pity for the rich.

Nor. And loves one's painting and one's writing, then. And not one's mistress! All is best, believe, And we best as no other than we are. We live, and they experiment on life-- Those poets, painters, all who stand aloof To overlook the farther. Let us be The thing they look at! I might take your face And write of it and paint it--to what end? For whom? what pale dictatress in the air Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghost-like form With earth's real blood and breath, the beauteous life She makes despised forever? You are mine, Made for me, not for others in the world, Nor yet for that which I should call my art, The cold calm power to see how fair you look. I come to you; I leave you not, to write Or paint. You are, I am: let Rubens there Paint us!

Con. So, best!

Nor. I understand your soul, You live, and rightly sympathize with life, With action, power, success. This way is straight; And time were short, beside, to let me change The craft my childhood learnt: my craft shall serve. Men set me here to subjugate, enclose, Manure their barren lives, and force thence fruit First for themselves, and afterward for me In the due tithe; the task of some one soul, Through ways of work appointed by the world. I am not bid create--men see no star Transfiguring my brow to warrant that-- But find and bind and bring to bear their wills. So I began: to-night sees how I end. What if it see, too, power's first outbreak here Amid the warmth, surprise and sympathy, And instincts of the heart that teach the head? What if the people have discerned at length The dawn of the next nature, novel brain Whose will they venture in the place of theirs, Whose work, they trust, shall find them as novel ways To untried heights which yet he only sees? I felt it when you kissed me. See this Queen, This people--in our phrase this mass of men-- See how the mass lies passive to my hand Now that my hand is plastic, with you by To make the muscles iron! Oh, an end Shall crown this issue as this crowns the first! My will be on the people! then, the strain, The grappling of the potter with his clay, The long uncertain struggle,--the success And consummation of the spirit-work, Some vase shape to the curl of the god's lip, While rounded fair for human sense to see The Graces in a dance men recognize With turbulent applause and laughs of heart! So triumph ever shall renew itself; Ever shall end in efforts higher yet, Ever begin ...

Con. I ever helping?

Nor. Thus!

(As he embraces her, the QUEEN enters.)

Con. Hist, madam! So have I performed my part. You see your gratitude's true decency, Norbert? A little slow in seeing it! Begin, to end the sooner! What 's a kiss?

Nor. Constance?

Con. Why, must I teach it you again? You want a witness to your dulness, sir? What was I saying these ten minutes long? Then I repeat--when some young handsome man Like you has acted out a part like yours, Is pleased to fall in love with one beyond, So very far beyond him, as he says-- So hopelessly in love that but to speak Would prove him mad,--he thinks judiciously, And makes some insignificant good soul, Like me, his friend, adviser, confidant, And very stalking-horse to cover him In following after what he dares not face-- When his end 's gained--(sir, do you understand) When she, he dares not face, has loved him first, --May I not say so, madam?--tops his hope, And overpasses so his wildest dream, With glad consent of all, and most of her The confidant who brought the same about-- Why, in the moment when such joy explodes, I do hold that the merest gentleman Will not start rudely from the stalking-horse, Dismiss it with a "There, enough of you!" Forget it, show his back unmannerly; But like a liberal heart will rather turn And say, "A tingling time of hope was ours; Betwixt the fears and falterings, we two lived A chanceful time in waiting for the prize: The confidant, the Constance, served not ill. And though I shall forget her in good time, Her use being answered now, as reason bids, Nay as herself bids from her heart of hearts,-- Still, she has rights, the first thanks go to her, The first good praise goes to the prosperous tool, And the first--which is the last--rewarding kiss."

Nor. Constance, it is a dream--ah, see, you smile!

Con. So, now his part being properly performed, Madam, I turn to you and finish mine As duly; I do justice in my turn. Yes, madam, he has loved you--long and well; He could not hope to tell you so--'t was I Who served to prove your soul accessible, I led his thoughts on, drew them to their place When they had wandered else into despair, And kept love constant toward its natural aim. Enough, my part is played; you stoop half-way And meet us royally and spare our fears: 'T is like yourself. He thanks you, so do I. Take him--with my full heart! my work is praised By what comes of it. Be you happy, both! Yourself--the only one on earth who can-- Do all for him, much more than a mere heart Which though warm is not useful in its warmth As the silk vesture of a queen! fold that Around him gently, tenderly. For him-- For him,--he knows his own part!

Nor. Have you done? I take the jest at last. Should I speak now? Was yours the wager, Constance, foolish child, Or did you but accept it? Well--at least You lose by it.

