Introduction and Notes: Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, from theedition of Browning's poems published by Thomas Y. Crowell andCompany, New York, in 1898. Editing conventions: The digraphs have been silently rendered as"ae" or "oe. " indicates u-grave, a-grave, e-grave, and a-circumflex. Similarly, u-umlaut is rendered as "ue. " Stanza and section numbers have been moved to the left margin, andperiods that follow them have been removed. Periods have been omitted after Roman numerals in the titles ofpopes and nobles. In keeping with contemporary practice, commas have been deleted whenthey precede dashes and spaces deleted in such contractions as"there's" where the printed text has "there 's. " In references to Bible verses, Roman numerals have been changed toArabic numerals (e. G. , "John iii. 16" is changed to "John 3:16"). MEN AND WOMEN BY ROBERT BROWNING CONTENTS Introduction (by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke) "Transcendentalism: A Poem in Twelve Books" How It Strikes a Contemporary Artemis Prologizes An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician Johannes Agricola in Meditation Pictor Ignotus Fra Lippo Lippi Andrea del Sarto The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church Bishop Blougram's Apology Cleon Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli One Word More INTRODUCTION Thirteen years after the publication, in 1855, of the Poems, in twovolumes, entitled "Men and Women, " Browning reviewed his work andmade an interesting reclassification of it. He separated thesimpler pieces of a lyric or epic cast--such rhymed presentationsof an emotional moment, for example, as "Mesmerism" and "A Woman'sLast Word, " or the picturesque rhymed verse telling a story of anexperience, such as "Childe Roland" and "The Statue and theBust"--from their more complex companions, which were almostaltogether in blank verse, and, in general, markedly personified atypical man in his environment, a Cleon or Fra Lippo, a Rudel or aBlougram. These boldly sculptured figures he set apart from theothers as the fit components of the more closely related group whichever since has constituted the division now known as "Men andWomen. " Possibly the poet took some pleasure in thus bringing to confusionthose critics who, beginning first to take any notice of his workafter the issue of these volumes of 1855, discovered therein poemsthey praised chiefly by means of contrasting them with foregoingwork they found unnoticeable and later work they declaredinscrutable. Their bland discrimination, at any rate, in favor of"Men and Women" became henceforth inapplicable, since the poet notonly cast out from the division they elected to honor the littlelyrical pieces that caught their eye, but also brought to the front, from his earlier neglected work of the same kind as the monologuesretained, his Johannes Agricola of 1836, Pictor Ignotus of 1845, andRudel of 1842. Later criticism, moreover, that even yet assumes toring the old changes of discrimination against everything but "Menand Women, " is made not merely inapplicable by this re-arrangement, but uninformed, a meaningless echo of a borrowed opinion which hashad the very ground from under it shifted. The self-criticism of which this re-arrangement gives a hint is morevaluable. All the shorter poems accumulated up to this period, various as theyare in theme and metrical form, are uniform in the fashioning oftheir contour and color. As soon as this underlying uniformity ofmake is recognized it may be seen to be the coloring and reliefbelonging to any sort of poetic material, whether ordinarilyaccounted dramatic material or not, which is imaginativelyexternalized and made concrete. This peculiarity of make Browningearly acknowledged in his estimate of his shorter poems ascharacteristic of his touch, when he called his lyrics and romancesdramatic. He became consciously sensitive later to slight variationseffected by his manipulation in shape and shade which it yet takes alittle thought to discern, even after his own redivision of hiswork has given the clew to his self-judgments. Not only events, deeds, and characters--the usual subject-mattermoulded and irradiated by dramatic power--but thoughts, impressions, experiences, impulses, no matter how spiritualized or complex ormobile, are transfused with the enlivening light of his creativeenergy in his shorter poems. Perhaps the very path struck outthrough them by the poet in his re-division may be traced betweenthe leaves silently closing together again behind him if it benoticed that among these poems there are some with footholds firmlyrooted in the earth and others whose proper realm is air. These havewings for alighting, for flitting thither and hither, or forpursuing some sudden rapt whirl of flight in Heaven's face atfancy's bidding. They are certainly not less original than thoseother solider, earth-fast poems, but they are less unique. Beingmotived in transient fancy, they are more akin to poems by otherhands, and could be classed more readily with them by any observer, despite all differences, as little poetic romances or as a speciesof lyric. They were probably first found praiseworthy, not only because theywere simpler, but because, being more like work already understoodand approved, adventurous criticism was needed to taste theirquality. The other longer poems in blank verse, graver and moredignified, yet even more vivid, and far more life-encompassing, which bore the rounded impress of the living human being, instead ofthe shadowy motion of the lively human fancy--these are the birth ofa process of imaginative brooding upon the development of man bymeans of individuality throughout the slow, unceasing flow of humanhistory. Browning evidently grew aware that whatever these poems ofpersonality might prove to be worth to the world, these were theones deserving of a place apart, under the early title of "Men andWomen, " which he thought especially suited to the more roundlymodelled and distinctively colored exemplars of his peculiarfaculty. In his next following collection, under the similar descriptivetitle of "Dramatis Personae, " he added to this class of work, shaping in the mould of blank verse mainly used for "Men and Women"his personifications of the Medium Mr. Sludge, the embryo theologianCaliban, the ripened mystical saint of "A Death in the Desert";while Abt Vogler, the creative musician, Rabbi ben Ezra, theintuitional philosopher, and the chastened adept in loving, JamesLee's wife, although held within the embrace of their maker'sdramatic conception of them, as persons of his stage, were made topour out their speech in rhyme as Johannes Agricola in the earliervolume uttered his creed and Rudel his love-message, as if the heatof their emotion-moved personality required such an outlet. Somesuch general notion as this of the scope of this volume, and of thedesign of the poet in the construction, classification, and orderlyarrangement of so much of his briefer work as is here containedseems to be borne out upon a closer examination. On the thresholdof this new poetic world of personality stands the Poet of the poemsignificantly called "Transcendentalism, " who is speaking to anotherpoet about the too easily obvious, metaphor-bare philosophy of hisopus in twelve books. That the admonishing poet is stationed thereat the very door-sill of the Gallery of Men and Women is surely notaccidental, even if Browning's habit of plotting his groups of poemssymmetrically by opening with a prologue-poem sounding the rightkey, and rounding the theme with an epilogue, did not tend to proveit intentional. It is an open secret that the last poem in "Men andWomen, " for instance, is an epilogue of autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few lastchords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers maybe felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards theone who inspired "One Word More. " The appropriateness of"Transcendentalism" as a prologue need be no more of a secret thanthat of "One Word More" as an epilogue, although it is left tobetray itself. Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson forexample, and Tennyson, place the outright plain name of theirthought at the head of their verses, without any attempt to maketheir titles dress their parts and keep as thoroughly true to theirroles as the poems themselves. But a complete impersonation of histhought in name and style as well as matter is characteristic ofBrowning, and his personified poets playing their parts together in"Transcendentalism" combine to exhibit a little masque exemplifyingtheir writer's view of the Poet as veritably as if he had named itspecifically "The Poet. " One poet shows the other, and brings himvisibly forward; but even in such a morsel of dramatic workmanshipas this, fifty-one lines all told, there is the complexity andinvolution of life itself, and, as ever in Browning's monologues, over the shoulder of the poet more obviously portrayed peers aslivingly the face of the poet portraying him. And this one--theadmonishing poet--is set there with his "sudden rose, " as if toindicate with that symbol of poetic magic what kind of spell wassought to be exercised by their maker to conjure up in his house ofsong the figures that people its niches. Could a poem be imaginedmore cunningly devised to reveal a typical poetic personality, and atypical theory of poetic method, through its way of revealinganother? What poet could have composed it but one who himselfemployed the dramatic method of causing the abstract to berealizable through the concrete image of it, instead of the contrarymode of seeking to divest the objective of its concrete form inorder to lay bare its abstract essence? This opposite theory of thepoetic function is precisely the Boehme mode, against which theveiled dramatic poet, who is speaking in favor of the Halberstadtianmagic, admonishes his brother, while he himself in practicalsubstantiation of his theory of poetics brings bodily in sight theboy-face above the winged harp, vivified and beautiful himself, although his poem is but a shapeless mist. Not directly, then, but indirectly, as the dramatic poet everreveals himself, does the sophisticated face of the subtle poet of"Men and Women" appear as the source of power behind both of thepoets of this poem, prepossessing the reader of the verity andbeauty of the theory of poetic art therein exemplified. Such aninterpretation of "Transcendentalism, " and such a conception of itas a key to the art of the volume it opens, chimes in harmoniouslywith the note sounded in the next following poem, "How it Strikes aContemporary. " Here again a typical poet is personified, not, however, by means of his own poetic way of seeing, but of theprosaic way in which he is seen by a contemporary, the whole, ofcourse, being poetically seen and presented by theover-poet. Browning himself, and in such a manifold way that thereader is enabled to conceive as vividly of the talker and hismental atmosphere and social background--the people and habitudes ofthe good old town of Valladolid--as of the betalked-of Corregidorhimself; while by the totality of these concrete images animpression is conveyed of the dramatic mode of poetic expressionwhich is far more convincing than any explicit theoretic statementof it could be, because so humanly animated. "Artemis Prologizes" seems to have been selected to close thislittle opening sequence of poems on the poet, because that fragmentof a larger projected work could find place here almost as if itwere a poet's exercise in blank verse. Its smooth and spaciousrhythm, flawless and serene as the distant Greek myth of the heroand the goddess it celebrates, is in striking contrast with therougher, but brighter and more humanly colloquial blank verse of"Bishop Blougram's Apology, " for example, or the stiff carefulnessof the "Epistle" of Karshish. It might alone suffice, by comparisonwith the metrical craftsmanship of the other poems of "Men andWomen, " to assure the observant reader that never was a good workmanmore baselessly accused of metrical carelessness than the poet whodesignedly varies his complicated verse-effects to suit every innerimpulse belonging to his dramatic subject. A golden finish being inplace in this statuesque, "Hyperion"-like monologue of Artemis, behold here it is, and none the less perfect because not merely theoutcome of the desire to produce a polished piece of poeticmechanism. Browning, perhaps, linked his next poem, "The Strange MedicalExperience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, " with the calmprologizing of the Hellenic goddess, by association of the "wisepharmacies" of AEsculapius, with the inquisitive sagacity ofKarshish, "the not-incurious in God's handiwork. " By this orderingof the poems, the reader may now enjoy, at any rate, the contrastsbetween three historic phases of wisdom in bodily ills: the phasepresented in the dependence of the old Greek healer upon simplephysical effects, soothing "with lavers the torn brow, " and laying"the stripes and jagged ends of flesh even once more"; and thephases typified, on the one side, by the ingenious Arab, sire of themodern scientist, whose patient correlation of facts and studious, sceptical scrutiny of cause and effect are caught in the bud in thediagnosis transmitted by Karshish to Abib, and, on the other side, by the Nazarene physician, whose inspired secret of summoning out ofthe believing soul of man the power to control his body--so baffledand fascinated Karshish, drawing his attention in Lazarus to justthat connection of the known physical with the unknown psychicalnature which is still mystically alluring the curiosity ofinvestigators. From the childlike, over-idealizing mood of Lazarus toward the Godwho had succored him, inducing in him so fatalistic an indifferenceto human concerns, there is but a step to the rapture of absolutetheology expressed in the person of Johannes Agricola. Such poemsas these put before the cool gaze of the present century the verymen of the elder day of religion. Their robes shine with anunearthly light, and their abstracted eyes are hypnotized by theeffulgence of their own haloes. Yet the poet never fails toinsinuate some naive foible in their personification, a numbness ofthe heart or an archaism of soul, which reveals the possessed one asbut a human brother, after all, shaped by his environment, andembodying the spirit of an historic epoch out of which the currentof modern life is still streaming. The group of art poems which follows similarly presents a dramaticsynthesis of the art of the Renaissance as represented by threetypes of painters. The religious devotion of the monastic painter, whose ecstatic spirit breathes in "Pictor Ignotus, " probably givesthis poem its place adjoining Agricola and