Con. Nay, madam, 't is your turn! Restrain him still from speech a little more, And make him happier as more confident! Pity him, madam, he is timid yet! Mark, Norbert! Do not shrink now! Here I yield My whole right in you to the Queen, observe! With her go put in practice the great schemes You teem with, follow the career else closed-- Be all you cannot be except by her! Behold her!--Madam, say for pity's sake Anything--frankly say you love him! Else He 'll not believe it: there 's more earnest in His fear than you conceive: I know the man!

Nor. I know the woman somewhat, and confess I thought she had jested better: she begins To overcharge her part. I gravely wait Your pleasure, madam: where is my reward?

Queen. Norbert, this wild girl (whom I recognize Scarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit, Eccentric speech and variable mirth, Not very wise perhaps and somewhat bold, Yet suitable, the whole night's work being strange) --May still be right: I may do well to speak And make authentic what appears a dream To even myself. For, what she says is true: Yes, Norbert--what you spoke just now of love, Devotion, stirred no novel sense in me, But justified a warmth felt long before. Yes, from the first--I loved you, I shall say: Strange! but I do grow stronger, now 't is said. Your courage helps mine: you did well to speak To-night, the night that crowns your twelve-months' toil: But still I had not waited to discern Your heart so long, believe me! From the first The source of so much zeal was almost plain, In absence even of your own words just now Which hazarded the truth. 'T is very strange, But takes a happy ending--in your love Which mine meets: be it so! as you choose me, So I choose you.

Nor. And worthily you choose. I will not be unworthy your esteem, No, madam. I do love you; I will meet Your nature, now I know it. This was well. I see,--you dare and you are justified: But none had ventured such experiment, Less versed than you in nobleness of heart, Less confident of finding such in me. I joy that thus you test me ere you grant The dearest, richest, beauteousest and best Of women to my arms: 't is like yourself. So--back again into my part 's set words-- Devotion to the uttermost is yours, But no, you cannot, madam, even you, Create in me the love our Constance does. Or--something truer to the tragic phrase-- Not yon magnolia-bell superb with scent Invites a certain insect--that 's myself-- But the small eye-flower nearer to the ground. I take this lady.

Con. Stay--not hers, the trap-- Stay, Norbert--that mistake were worst of all! He is too cunning, madam! It was I, I, Norbert, who ...

Nor. You, was it, Constance? Then, But for the grace of this divinest hour Which gives me you, I might not pardon here! I am the Queen's; she only knows my brain: She may experiment upon my heart And I instruct her too by the result. But you, Sweet, you who know me, who so long Have told my heartbeats over, held my life In those white hands of yours,--it is not well!

Con. Tush! I have said it, did I not say it all? The life, for her--the heartbeats, for her sake!

Nor. Enough! my cheek grows red, I think. Your test? There 's not the meanest woman in the world, Not she I least could love in all the world, Whom, did she love me, had love proved itself, I dare insult as you insult me now. Constance, I could say, if it must be said, "Take back the soul you offer, I keep mine!" But--"Take the soul still quivering on your hand, The soul so offered, which I cannot use, And, please you, give it to some playful friend, For--what 's the trifle he requites me with?" I, tempt a woman, to amuse a man. That two may mock her heart if it succumb? No: fearing God and standing 'neath his heaven, I would not dare insult a woman so, Were she the meanest woman in the world, And he, I cared to please, ten emperors!

Con. Norbert!

Nor. I love once as I live but once. What case is this to think or talk about? I love you. Would it mend the case at all If such a step as this killed love in me? Your part were done: account to God for it! But mine--could murdered love get up again, And kneel to whom you please to designate, And make you mirth? It is too horrible. You did not know this, Constance? now you know That body and soul have each one life, but one: And here 's my love, here, living, at your feet.

Con. See the Queen! Norbert--this one more last word-- If thus you have taken jest for earnest--thus Loved me in earnest ...

Nor. Ah, no jest holds here! Where is the laughter in which jests break up, And what this horror that grows palpable? Madam--why grasp you thus the balcony? Have I done ill? Have I not spoken truth? How could I other? Was it not your test, To try me, what my love for Constance meant? Madam, your royal soul itself approves, The first, that I should choose thus! so one takes A beggar,--asks him, what would buy his child? And then approves the expected laugh of scorn Returned as something noble from the rags. Speak, Constance, I 'm the beggar! Ha, what 's this? You two glare each at each like panthers now. Constance, the world fades; only you stand there! You did not, in to-night's wild whirl of things, Sell me--your soul of souls, for any price? No--no--'t is easy to believe in you! Was it your love's mad trial to o'ertop Mine by this vain self-sacrifice? well, still-- Though I might curse, I love you. I am love And cannot change: love's self is at your feet! [The QUEEN goes out.

Con. Feel my heart; let it die against your own!