Lazarus. His artist'shankering to create that beauty to bless the world with which hissoul refrains from grossly satisfying, unites the poem with the twofollowing ones. In the first of these the realistic artist, FraLippo, is graphically pictured personally ushering in the high noonof the Italian efflorescence. In the second, the gray of that day ofart is silvering the self-painted portrait of the prematurelyfrigid and facile formalist, Andrea del Sarto. In "Pictor Ignotus"not only the personality of the often unknown and unnamedpainting-brother of the monasteries is made clear, but also thenature of his beautiful cold art and the enslavement of both art andpersonality to ecclesiastical beliefs and ideals. In "Fra LippoLippi" not alone the figure of the frolicsome monk appears caught inhis pleasure-loving escapade, amid that picturesque knot ofalert-witted Florentine guards, ready to appreciate all the goodpoints in his story of his life and the protection the arms of theChurch and the favor of the Medici have afforded his genius, but, furthermore, is illustrated the irresistible tendency of theart-impulse to expand beyond the bounds set for it either by laws ofChurch or art itself, and to find beauty wheresoever in life itchooses to turn the light of its gaze. So, also, in "Andrea delSarto, " the easy cleverness of the unaspiring craftsman is notembodied apart from the abject relationship which made his very soula bond-slave to the gross mandates of "the Cousin's whistle. " Yetin all three poems the biographic and historic conditionscontributing toward the individualizing of each artist are sounobtrusively epitomized and vitally blended, that, while scarcelyany item of specific study of the art and artists of the Renaissancewould be out of place in illustrating the essential truth of theportraiture and assisting in the better appreciation of the poem, there is no detail of the workmanship which does not fall into thebackground as a mere accessory to the dominant figure through whoserelationship to his art his station in the past is made clear. This sort of dramatic synthesis of a salient, historical epoch isagain strikingly disclosed in the following poem of the Renaissanceperiod, "The Bishop Orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church. " Inthis, again, the art-connoisseurship of the prelacy, so importantan element in the Italian movement towards art-expression, isrevealed to the life in the beauty-loving personality of the dyingbishop. And by means, also, of his social ties with his nephews, called closer than they wish about him now; with her whom "men wouldhave to be their mother once"; with old Gandolf, whom he fanciesleering at him from his onion-stone tomb; and with all those strongdesires of the time for the delight of being envied, for marblebaths and horses and brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses, theseeds of human decay planted in the plot of Time, known as theCentral Renaissance, by the same lingering fleshliness andself-destroying self-indulgence as was at home in pagan days, arelivingly exposed to the historic sense. Is the modern prelate portrayed in "Bishop Blougram's Apology, " withall his bland subtlety, complex culture, and ripened perceptions, distant as the nineteenth century from the sixteenth, very differentat bottom from his Renaissance brother, in respect to his nativehankering for the pleasure of estimation above his fellows?Gigadibs is his Gandolf, whom he would craftily overtop. He is theone raised for the time above the commonalty by his criticism of thebishop, to whom the prelate would fain show how little he was to bedespised, how far more honored and powerful he was among men. Asfor Gigadibs, it is to be noticed that Browning quietly makes him domore than leer enviously at his complacent competitor from atomb-top. The "sudden healthy vehemence" that struck him and madehim start to test his first plough in a new world, and read his lastchapter of St. John to better purpose than towardsself-glorification beyond his fellows, is a parable of the moreprofitable life to be found in following the famous injunction ofthat chapter in John's Gospel, "Feed my sheep!" than in causingthose sheep to motion one, as the bishop would have his obsequiouswethers of the flock motion him, to the choice places of the sward. So, as vivid a picture of the materialism and monopolizing of thepresent century sowing seeds of decay and self-destruction in themovement of this age toward love of the truth, of the beauty ofgenuineness in character and earnestness in aim, is portrayedthrough the realistic personality of the great modern bishop, in hiseasy-smiling after-dinner talk with Gigadibs, the literary man, asis presented of the Central Renaissance period in the companionpicture of the Bishop of Saint Praxed's. In Cleon, the man of composite art and culture, the last ripefruitage of Greek development, is personified and brought intocontact, at the moment of the dawn of Christianity in Europe, withthe ardent impulse the Christian ideal of spiritual life supplied tohuman civilization. How close the wise and broad Greek culture cameto being all-sufficing, capable of effecting almost enough ofimpetus for the aspiring progress of the world, and yet how much itlacked a warmer element essential to be engrafted upon its loftybeauty, the reader, upon whose imaginative vision the personality ofCleon rises, can scarcely help but feel. The aesthetic and religious or philosophical interests vitallyconceived and blended, which link together so many of the main poemsof "Men and Women, " close with "Cleon. " Rudel, the troubadour, presenting, in the self-abandonment of his offering of love to theLady of Tripoli, an impersonation of the chivalric lovecharacteristic of the Provencal life of the twelfth century, intervenes, appropriately, last of all, between the preceding poemsand the epilogue, which devotes heart and brain of the poet himself, with the creatures of his hand, to his "Moon of Poets. " As these poetic creations now stand, they all seem, uponexamination, to incarnate the full-bodied life of distinctive typesof men, centred amid their relations with other men within aspecific social environment, and fulfilling the possibilities forsuch unique, dramatic syntheses as were revealed but partially or inembryo here and there among the other shorter poems of this periodof the poet's growth. In one important particular the re-arrangement of the "Men andWomen" group of poems made its title inappropriate. The gracefulpresence and love-lit eyes of the many women of the shorterlove-poems were withdrawn, and Artemis, Andrea del Sarto's wife, thePrior's niece--"Saint Lucy, I would say, " as Fra Lippoexplains--and, perhaps, the inspirer of Rudel's chivalry, too, theshadowy yet learned and queenly Lady of Tripoli, alone were left torepresent the "women" of the title. As for minor inexactitudes, what does it matter that the advantage gained by nicely selectingthe poems properly belonging together, both in conception andartistic modelling, was won at the cost of making the referenceinaccurate, in the opening lines of "One Word More, " to "my fiftymen and women, naming me the fifty poems finished"?--Or that themention of Roland in line 138 is no longer in place with Karshish, Cleon, Lippo, and Andrea, now that the fantastic story of ChildeRoland's desperate loyalty is given closer companionship among thevaried experiences narrated in the "Dramatic Romances"? While asfor the mention of the Norbert of "In a Balcony"--which wasoriginally included as but one item along with the other contents of"Men and Women"--that miniature drama, although it stands by itselfnow, is still near enough at hand in the revised order to accountfor the allusion. These are all trifles--mere sins against literalaccuracy. But the discrepancy in the title occasioned by the absenceof women is of more importance. It is of especial interest, incalling attention to the fact that the creator of Pompilia, Balaustion, and the heroine of the "Inn Album"--all central figures, whence radiate the life and spiritual energy of the work theyennoble--had, at this period, created no typical figures of women inany degree corresponding to those of his men. CHARLOTTE PORTERHELEN A. CLARKE "TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS" 1855 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 thoughtsInstead 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: 10Speak 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: 20If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!As German Boehme never cared for plantsUntil 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 twoWhile reading prose in that tough book he wrote 30(Collating and emendating the sameAnd 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 bookAnd 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, 40Over us, under, round us every side, Nay, in and out the tables and the chairsAnd 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 chordsBent, following the cherub at the top 50That points to God with his paired half-moon wings. NOTES "Transcendentalism" is a criticism, placed in the mouth of a poet, of another poet, whose manner of singing is prosaic, because itseeks to transcend (or penetrate beyond) phenomena, by divestingpoetic expression of those concrete embodiments which enable it toappeal to the senses and imagination. Instead of bare abstractionsbeing suited to the developed mind, it is the primitive mind, which, like Boehme's, has the merely metaphysical turn, and expects todiscover the unincarnate absolute essence of things. The maturermind craves the vitalizing method of the artist who, like themagician of Halberstadt, recreates things bodily in all theirbeautiful vivid wholeness. Yet the poet who sincerely holds sofragmentary a conception of art is himself a poem to the poet whoholds the larger view. His boy-face singing to God above hisineffective harp-strings is a concrete image of this sort of poetictranscendentalism. [It is obvious that Browning uses the Halberstadt and not the Boehmemethod in presenting this embodiment of his subject. Thesupposition of certain commentators that Browning is here picturinghis own artistic method as transcendental is a misconception of hischaracteristic theory of poetic art, as shown here and elsewhere. ] 22. Boehme: Jacob, an "inspired" German shoemaker (1575-1624), whowrote "Aurora, " "The Three Principles, " etc. , mystical commentarieson Biblical events. When twenty-five years old, says Hotham in"Mysterium Magnum, " 1653, "he was surrounded by a divine Light andreplenished with heavenly Knowledge . . . Going abroad into theFieldes to a Greene before Neys-Gate at Gorlitz and viewing theHerbes and Grass of the Fielde, in his inward light he saw intotheir Essences . . . And from that Fountain of Revelation wrote , " on the signatures of things, the "tough book" towhich Browning refers. 37. Halberstadt: Johann Semeca, called Teutonicus, a canon ofHalberstadt in Germany, who was interested in the unchurchly studyof mediaeval science and reputed to be a magician, possessing thevegetable stone supposed to make plants grow at will, having thesame power over organic life that the philosopher's stone of thealchemists had over minerals, so that, like Albertus Magnus, anothersuch mage of the Middle Ages, he could cause flowers to spring up inthe midst of winter. HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY 1855 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 blackWas 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, 10Scenting theworld, 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 themselvesOn the main promenade just at the wrong time:You'd come upon his scrutinizing hatMaking a peaked shade blacker than itselfAgainst the single window spared some houseIntact yet with its mouldered Moorish work--Or else surprise the ferret of his stick 20Trying themortar's temper 'tween the chinksOf 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 boysThat volunteer to help him turn its winch. He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, 30If 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 40We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took accountOf all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the KingWho 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 easeAs back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in years a little--such a brow 50His eyes had to live under!--clear as flintOn either side the formidable noseCurved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw, Had he to do with A. 's surprising fate?When altogether old B. DisappearedAnd young C. Got his mistress, was't our friend, His letter to the King, that did it all?What paid the Woodless man for so much pains?Our Lord the King has favorites manifold, And shifts his ministry some once a month; 60Our city gets new governors at whiles--But never word or sign, that I could hear, Notified to this man about the streetsThe King's approval of those letters connedThe 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!" 70Was some such understanding 'twixt the two? I found no truth in one report at least--That if you tracked him to his home, down lanesBeyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace, You found he ate his supper in a roomBlazing with lights, four Titians on the wall, And twenty naked girls to change his plate!Poor man, he lived another kind of lifeIn that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! 80The 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 cheeseAnd 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!" 90I had been used to think that personageWas 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 happy been afraid, To have just looked, when this man came to die, 100And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sidesAnd stood about the neat low truckle-bed, With the heavenly manner of relieving guard. Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief, Thro' 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, 110You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the whileHow 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. NOTES "How it Strikes a Contemporary" is a portrait of the Poet as theunpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him. It is humorouslycolored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspectswithout understanding either the greatness of the poet's spiritualpersonality and mission, or the nature of his life, which iswithdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighteduniversal sympathies and kindly mediation between Humanity and itsGod. 3. Valladolid: the royal city of the kings of Castile, before PhilipII moved the Court to Madrid, where Cervantes, Calderon, and LasCasas lived and Columbus died. 76. Titian: pictures by the Venetian, Tiziano Vecellio (1477-1576), glowing in color, presumably of large golden-haired women like hisfamous Venus. 90. Corregidor: the Spanish title for a magistrate, literally, acorrector, from corregir, to correct. ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES 1842 I am a goddess of the ambrosia courts, And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassedBy 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, guardEach 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 10Of 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 stepTo follow through the wild-wood leafy ways, And chase the panting stag, or swift with dartsStop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low, Neglected homage to another god:Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smokeOf tapers lulled, in jealousy despatched 20A noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings, Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himselfThe son of Theseus her great absent spouse. Hippolutos exclaiming in his rageAgainst the fury of the Queen, she judgedLife insupportable; and, pricked at heartAn Amazonian stranger's race should dareTo scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scrollThe fame of him her swerving made not swerve. 30And 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 obtainedThat of his wishes should be granted three, And one he imprecated straight--"AliveMay ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the princeHad stepped into the fixed boots of the car 40That give the feet a stay against the strengthOf the Henetian horses, and aroundHis body flung the rein, and urged their speedAlong the rocks and shingles at the shore, When from the gaping wave a monster flungHis obscene body in the coursers' path. These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawledWallowing about their feet, lost care of himThat reared them; and the master-chariot-poleSnapping beneath their plunges like a reed, 50Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast, Was yet dragged forward by the circling reinWhich either hand directed; nor they quenchedThe frenzy of their flight before each trace, Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car, Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell, Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sandsOn that detested beach, was bright with bloodAnd morsels of his flesh; then fell the steedsHead foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts, 60Shivering 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, deedBy deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth. Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men, 70And worthily; but ere the death-veils hidHis face, the murdered prince full pardon breathedTo his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails. So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries, Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cakeShould tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;Lest at my fane the priests disconsolateShould dress my image with some faded poorFew crowns, made favors of, nor dare objectSuch slackness to my worshippers who turn 80Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand, As they had climbed Olumpos to reportOf Artemis and nowhere found her throne--I interposed: and, this eventful night(While round the funeral pyre the populaceStood with fierce light on their black robes which boundEach sobbing head, while yet their hair they clippedO'er the dead body of their withered prince, And, in his palace, Theseus prostratedOn the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab 90'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief--As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashedSending a crowd of sparkles through the night, And the gay fire, elate with mastery, Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jarsOf wine, dissolving oils and frankincense, And splendid gums like gold) my potencyConveyed the perished man to my retreatIn the thrice-venerable forest here. And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now 100The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame, Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taughtThe doctrine of each herb and flower and root, To know their secret'st virtue and expressThe saving soul of all: who so has soothedWith layers 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 lagged ends of fleshEven once more, and slacked the sinew's knot 110Of every tortured limb--that now he liesAs if mere sleep possessed him underneathThese 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 leavesThat strew the turf around the twain! While I 120Await, in fitting silence, the event. NOTES "Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting therevival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woodsand given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introducean unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in"Hippolytus, " which see. AN EPISTLECONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCEOF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN 1855 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 spaceThat 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 cracksBefall the flesh through too much stress and strain, 10Whereby the wily vapor fain would slipBack 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 homeSends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)Three samples of true snakestone--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. 20 My journeyings were brought to Jericho:Thus I resume. Who studious in our artShall count a little labor un-repaid?I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and boneOn many a flinty furlong of this land. Also, the country-side is all on fireWith rumors of a marching hitherward:Some say Vespasian comes, some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: 30I 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 thenceA man with plague-sores at the third degreeRuns till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 40And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. A viscid choler is observableIn tertians, I was nearly bold to say;And falling-sickness hath a happier cureThan our school wots of: there's a spider hereWeaves 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 50Blown 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, Judaea's gum-tragacanthScales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-diseaseConfounds me, crossing so with leprosy--Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar-- 60But 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 elseThe Man had something in the look of him--His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth. 70So, pardon if--(lest presently I loseIn the great press of novelty at handThe 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! 'Tis but a case of mania--subinducedBy epilepsy, at the turning-point 80Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:When, by the exhibition of some drugOr spell, exorcisation, stroke of artUnknown to me and which 't were well to know, The evil thing out-breaking all at onceLeft 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 inscribeWhatever it was minded on the wall 90So plainly at that vantage, as it were, (First come, first served) that nothing subsequentAttaineth to erase those fancy-scrawlsThe just-returned and new-established soulHath gotten now so thoroughly by heartThat henceforth she will read or these or none. And first--the man's own firm conviction restsThat he was dead (in fact they buried him)--That he was dead and then restored to lifeBy a Nazarene physician of his tribe: 100--'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, 110As much, indeed, beyond the common healthAs he were made and put aside to show. Think, could we penetrate by any drugAnd 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, 120Now 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 sameWith straitened habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brainThe sudden element that changes things, 130That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his handAnd 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 befitsThe 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-- 140Heaven 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 armamentsAssembled 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 150With stupor at its very littleness, (Far as I see) as if in that indeedHe caught prodigious import, whole results;And so will turn to us the bystandersIn 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, lookFor scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160Or pretermission of the daily craft!While a word, gesture, glance from that same childAt play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. DemandThe reason why--"'t is but a word, " object--"A gesture"--he regards thee as our lordWho lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly recite 170Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Able to bid the sun throb wide and burstAll into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alikeThrown o'er your heads, from under which ye bothStretch your blind hands and trifle with a matchOver 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 180Of 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 impulsesSudden 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. " 190And oft the man's soul springs into his faceAs if he saw again and heard againHis sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood withinAdmonishes: then back he sinks at onceTo ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his tradeWhereby he earneth him the daily bread;And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows 200God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed the especial marking of the manIs prone submission to the heavenly will--Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the lastFor that same death which must restore his beingTo equilibrium, body loosening soulDivorced even now by premature full growth:He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to liveSo long as God please, and just how God please. 210He even seeketh not to please God more(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. Hence, I perceive not he affects to preachThe 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: 220"How, beast, " said I, "this stolid carelessnessSufficeth thee, when Rome is on her marchTo 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 brutesAnd birds--how say I? flowers of the field--As a wise workman recognizes tools 230In 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--An indignation which is promptly curbed:As when in certain travel I have feignedTo be an ignoramus in our artAccording to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitionersSteeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure--and I must hold my peace! Thou wilt object--Why have I not ere thisSought out the sage himself, the NazareneWho wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, Conferring with the frankness that befits?Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leechPerished in a tumult many years ago, Accused--our learning's fate--of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 250And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the lossTo occult learning in our lord the sageWho 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; 260But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, In mere respect for any good man's fame. (And after all, our patient LazarusIs stark mad; should we count on what he says?Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech'Tis 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! 270--'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 LazarusWho saith--but why all this of what he saith?Why write of trivial matters, things of priceCalling at every moment for remark?I noticed on the margin of a pool 280Blue-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 seemUnduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!Nor I myself discern in what is writGood cause for the peculiar interestAnd awe indeed this man has touched me with. Perhaps the journey's end, the wearinessHad wrought upon me first. I met him thus: 290I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hillsLike an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there cameA moon made like a face with certain spotsMultiform, manifold and menacing:Then a wind rose behind me. So we metIn this old sleepy town at unaware, The man and I. I send thee what is writ. Regard it as a chance, a matter riskedTo this ambiguous Syrian--he may lose, Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 300Jerusalem's repose shall make amendsFor 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 voiceSaying, "0 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, 310And thou must love me who have died for thee!"The madman saith He said so: it is strange. NOTES "An Epistle" gives the observations and opinions of Karshish, theArab physician, writing to Abib, his master, upon meeting withLazarus after he has been raised from the dead. Well versed inEastern medical lore, he tries to explain the extraordinaryphenomenon according to his knowledge. He attributes Lazarus'version of the miracle to mania induced by trance, and the meansused by the Nazarene physician to awaken him, and strengthens hisview by describing the strange state of mind in which he findsLazarus--like a child with no appreciation of the relative values ofthings. Through his renewal of life he had caught a glimpse of itfrom the infinite point of view, and lives now only with the desireto please God. His sole active quality is a great love for allhumanity, his impatience manifests itself only at sin and ignorance, and is quickly curbed. Karshish, not able to realize this new planeof vision in which had been revealed to Lazarus the equal worth ofall things in the divine plan, is incapable of understandingLazarus; but in spite of his attempt to make light of the case, heis deeply impressed by the character of Lazarus, and has besides ahardly acknowledged desire to believe in this revelation, told of byLazarus, of God as Love. Professor Corson says of this poem: "Itmay be said to polarize the idea, so often presented in Browning'spoetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith. " 17. Snakestone: a name given to any substance used as a remedy forsnake-bites; for example, some are of chalk, some of animalcharcoal, and some of vegetable substances. 