Nor. Against my own. Explain not; let this be! This is life's height.

Con. Yours, yours, yours!

Nor. You and I-- Why care by what meanders we are here I' the centre of the labyrinth? Men have died Trying to find this place, which we have found.

Con. Found, found!

Nor. Sweet, never fear what she can do! We are past harm now.

Con. On the breast of God. I thought of men--as if you were a man. Tempting him with a crown!

Nor. This must end here: It is too perfect.

Con. There 's the music stopped. What measured heavy tread? It is one blaze About me and within me.

Nor. Oh, some death Will run its sudden finger round this spark And sever us from the rest!

Con. And so do well. Now the doors open.

Nor. 'T is the guard comes.

Con. Kiss!

BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM

The eighth line of the fourteenth section of One Word More reads,

"Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty."

Originally it read,

"Karshook, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty."

The reference apparently was to the poem written in April, 1854, and printed in The Keepsake, an annual edited by Miss Power, a niece of Lady Blessington, in whom Dickens also took an interest. It may have been Browning's intention to include this poem in Men and Women, but he never did place it there, and finally dropped Karshook and substituted Karshish, who narrates his medical experience.

I

"Would a man 'scape the rod?" Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, "See that he turn to God The day before his death."

"Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come!" I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire-- "Then let him turn to-day!"

II

Quoth a young Sadducee: "Reader of many rolls, Is it so certain we Have, as they tell us, souls?"

"Son, there is no reply!" The Rabbi bit his beard: "Certain, a soul have I-- We may have none," he sneered.

Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, The Right-hand Temple-column, Taught babes in grace their grammar, And struck the simple, solemn.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

The volume bearing the title Dramatis Personæ was published in 1864 and the contents remained unchanged in subsequent editions except that two short poems were added in the edition of 1868. The first poem was however originally entitled James Lee. The first six stanzas of the sixth section of the poem were first printed in 1836 in Mr. Fox's The Monthly Repository, and bore the title merely Lines, with the signature Z.

JAMES LEE'S WIFE

I

JAMES LEE'S WIFE SPEAKS AT THE WINDOW

Ah, Love, but a day And the world has changed! The sun 's away, And the bird estranged; The wind has dropped, And the sky 's deranged: Summer has stopped.

Look in my eyes! Wilt thou change too? Should I fear surprise? Shall I find aught new In the old and dear, In the good and true, With the changing year?

Thou art a man, But I am thy love. For the lake, its swan; For the dell its dove; And for thee--(oh, haste!) Me, to bend above, Me, to hold embraced.

II

BY THE FIRESIDE

Is all our fire of shipwreck wood, Oak and pine? Oh, for the ills half-understood, The dim dead woe Long ago Befallen this bitter coast of France! Well, poor sailors took their chance; I take mine.

A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot O'er the sea: Do sailors eye the casement--mute Drenched and stark, From their bark-- And envy, gnash their teeth for hate O' the warm safe house and happy freight --Thee and me?

God help you, sailors, at your need! Spare the curse! For some ships, safe in port indeed, Rot and rust, Run to dust, All through worms i' the wood, which crept, Gnawed our hearts out while we slept: That is worse.

Who lived here before us two? Old-world pairs. Did a woman ever--would I knew!-- Watch the man With whom began Love's voyage full-sail,--(now gnash your teeth!) When planks start, open hell beneath Unawares?

III

IN THE DOORWAY

The swallow has set her six young on the rail, And looks seaward: The water 's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale To the leeward,-- On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind. "Good fortune departs, and disaster 's behind,"-- Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!

Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled Her five fingers, Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world Where there lingers No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake: How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake! My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled.

Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough, With the field there, This house of four rooms, that field red and rough, Though it yield there, For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent; If a magpie alight now, it seems an event; And they both will be gone at November's rebuff.

But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change To the spirit, God meant should mate his with an infinite range, And inherit His power to put life in the darkness and cold? Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold! Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!

IV

ALONG THE BEACH

I will be quiet and talk with you, And reason why you are wrong. You wanted my love--is that much true? And so I did love, so I do: What has come of it all along?

I took you--how could I otherwise? For a world to me, and more; For all, love greatens and glorifies Till God's aglow, to the loving eyes, In what was mere earth before.

Yes, earth--yes, mere ignoble earth! Now do I mis-state, mistake? Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth? Expect all harvest, dread no dearth, Seal my sense up for your sake?

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! not so, indeed! You were just weak earth, I knew: With much in you waste, with many a weed, And plenty of passions run to seed, But a little good grain too.

And such as you were, I took you for mine: Did not you find me yours, To watch the olive and wait the vine, And wonder when rivers of oil and wine Would flow, as the Book assures?