28. Vespasian: Nero's general who marched against Palestine in 66, and was succeeded in the command, when he was proclaimed Emperor(70-79), by his son, Titus. 29. Black lynx: the Syrian lynx is distinguished by black ears. 43. Tertians: fevers, recurring every third day; hence the name. 44. Falling-sickness: epilepsy. Caesar's disease ("Julius Caesar, "I. 2, 258). 45. There's a spider here: "The habits of the aranead heredescribed point very clearly to some one of the Wandering group, which stalk their prey in the open field or in diverslurking-places, and are distinguished by this habit from the othergreat group, known as the Sedentary spiders, because they sit orhang upon their webs and capture their prey by means of silkensnares. The next line is not determinative of the species, forthere is a great number of spiders any one of which might bedescribed as 'Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back. ' We havea little Saltigrade or Jumping spider, known as the Zebra spider(Epiblemum scenicum), which is found in Europe, and I believe alsoin Syria. One often sees this species and its congeners upon theledges of rocks, the edges of tombstones, the walls of buildings, and like situations, hunting their prey, which they secure byjumping upon it. So common is the Zebra spider, that I might thinkthat Browning referred to it, if I were not in doubt whether hewould express the stripes of white upon its ash-gray abdomen by theword 'mottles. ' However, there arc other spiders belonging to thesame tribe (Saltigrades) that really are mottled. There are alsospiders known as the Lycosids or Wolf spiders or Ground spiders, which are often of an ash-gray color, and marked with little whitishspots after the manner of Browning's Syrian species. Perhaps thepoet had one of these in mind, at least he accurately describestheir manner of seeking prey. The next line is an interrupted one, 'Take five and drop them. . . . ' Take five what? Five of theseash-gray mottled spiders? Certainly. But what can be meant by theexpression 'drop them'? This opens up to us a strange chapter inhuman superstition. It was long a prevalent idea that the spider invarious forms possessed some occult power of healing, and menadministered it internally or applied it externally as a cure formany diseases. Pliny gives a number of such remedies. A certainspider applied in a piece of cloth, or another one ('a white spiderwith very elongated thin legs'), beaten up in oil is said by thisancient writer upon Natural History to form an ointment for theeyes. Similarly, 'the thick pulp of a spider's body, mixed with theoil of roses, is used for the ears. ' Sir Matthew Lister, who wasindeed the father of English araneology, is quoted in Dr. James'sMedical Dictionary as using the distilled water of boiled blackspiders as an excellent cure for wounds. " (Dr. H. C. McCook inPoet-lore, Nov. , 1889. ) 53. Gum-tragacanth: yielded by the leguminous shrub, Astragalustragacantha. 60. Zoar: the only one that was spared of the five cities of theplain (Genesis 14. 2). 108. Lazarus . . . Fifty years of age: in The Academy, Sept. 16, 1896, Dr. Richard Garnett says: "Browning commits an oversight, itseems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of thesiege of Jerusalem, circa 68 A. D. " The miracle is supposed to havebeen wrought about 33 A. D. , and Lazarus would then have been onlyfifteen, although according to tradition he was thirty when he wasraised from the dead, and lived only thirty years after. Upon thisProf. Charles B. Wright comments in Poet-lore, April, 1897: "Iincline to think that the oversight is not Browning's. Let us standby the tradition and the resulting age of sixty-five. . . . Karshishis simply stating his professional judgment. Lazarus is given anage suited to his appearance--he seems a man of fifty. The yearshave touched him lightly since 'heaven opened to his soul. '. . . And that marvellous physical freshness deceives the very leechhimself. " 177. Greek fire: used by the Byzantine Greeks in warfare, firstagainst the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 A. D. Therefore an anachronism in this poem. Liquid fire was, however, known to the ancients, as Assyrian bas-reliefs testify. Greek firewas made possibly of naphtha, saltpetre, and sulphur, and was thrownupon the enemy from copper tubes; or pledgets of tow were dipped init and attached to arrows. 281. Blue-flowering borage: (Borago officianalis). The ancientsdeemed this plant one of the four "cordial flowers, " for cheeringthe spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Plinysays it produces very exhilarating effects. JOHANNES AGRICOLA IN MEDITATION 1842 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. 10I 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 oneTo the minutest; ay, God said This head this hand should rest upon Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun. 20And 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. 30Yes, 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. 40For 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 winIf not love like God's love for me, At least to keep his anger in; And all their striving turned to sin. 50Priest, 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? 60 NOTES "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" presents the doctrine ofpredestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whoseconviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of adivine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing toweaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it isnot his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose wayshe could understand or for whose love he had to bargain. Johannes Agricola: (1492-1566), Luther's secretary, 1519, afterwardin conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Lutherantinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as ofno use under the Gospel dispensation. In a note accompanying thefirst publication of this poem, Browning quotes from "The Dictionaryof All Religions" (1704): "They say that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc. , aresins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace beingonce assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . That Goddoth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is noevidence of justification. " Though many antinomians taught thus, says George Willis Cooke in his "Browning Guide Book, " it does notcorrectly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality heldmoral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but forguidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principlesand motives necessary. PICTOR IGNOTUS FLORENCE, 15- 1845 I could have painted pictures like that youth's Ye praise so. How my soul springs up! No barStayed 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 shrunkFrom seconding my soul, with eyes uplift And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunkTo the centre, of an instant; or around Turned calmly and inquisitive, to scan 10The 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; 20Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up, And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved--0 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, 30Flowers 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 distinctAbove his hair, lie learning at my feet!-- Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linkedWith 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! 40But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sights Have scared me, like the revels through a doorOf 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 begunTo 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, 50Count them for garniture and household-stuff, And where they live needs must our pictures liveAnd 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 paintThese endless cloisters and eternal aisles With the same series. Virgin, Babe and Saint, 60With 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? 70Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry? Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth? NOTES "Pictor Ignotus" is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painterof the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whosepictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has neverso exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression andrecognition of his power would have given him, because he could notbear to submit his art to worldly contact. So he has chosen to sinkhis name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancyto pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacredthemes. His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulderunvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullyingof his work by secular fame. 67. Travertine: a white limestone, the name being a corruption of, from , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence thisstone comes. FRA LIPPO LIPPI 1855 1 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, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, And here you catch me at an alley's endWhere 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, 10, , that's crept to keep him company!Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll takeYour 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 friendThree 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! 20But you, sir, it concerns you that your knavesPick up a manner nor discredit you:Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streetsAnd 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 goDrink out this quarter-florin to the healthOf the munificent House that harbors me(And many more beside, lads! more beside!) 30And all's come square again. I'd like his face--His, elbowing on his comrade in the doorWith the pike and lantern--for the slave that holdsJohn Baptist's head a-dangle by the hairWith 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, 40You 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 bandsTo roam the town and sing out carnival, And I've been three weeks shut within my mew, A-painting for the great man, saints and saintsAnd saints again. I could not paint all night--Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air. 50There came a hurry of feet and little feet, A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song----and so on. Round they went. Scarce had they turned the corner when a titterLike 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, 61Curtain 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 funHard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met--And so as I was stealing back again 70To get to bed and have a bit of sleepEre I rise up to-morrow and go workOn Jerome knocking at his poor old breastWith 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! 80I was a baby when my mother diedAnd father died and left me in the street. I starved there. God knows how, a year or twoOn 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, 90By 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 fatherWiping his own mouth, 't was 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;1 did renounce the world, its pride and greed, Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house, Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici 100Have given their hearts to--all at eight years old. Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure, 'T was 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!But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streetsEight years together, as my fortune was, Watching folk's faces to know who will flingThe 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 catchThe droppings of the wax to sell again, 120Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped, How say I?--nay, which dog bites?, which lets dropHis 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 lessFor 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, 130Joined 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 worldBetwixt 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 CamaldoleseAnd Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine 140And 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 confessTheir cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends--To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 150With the little children round him in a rowOf admiration, half for his beard and halfFor that white anger of his victim's sonShaking a fist at him with one fierce arm, Signing himself with the other because of Christ(Whose sad face on the cross sees only thisAfter the passion of a thousand years)Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head, (Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eveOn tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf, 160Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone, I painted all, then cried "'T is 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 loudTill 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 170To 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 faceAnd 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 trueAs 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, 180But 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? 190Why put all thoughts of praise out of our headWith 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 bodySo ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further 200And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for whiteWhen what you put for yellow's simply black, And any sort of meaning looks intenseWhen 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 prettyYou can't discover if it means hope, fear, 210Sorrow 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 three-fold?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. 220"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 oldAnd 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 justTo plant a flag in, or tie up a horse! 230And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyesAre 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!"I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know! 240Don'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 paintTo please them--sometimes do and sometimes don't;For, doing most, there's pretty sure to comeA 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, 250The 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 grassAfter hard years, throws up his stiff heels so, Although the miller does not preach to himThe only good of grass is to make chaff. What would men have? Do they like grass or no--May they or may n't they? all I want's the thingSettled forever one way. As it is, 260You 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 thereA-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. 270But see, now--why, I see as certainlyAs that the morning-star's about to shine, What will hap some day. We've a youngster hereComes 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! 280You 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? 290To 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 theseJust as they are, careless what comes of it?God's works--paint any one, and count it crimeTo let a truth slip. Don't object, "His worksAre 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 300First when we see them painted, things we have passedPerhaps 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, 310Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh, It makes me mad to see what men shall doAnd 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 plainIt does not say to folk--remember matins, Or, mind you fast next Friday! "Why, for thisWhat need of art at all? A skull and bones, 320Two 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 sinceAt 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 slavesWho 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 330With 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 wordSpoke in a huff by a poor monk. God wot, Tasting the air this spicy night which turnsThe unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! 340It's natural a poor monk out of boundsShould 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, seeSomething in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!They want a cast o' my office. I shall paintGod in the midst. Madonna and her babe, Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood, Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet 350As puff on puff of grated orris-rootWhen 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 whiteThe 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 theseSecured at their devotion, up shall come 360Out 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 370Forward, 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, " So, all smile--I shuffle sideways with my blushing faceUnder the cover of a hundred wingsThrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay 380And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut, Till, wholly unexpected, in there popsThe hothead husband! Thus I scuttle offTo some safe bench behind, not letting goThe palm of her, the little lily thingThat 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 churchA pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights! 390The street's hushed, and I know my own way back, Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks! NOTES "Fra Lippo Lippi" is a dramatic monologue which incidentally conveysthe whole story of the occurrence the poem starts from--the seizureof Fra Lippo by the City Guards, past midnight, in an equivocalneighborhood--and the lively talk that arose thereupon, outlines thecharacter and past life of the Florentine artist-monk (1412-1469)and the subordinate personalities of the group of officers; andmakes all this contribute towards the presentation of Fra Lippo as atype of the more realistic and secular artist of the Renaissance whovalued flesh, and protested against the ascetic spirit which stroveto isolate the soul. 7. The Carmine: monastery of the Del Carmine friars. 17. Cosimo: de' Medici (1389-1464), Florentine statesman and patronof the arts. 23. Pilchards: a kind of fish. 53. Flower o' the broom: of the many varieties of folk-songs inItaly that which furnished Browning with a model for Lippo's songsis called a stornello. The name is variously derived. Some take itas merely short for ritornillo; others derive it from a storno, tosing against each other, because the peasants sing them at theirwork, and as one ends a song, another caps it with a fresh one, andso on. These stornelli consist of three lines. The first usuallycontains the name of a flower which sets the rhyme, and is fivesyllables long. Then the love theme is told in two lines of elevensyllables each, agreeing by rhyme, assonance, or repetition with thefirst. The first line may be looked upon as a burden set at thebeginning instead of, as is more familiar to us, at the end. Thereare also stornelli formed of three lines of eleven syllables withoutany burden. Browning has made Lippo's songs of only two lines, buthe has strictly followed the rule of making the first line, containing the address to the flower, of five syllables. TheTuscany versions of two of the songs used by Browning are asfollows: "Flower of the pine! Call me not ever happy heart again, But callme heavy heart, 0 comrades mine. " "Flower of the broom! Unwed thy mother keeps thee not to lose Thatflower from the window of the room. " 67. Saint Laurence: the church of San Lorenzo. 88. Aunt Lapaccia: by the death of Lippo's father, says Vasari, he"was left a friendless orphan at the age of two . . . Under the careof Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, who brought him up with very greatdifficulty till his eighth year, when, being no longer able tosupport the burden, she placed him in the Convent of theCarmelites. " 121. The Eight: the magistrates of Florence. 130. Antiphonary: the Roman Service-Book, containing all that issung in the choir--the antiphones, responses, etc. ; it was compiledby Gregory the Great. 131. Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes: the musicalnotation of Lippo's day was entirely different from ours, the notesbeing square and oblong and rather less suited for arms and legsthan the present rounded notes. 139. Camaldolese: monks of Camaldoli. --Preaching Friars: theDominicans. 189. Giotto: reviver of art in Italy, painter, sculptor, andarchitect (1266-1337). 196. Herodias: Matthew xiv. 6-11. 235. Brother Angelico: Fra Angelico, Giovanni da Fiesole(1387-1455), flower of the monastic school of art, who was said topaint on his knees. 236. Brother Lorenzo: Lorenzo Monaco, of the same school. 276. Guidi : Tommaso Guidi, or Masaccio, nicknamed "Hulking Tom"(1401-1429). [Vasari makes him Lippo's predecessor. Browningfollowed the best knowledge of his time in making him, instead, Lippo's pupil. Vasari is now thought to be right. ] 323. A Saint Laurence . . . At Prato: near Florence, where Lippipainted many saints. [Vasari speaks of a Saint Stephen painted therein the same realistic manner as Browning's Saint Laurence, whosemartyrdom of broiling to death on a gridiron affords Lippo's powersa livelier effect. ] The legend of this saint makes his fortitudesuch that he bade his persecutors turn him over, as he was "done onone side. " 346. Something in Sant Ambrogio's: picture of the Virgin crownedwith angels and saints, painted for Saint Ambrose Church, now at theBelle Arti in Florence. Vasari says by means of it he became knownto Cosimo. Browning, on the other hand, crowns his poem withLippo's description of this picture as an expiation for his pranks. 354. Saint John: the Baptist; see reference to camel-hair, line 375and Matthew iii. 4. 355. Saint Ambrose: (340-397), Archbishop of Milan. 358. Man of Uz : Job i. 1. 377. : this one completed the work. 381. Hot cockles: an old-fashioned game. ANDREA DEL SARTO (CALLED "THE FAULTLESS PAINTER") 1855 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 handWhen next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?Oh, I'll content him--but to-morrow. Love! 10I often am much wearier than you think, This evening more than usual, and it seemsAs if--forgive now--should you let me sitHere by the window with your hand in mineAnd 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 workCheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this! 20Your 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 serveFor 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, 30And, 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 downTo yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 40There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;That length of convent-wall across the wayHolds 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 selfAnd 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; 50So 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 understandNor 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 things should be--Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say. I can do with my pencil what I know, 60What I see, what at bottom of my heartI 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 'tis 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, 70And fail in doing. I could count twenty suchOn twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others striveTo paint a little thing like that you smearedCarelessly 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, 80Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to promptThis 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, 90Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blameOr their praise either. Somebody remarksMorello's outline there is wrongly traced, His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, Sightly 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-grayPlacid, and perfect with my art: the worse!I know both what I want and what might gain, 100And 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 youthThe Urbinate who died five years ago. ('Tis 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; 110That 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-- 120More 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 birdThe 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! 130Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"I might have done it for you. So it seems:Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules. 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, 140God, 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! 150I 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 curlOver 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 160Profuse, 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 temptOut of the grange whose four walls make his world. 170How 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; sinceI 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 180Both pictures in your presence; clearer growsMy better fortune, I resolve to think. For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, Said one day Agnolo, his very self, To Rafael's . . . I have known it all these years . . . (When the young man was flaming out his thoughtsUpon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it)"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrubGoes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190Who, were he set to plan and executeAs 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?) 200If 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 nightI 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. 210Come from the window, love--come in, at last, Inside the melancholy little houseWe built to be so gay with. God is just. King Francis may forgive me: oft at nightsWhen I look up from painting, eyes tired out, The walls become illumined, brick from brickDistinct, 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? 220Must 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 heartAre left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sitThe gray remainder of the evening out, Idle, you call it, and muse perfectlyHow I could paint, were I but back in France, One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face, 230Not yours this time! I want you at my sideTo 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 twoIf he demurs; the whole should prove enoughTo pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, 240Get 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 trueI 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. 250Well, had I riches of my own? you seeHow 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 timeAnd not been paid profusely. Some good sonPaint 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-- 260Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, Meted on each side by the angel's reed, For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and meTo cover--the three first without a wife, While I have mine! So--still they overcomeBecause there's still Lucrezia--as I choose. Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love. NOTES "Andrea del Sarto. " This monologue reveals, beside the personalitiesof both Andrea and Lucretia and the main incidents of their lives, the relations existing between Andrea's character, his choice of awife, and the peculiar quality of his art; the whole serving, also, to illustrate the picture on which the poem is based. The gray tonethat silvers the picture pervades the poem with an air of helpless, resigned melancholy, and sets forth the fatal quality of facilecraftsmanship joined with a flaccid spirit. --Mr. John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's cousin, asked Browning to get him a copy of thepicture of Andrea and his wife in the Pitti Palace. Browning, beingunable to find one, wrote this poem describing it, instead. Andrea(1486-1531), because his father was a tailor, was called del Sarto, also, il pittore senza errori, "the faultless painter. " 2. Lucrezia: di Baccio del Fede, a cap-maker's widow, says Vasari, who ensnared Andrea "before her husband's death, and who delightedin trapping the hearts of men. " 15. Fiesole: a hillside city on the Arno, three miles west ofFlorence. 93. Morello: the highest of the Apennine mountains north ofFlorence. 105. The Urbinate: Raphael Santi (1483-1520), so called because born at Urbino. 106. Vasari: painter and writer of the "Lives of the Most ExcellentItalian Painters, " which supplied Browning with material for thispoem and for "Fra Lippo. " 130. Agnolo: Michel Agnolo Buonarotti, painter, sculptor, and1architect (1475-564). 149. Francis: Francis I of France (1494-1547), who invited Andrea tohis Court at Fontainebleau, where he was loaded with gifts andhonors, until, says Vasari, "came to him certain letters fromFlorence written to him by his wife . . . With bitter complaints, "when, taking "the money which the king confided to him for thepurchase of pictures and statues, . . . He set off . . . Havingsworn on the Gospels to return in a few months. Arrived inFlorence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, makingpresents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his ownparents, who died in poverty and misery. When the period specifiedby the king had come . . . He found himself at the end not only ofhis own money but . . . Of that of the king. " 184. Agnolo . . . To Rafael: Angelo's remark is given thus byBocchi, "Bellezze di Firenze"; "There is a bit of a manikin inFlorence who, if he chanced to be employed in great undertakings asyou have happened to be, would compel you to look well about you. " 210. Cue-owls: the owl's cry gives it its common name in variouslanguages and countries; the peculiarity of its cry as to thepredominant sound of oo or ow naming the species. This Italianulo> is probably the , of the same family as our cat-owl. Buffon gives its note, , ; hence the Latin name, . 241. Scudi: Italian coins. 261. The New Jerusalem: Revelation 21. 15-17. 263. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, who, together with Rafael and Agnolo, incarnates the genius of the Renaissance. He visited the same Courtto which Andrea was invited, and was said to have died in the armsof Francis I. THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH ROME, 15- 1845 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 10In 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 foughtWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:--Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner SouthHe graced his carrion with. God curse the same!Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side, And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats, And up into the aery dome where liveThe 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 ripeAs fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30--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 digThe 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, 40And corded up in a tight olive-frail, Some lump, ah God, of , 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 handsYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay, For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50Swift 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 elseShall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchanceSome tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables . . . But I knowYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee, Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hopeTo revel down my villas while I gaspBricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertineWhich 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! 70One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world--And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to prayHorses 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, 80And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and tasteGood 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, dropInto great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: 90And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughtsGrow, 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! 100Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage. All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the PopeMy 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 vaseWith grapes, and add a vizor and a Term, And to the tripod ye would tie a lynxThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110To comfort me on my entablatureWhereon I am to lie till I must ask"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!For ye have stabbed me with ingratitudeTo death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone--Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweatAs 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 120--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! NOTES "The Bishop orders his Tomb" This half-delirious pleading of thedying prelate for a tomb which shall gratify his luxurious artistictastes and personal rivalries, presents dramatically not merely thespecial scene of the worldly old bishop's petulant struggle againsthis failing power, and his collapse, finally, beneath the will ofhis so-called nephews, it also illustrates a characteristic grossform of the Renaissance spirit encumbered with Pagan survivals, fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered itsdevelopment. -- "It is nearly all that I said of the CentralRenaissance--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good Latin--inthirty pages of the 'Stones of Venice, ' put into as many lines, Browning's being also the antecedent work" (Ruskin). The Church ofSt. Praxed is notable for the beauty of its stone-work and mosaics, one of its chapels being so extraordinarily rich that it was called, or the Garden of Paradise; and so, although thebishop and his tomb there are imaginary, it supplies an appropriatesetting for the poetic scene. 1. Vanity, saith the preacher: Ecclesiastes 1. 2. 21. Epistle-side: the right-hand side facing the altar, where theepistle is read by the priest acting as celebrant, the gospel beingread from the other side by the priest acting as assistant. 25. Basalt: trap-rock, leaden or black in color. 31. Onion stone: for the Italian , a kind ofgreenish-white marble splitting into coats like an onion, ;hence so called. 41. Olive-frail: a basket made of rushes, used for packing olives. 42. Lapis lazuli: a bright blue stone. 46. Frascati: near Rome, on the Alban hills. 48. God the Father's globe: in the group of the Trinity adorning thealtar of Saint Ignatius at the church of Il Gesu in Rome. 51. Weaver's shuttle: Job 7. 6. 54. Antique-black: Nero antico. Browning gives the Englishequivalent for the name of this stone. 58. Tripod: the seat with three feet on which the priestess ofApollo sat to prophesy, an emblem of the Delphic oracle. Thyrsus: the ivy-coiled staffer spear stuck in a pine-cone, symbolof Bacchic orgy. These, with the other Pagan tokens and pictures, mingle oddly but significantly with the references to the Saviour, Saint Praxed, and Moses. See also line 92, where Saint Praxed isconfused with the Saviour, in the mind of the dying priest. SaintPraxed, the virgin daughter of a Roman Senator and friend of SaintPaul, in whose honor the Bishop's Church is named, is again broughtforward in lines 73-75 in a queer capacity which pointedlyillustrates the speaker and his time. 66. Travertine: see note "Pictor Ignotus, " 67. 68. Jasper: a dark green stone with blood-red spots, susceptible ofhigh polish. 77. Tully's: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-46 B. C. ). 79. Ulpian: a Roman jurist (170-228 A. D. ), belonging to thedegenerate age of Roman literature. 99. : he was illustrious; formed from , aninceptive verb from : in post classic Latin. 102. Else I give the Pope my villas: perhaps a threat founded on thecustom of Julius II and other popes, according to Burckhardt, ofenlarging their power "by making themselves heirs of the cardinalsand clergy . . . Hence the splendor of tile tombs of the prelates. . . A part of the plunder being in this way saved from the handsof the Pope. " 108. A vizor and a Term: a mask, and a bust springing from a squarepillar, representing the Roman god Terminus, who presided overboundaries. BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY 1855 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 masterpieceLike 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 10Cost 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 't is our engagement: don't you know, I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out, We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peepsOver the glasses' edge when dinner's done, And body gets its sop and holds its noiseAnd leaves soul free a little. Now's the time: 20Truth's break of day! You do despise me then. And if I say, "despise me"--never fear!1 know you do not in a certain sense--Not in my arm-chair, for example: here, I well imagine you respect my place(, worldly circumstance)Quite to its value--very much indeed:--Are up to the protesting eyes of youIn pride at being seated here for once--You'll turn it to such capital account! 30When 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 seenSomething of mine he relished, some review: 40He's quite above their humbug in his heart, Half-said as much, indeed--the thing's his trade. I warrant, Blougram 's sceptical at times:How otherwise? I liked him, I confess!", 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 50Is 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 60Never 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 reachedMy 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, 70Because 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 PopeAt 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 lessI boast of my ideal realized 80Is nothing in the balance when opposedTo 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 lifeProvided it could be--but, finding firstWhat may be, then find how to make it fair 90Up to our means: a very different thing!No abstract intellectual plan of lifeQuite 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 100Each 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 listOf 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 110They 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!'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glowHang full in face of one where'er one roams, Since he more than the others brings with himItaly'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-- 120You see him screw his face up; what's his cryEre 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 overhaulsYour Jerome, piano, bath, you come on boardBare--why, you cut a figure at the firstWhile sympathetic landsmen see you off;Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up from your utterly naked boards 130Into 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!" 140And meantime you bring nothing: never mind--You've proved your artist-nature: what you don'tYou 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, 150(Not statedly, that is, and fixedlyAnd absolutely and exclusively)In any revelation called divine. No dogmas nail your faith; and what remainsBut 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. 160 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 lieI could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall, So give up hope accordingly to solve--(To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas thenWith both of us, though in unlike degree, Missing full credence--overboard with them! 170I 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 fixedTo-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'sThe gain? how can we guard our unbelief, 180Make 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 fearsAs 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, Round the ancient idol, on his base again--The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. 190There 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 hitSome sense, in which it might be, after all. Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?" --That wayOver the mountain, which who stands uponIs apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;While, if he views it from the waste itself, 200Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or twoSeen from the unbroken desert either side?And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)What if the breaks themselves should prove at lastThe most consummate of contrivancesTo 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 unbeliefIs a life of doubt diversified by faith, 210For 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 faithAnd 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 unbeliefLeft to a man's choice--we'll proceed a step, Returning to our image, which I like. 220 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 findOne and but one choice suitable to all;The choice, that you unluckily prefer, Turning things topsy-turvy--they or itGoing to the ground. Belief or unbeliefBears upon life, determines its whole course, Begins at its beginning. See the world 230Such 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 fruitIn power, peace, pleasantness and length of days. I find that positive belief does thisFor me, and unbelief, no whit of this. --For you, it does, however?--that, we'll try! 240'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least, Induce the world to let me peaceably, Without declaring at the outset, "Friends, I absolutely and peremptorilyBelieve!"--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 handAll day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends; 250And 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's 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, 260Live 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 youBed-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, 270If once we choose belief, on all accountsWe 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 pointsWhereon 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 muchFor riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose, 280Since various theories of life and life'sSuccess are extant which might easilyComport with either estimate of these;And whoso chooses wealth or poverty, Labor or quiet, is not judged a foolBecause his fellow would choose otherwise;We let him choose upon his own accountSo long as he's consistent with his choice. But certain points, left wholly to himself, When once a man has arbitrated on, 290We say he must succeed there or go hang. Thus, he should wed the woman he loves mostOr 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 mistakeOn such a point, the man himself being judge:He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul. 300 Well now, there's one great form of Christian faithI happened to be born in--which to teachWas given me as I grew up, on all hands, As best and readiest means of living by;The same on examination being provedThe most pronounced moreover, fixed, preciseAnd absolute form of faith in the whole world--Accordingly, most potent of all formsFor working on the world. Observe, my friend!Such as you know me, I am free to say, 310In these hard latter days which hamper one, Myself--by no immoderate exerciseOf intellect and learning, but the tactTo 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 worldAnd 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 320A comfortable care in many ways. There's power in me and will to dominateWhich 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 330As though I would not, could I help it, takeAn uniform I wear though over-rich--Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sakeAnd despicable therefore! now folk kneelAnd kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand. Thus I am made, thus life is best for me, And thus that it should be I have procured;And thus it could not be another way, I venture to imagine. You'll reply, 340So 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 successThough 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; 350The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailedI'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apesTo 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 doomedTo a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole, The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should striveTo make what use of each were possible;And as this cabin gets upholstery, 360That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw. But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fastI fail of all your manhood's lofty tastesEnumerated so complacently, On the mere ground that you forsooth can findIn this particular life I choose to leadNo fit provision for them. Can you not?Say you, my fault is I address myselfTo grosser estimators than should judge?And that's no way of holding up the soul, 370Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knowsOne 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 senseEye me and know me, whether I believeIn the last winking Virgin, as I vow, And am a fool, or disbelieve in herAnd am a knave--approve in neither case, Withhold their voices though I look their way: 380Like 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 outbangHis orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones, He looks through all the roaring and the wreathsWhere sits Rossini patient in his stall. Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--That even your prime men who appraise their kindAre men still, catch a wheel within a wheel, See more in a truth than the truth's simple self, 390Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the streetSixty 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, demirepThat loves and saves her soul in new French books--We watch while these in equilibrium keepThe giddy line midway: one step aside, 400They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the lineBefore your sages--just the men to shrinkFrom the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broadYou offer their refinement. Fool or knave?Why needs a bishop be a fool or knaveWhen there's a thousand diamond weights between?So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you'll find, Profess themselves indignant, scandalizedAt thus being held unable to explainHow a superior man who disbelieves 410May 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 agoThey'd say, "What's strange? Blougram of course believes;"And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course. "But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yetHow can he?" All eyes turn with interest. Whereas, step off the line on either side--You, for example, clever to a fault, 420The 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 backBrave 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! 430Enough; 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 elementOf unbelief (we can't believe, you know-- 440We're still at that admission, recollect!)Where do you find--apart from, towering o'erThe secondary temporary aimsWhich satisfy the gross taste you despise--Where do you find his star?--his crazy trustGod knows through what or in what? it's aliveAnd shines and leads him, and that's all we want. Have we aught in our sober night shall pointSuch ends as his were, and direct the meansOf working out our purpose straight as his, 450Nor bring a moment's trouble on successWith 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 dareWith comfort to yourself blow millions up?We neither of us see it! we do seeThe blown-up millions--spatter of their brainsAnd writhing of their bowels and so forth, In that bewildering entanglement 460Of horrible eventualitiesPast 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; 470The whole to end that dismallest of endsBy an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church, And resurrection of the old regime?Would I, who hope to live a dozen years, Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?No: for, concede me but the merest chanceDoubt may be wrong--there's judgment, life to comeWith just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?This present life is all?--you offer meIts dozen noisy years, without a chance 480That 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 writeHamlet, Othello--make the world our own, Without a risk to run of either sort?I can't!--to put the strongest reason first. 490"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 500And all we want in common, shall I find--Trying forever? while on points of tasteWherewith, to speak it humbly, he and IAre 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 worksYour world is worthless and I touch it notLest I should wrong them"--I'll withdraw my plea. 510But does he say so? look upon his life!Himself, who only can, gives judgment there. He leaves his towers and gorgeous palacesTo 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, 520The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made, Be told that had the poet chanced to startFrom where I stand now (some degree like mineBeing 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 homeAnd get himself in dreams the Vatican, Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls, 530And 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 St. Gothard last JulyWith ten mules to the carriage and a bedSlung 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, 540Could 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 aloftNo less adroitly that of fifty strokesScarce five go o'er the wall so wide and highWhich 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, 550Successful dealings in his grain and wool--While I receive heaven's incense in my noseAnd 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 lifeAre 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, 560Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself;We penetrate our life with such a glowAs fire lends wood and iron--this turns steel, That burns to ash--all's one, fire proves its powerFor good or ill, since men call flare success. But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn. Light one in me, I'll 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, 570Sets up God's rule again by simple means, Re-opens 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 beI might be also. But to what result?He looks upon no future: Luther did. What can I gain on the denying side? 580Ice makes no conflagration. State the facts, Read the text right, emancipate the world--The emancipated world enjoys itselfWith scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it firstIt could not owe a farthing--not to himMore than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chanceStrauss may be wrong. And so a risk is run--For what gain? not for Luther's, who securedA real heaven in his heart throughout his life, 590Supposing 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 workThan unbelief like mine. Whole faith, or none!" Softly, my friend! I must dispute that point. Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith. 600We'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, 610Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends, Doubts in the trivial work of every day, Doubts at the very bases of my soulIn the grand moments when she probes herself--If finally I have a life to show, The thing I did, brought out in evidenceAgainst the thing done to me undergroundBy 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? 620It is the idea, the feeling and the love, God means mankind should strive for and show forthWhatever 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 630That will break silence and enjoin you loveWhat 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, 640This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of himI 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, 0mniscient, Omnipresent, sears too muchThe sense of conscious creatures to be borne. 650It 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 enoughAgainst that sight till we can bear its stress. Under a vertical sun, the exposed brainAnd lidless eye and disemprisoned heartLess certainly would wither up at once 660Than mind, confronted with the truth of him. But time and earth case-harden us to live;The feeblest sense is trusted most; the childFeels God a moment, ichors o'er the place, Plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means perpetual unbeliefKept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's footWho 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 670Threatening the torpor of the inside-noseNigh 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 backSix hundred years, blot out cosmogony, Geology, ethnology, what not, 680(Greek endings, each the little passing-bellThat 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 AraratBut did not climb there since 'twas getting duskAnd 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, 690Believe--and yet lie, kill, rob, fornicateFull 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 wakesAnd grows. Prolong that battle through his life!Never leave growing till the life to come!Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winksThat used to puzzle people wholesomely: 700Men have outgrown the shame of being fools. What are the laws of nature, not to bendIf 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 710As 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 obsoleteBut men believe still: ay, but who and where?King Bomba's lazzaroni foster yetThe sacred flame, so Antonelli writes;But even of these, what ragamuffin-saintBelieves God watches him continually, As he believes in fire that it will burn, Or rain that it will drench him? Break fire's law, 720Sin against rain, although the penaltyBe 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 fearThe Naples' liquefaction may be false, When set to happen by the palace-clockAccording to the clouds or dinner-time. 730I hear you recommend, I might at leastEliminate, decrassify my faithSince I adopt it; keeping what I mustAnd 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 holdAbout 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, 740There'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 lastBut Fichte's clever cut at God himself?Experimentalize on sacred things!I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brainTo stop betimes: they all get drunk alike. The first step, I am master not to take. You'd find the cutting-process to your tasteAs much as leaving growths of lies unpruned, 750Nor see more danger in it--you retort. Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wiseWhen we consider that the steadfast holdOn the extreme end of the chain of faithGives all the advantage, makes the differenceWith the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:We are their lords, or they are free of us, Justas we tighten or relax our hold. So, other matters equal, we'll revertTo the first problem--which, if solved my way 760And 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 timeHow narrowly and grossly I view life, Respect the creature-comforts, care to ruleThe 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: 770No prejudice to what next world may prove, Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledgeTo 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, yieldsPure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend, Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its useMay be to make the next life more intense? Do you know, I have often had a dream 780(Work it up in your next month's article)Of man's poor spirit in its progress, stillLosing true life forever and a dayThrough 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 fooleryHalfway into the next still, on and off!As when a traveller, bound from North to South, 790Scouts far 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 thinkMy brothers, who administer the means, Live better for my comfort--that's good too; 800And God, if he pronounce upon such life, Approves my service, which is better still. If he keep silence--why, for you or meOr 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 810However feebly. Do then--act away!'T is there I'm on the watch for you. How one actsIs, both of us agree, our chief concern:And how you 'll act is what I fain would seeIf, like the candid person you appear, You dare to make the most of your life's schemeAs I of mine, live up to its full lawSince there's no higher law that counterchecks. Put natural religion to the testYou've just demolished the revealed with--quick, 820Down 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 you chastityOr shame, from just the fact that at the firstWhoso embraced a woman in the field, Threw club down and forewent his brains beside, So, stood a ready victim in the reachOf any brother savage, club in hand; 830Hence saw the use of going out of sightIn 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. 840Then, 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 GodEre I can be aught, do aught?--no mere nameWant, 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, 850And 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 wayFor simple men: knowledge and power have rights, But ignorance and weakness have rights too. There needs no crucial effort to find truthIf here or there or anywhere about:We ought to turn each side, try hard and see, 860And if we can't, be glad we've earned at leastThe 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 minuteIn 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, 870Mankind 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 findIn this the pleasant pasture of our lifeMuch you may eat without the least offence, Much you don't eat because your maw objects, 880Much you would eat but that your fellow-flockOpen great eyes at you and even butt, And thereupon you like your mates so wellYou cannot please yourself, offending them;Though when they seem exorbitantly sheep, You weigh your pleasure with their butts and bleatsAnd strike the balance. Sometimes certain fearsRestrain 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, 890And 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 fillNot simply unbutted at, unbickered with, But motioned to the velvet of the swardBy 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 900And 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 curlsFrom 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? 910Suppose we die to-night: well, here am I, Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me, While writing all the same my articlesOn music, poetry, the fictile vaseFound 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 glassI pour you out in sign of amityBefore we part forever. Of your power 920And 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 oneThe world would brand the lie--my enemies first, Who'd sneer--"the bishop's an arch-hypocriteAnd knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool. "Whereas I should not dare for both my earsBreathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, 930Before 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 exceptionalAnd 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 940Carry 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 soulUnseized by the Germans yet--which view you'll print--Meantime the best you have to show being stillThat lively lightsome article we tookAlmost for the true Dickens--what's its name? 950"The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel lifeLimned 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 getIn all our own reviews and some not ours. 960Go 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 teethAs copy and quote the infamy chalked broadAbout me on the church-door opposite. You will not wait for that experience though, I fancy, howsoever you decide, To discontinue--not detesting, notDefaming, but at least--despising me! 970__________________________________________ Over his wine so smiled and talked his hourSylvester Blougram, styled --(the deuce knows whatIt'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 mindLong crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth. For Blougram, he believed, say, half he spoke. 980The other portion, as he shaped it thusFor argumentatory purposes, He felt his foe was foolish to dispute. Some arbitrary accidental thoughtsThat crossed his mind, amusing because new, He chose to represent as fixtures there, Invariable convictions (such they seemedBeside his interlocutor's loose cardsFlung daily down, and not the same way twice)While certain hell-deep instincts, man's weak tongue 990Is never bold to utter in their truthBecause styled hell-deep ('t is an old mistakeTo place hell at the bottom of the earth)He ignored these--not having in readinessTheir nomenclature and philosophy:He said true things, but called them by wrong names. "On the whole, " he thought, "I justify myselfOn every point where cavillers like thisOppugn my life: he tries one kind of fence, I close, he's worsted, that's enough for him. 1000He's on the ground: if ground should break awayI take my stand on, there's a firmer yetBeneath 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 weekSufficed 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 1010But 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 St. John. NOTES "Bishop Blougram's Apology" is made over the wine after dinner todefend himself from the criticisms of a doubting young literary man, who despises him because he considers that he cannot be true to hisconvictions in conforming to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He builds up his defence from the proposition that the problem oflife is not to conceive ideals which cannot be realized, but to findwhat is and make it as fair as possible. The bishop admits hisunbelief, but being free to choose either belief or unbelief, sinceneither can be proved wholly true, chooses belief as his guidingprinciple, because he finds it the best for making his own life andthat of others happy and comfortable in this world. Once havingchosen faith on this ground, the more absolute the form of faith, the more potent the results; besides, the bishop has that desire ofdomination in his nature, which the authorization of the Churchmakes safer for him. To Gigadibs' objection that were his naturenobler, he would not count this success, he replies he is as Godmade him, and can but make the best of himself as he is. To theobjection that he addresses himself to grosser estimators than heought, he replies that all the world is interested in the fact thata man of his sense and learning, too, still believes at this latehour. He points out the impossibility of his following an ideallike Napoleon's, for, conceding the merest chance that doubt may bewrong, and judgment to follow this life, he would not dare toslaughter men as Napoleon had for such slight ends. As forShakespeare's ideal, he can't write plays like his if he wanted to, but he has realized things in his life which Shakespeare onlyimagined, and which he presumes Shakespeare would not have scornedto have realized in his life, judging from his fulfilled ambition tobe a gentleman of property at Stratford. He admits, however, thatenthusiasm in belief, such as Luther's, would be far preferable tohis own way of living, and after this, enthusiasm in unbelief, whichhe might have if it were not for that plaguy chance that doubt maybe wrong. Gigadibs interposes that the risk is as great for coolindifference as for bold doubt. Blougram disputes that point bydeclaring that doubts prove faith, and that man's free willpreferring to have faith true to having doubt true tips the balancein favor of faith, and shows that man's instinct or aspiration istoward belief; that unquestioning belief, such as that of the Past, has no moral effect on man, but faith which knows itself throughdoubt is a moral spur. Thus the arguments from expediency, instinct, and consciousness, all bear on the side of faith, andconvince the bishop that it is safer to keep his faith intact fromhis doubts. He then proves that Gigadibs, with all his assumptionof superiority in his frankness of unbelief, is in about the sameposition as himself, since the moral law which he follows has nosurer foundation than the religious law the bishop follows, bothfounded upon instinct. The bishop closes as he began, with theconsciousness that rewards for his way of living are of asubstantial nature, while Gigadibs has nothing to show for hisfrankness, and does not hesitate to say that Gigadibs will considerhis conversation with the bishop the greatest honor ever conferredupon him. The poet adds some lines, somewhat apologetic for thebishop, intimating that his arguments were suited to the calibre ofhis critic, and that with a profounder critic he would have made amore serious defence. Speaking of a review of this poem by CardinalWiseman (1801-1865), Browning says in a letter to a friend, printedin , May, 1896: "The most curious notice I ever had wasfrom Cardinal Wiseman on --, himself. It was in the, a Catholic journal of those days, and certified to be hisby Father Prout, who said nobody else would have dared put it in. "This review praises the poem for its "fertility of illustration andfelicity of argument, " and says that "though utterly mistaken in thevery groundwork of religion, though starting from the most unworthynotions of the work of a Catholic bishop, and defending aself-indulgence every honest man must feel to be disgraceful, [it]is yet in its way triumphant. " 6. Brother Pugin: (1810-1852), an eminent English architect, who, becoming a Roman Catholic, designed many structures for that Church. 34. Corpus Christi Day: Thursday after Trinity Sunday, when theFeast of the Sacrament of the Altar is celebrated. 45. Che: what. 54. Count D' Orsay: (1798-1852), a clever Frenchman, distinguishedas a man of fashion, and for his drawings of horses. 113. Parma's pride, the 'Jerome . . . Correggio . . . The Modenese:the picture of Saint Jerome in the Ducal Academy at Parma, byCorreggio, who was born in the territory of Modena, Italy. 184. A chorus-ending from Euripides: the Greek dramatist, Euripides(480 B. C. - 406 B. C. ), frequently ended his choruses with thisthought--sometimes with slight variations in expression: "The Godsperform many things contrary to our expectations, and those thingswhich we looked for are not accomplished; but God hath brought topass things unthought of. " 316. Peter's . . . Or rather, Hildebrand's: the claim of Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) for temporal power and authorityexceeding Saint Peter's, the founder of the Roman Church. 411. Schelling: the German philosopher (1775-1854). 472. Austrian marriage: the marriage of Marie Louise, daughter ofthe Emperor of Austria, to Napoleon I. 475. Austerlitz: fought with success by Napoleon, in 1805, againstthe coalition of Austria, Russia, and England, and resulting in thealliance mentioned with Austria and fresh overtures to the Papalpower and the old French nobility. 514. Trimmest house in Stratford: New Place, a mansion in the heartof the town, built for Sir Hugh Clopton, and known for two centuriesas his "great house, " bought with nearly an acre of ground byShakespeare, in 1597. 516. Giulio Romano: Italian painter (1492-1546), referred to in"Winter's Tale, " v. Ii. 105. --Dowland: English musician, praisedfor his lute-playing in a sonnet in "The Passionate Pilgrim, "attributed to Shakespeare. 519. "Pandulph, " etc. : quotation from "King John, " iii. I. 138. 568. Luther: Martin (1483-1546), whose enthusiasm reformed theChurch. 577. Strauss: (1808-1874), one of the Tuebingen philosophers, authorof a Rationalistic "Life of Jesus. " 626. "What think ye, " etc. : Matthew 22. 42. 664. Ichors o'er the place: ichor=serum, which exudes where the skinis broken, coats the hurt, and facilitates its healing. 667. Snake 'neath Michael's foot: Rafael's picture in the Louvre ofSaint Michael slaying the dragon. 703. Brother Newman: John Henry (1801-1890), leader of theTractarian movement at Oxford, which approached the doctrines of theRoman Church. The last (90th) tract was entirely written by him. The Bishop of Oxford was called upon to stop the series, and in 1845Dr. Newman entered the Romish Church. 715. King Bomba: means King Puffcheek, King Liar, a sobriquet givento Ferdinand II, late king of the Two Sicilies. --Lazzaroni: Naplesbeggars, so called from the Lazarus of the Parable, Luke 16. 20. 716. Antonelli: Cardinal, secretary of Pope Pius IX. 728. Naples' liquefaction: the supposed miracle of the liquefactionof the blood of Saint Januarius the Martyr. A small quantity of itis preserved in a crystal reliquary in the great church at Naples, and when brought into the presence of the head of the saint, itmelts. 732. Decrassify: make less crass or gross. 744. Fichte: (1761-1814), celebrated German metaphysician, whodefined God as the "moral order of the universe. " 877. "": the Lord is your shepherd. 915. Anacreon: Greek lyric poet of the sixth century B. C. 972. , etc. : "In countries where the RomanCatholic faith is not regularly established, as it was not inEngland before the time of Cardinal Wiseman, there were no bishopsof sees in the kingdom itself, but they took their titles fromheathen lands. " CLEON "As certain also of your own poets have said"-- 1855 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 unladesGift after gift; they block my court at lastAnd pile themselves along its porticoRoyal with sunset, like a thought of thee: 10And one white she-slave from the group dispersedOf black and white slaves (like the chequer-workPavement, at once my nation's work and gift, Now covered with this settle-down of doves), One lyric woman, in her crocus vestWoven of sea-wools, with her two white handsCommends to me the strainer and the cupThy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine. Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence!For so shall men remark, in such an act 20Of love for him whose song gives life its joy, Thy recognition of the use of life;Nor call thy spirit barely adequateTo help on life in straight ways, broad enoughFor 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 acclaimClimbed with the eye to cheer the architect-- 30Didst ne'er engage in work for mere work's sake--Hadst ever in thy heart the luring hopeOf 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 festivalTo pour libation, looking o'er the sea, Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speakThy great words, and describe thy royal face-- 40Wishing 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 lifeI, Cleon, have effected all those thingsThou wonderingly dost enumerate. That epos on thy hundred plates of goldIs mine--and also mine the little chant, So sure to rise from every fishing-barkWhen, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net. 50The image of the sun-god on the phare, Men turn from the sun's self to see, is mine;The Poecile, o'er-storied its whole length, As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too. I know the true proportions of a manAnd 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, 60Inventing 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 mindThan 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 usWith some whole man of the heroic age, 70Great 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 hereBeing, 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? 80Was 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, superimposeThe 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, 90Occurred 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 timeHave reached, thou sayest well, each at one pointThe outside verge that rounds our faculty;And where they reached, who can do more than reach?It takes but little water just to touchAt some one point the inside of a sphere, 100And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the restIn due succession: but the finer airWhich not so palpably nor obviously, Though no less universally, can touchThe whole circumference of that emptied sphere, Fills it more fully than the water did;Holds thrice the weight of water in itselfResolved into a subtler element. And yet the vulgar call the sphere first fullUp to the visible height--and after, void; 110Not knowing air's more hidden properties. And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to ZeusTo 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 hereAnd, once for all, showed simultaneouslyWhat, in its nature, never can be shown, Piecemeal or in succession;--showed, I say, The worth both absolute and relative 120Of all his children from the birth of time, His instruments for all appointed work. I now go on to image--might we hearThe 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, 130Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock;The wave 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 140And painted men like Phidias and his friend;I am not great as they are, point by point. But I have entered into sympathyWith 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 dashedRose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup'sHoney with wine, and driven its seed to fruit, And show a better flower if not so large: 150I stand myself. Refer this to the godsWhose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare(All pride apart) upon the absurd pretextThat 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, 0 king, My works, in all these varicolored kinds, 160So done by me, accepted so by men--Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men's hearts)I must not be accounted to attainThe 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 thyselfThe fortunate of men? "For" (writest thou)"Thou leavest much behind, while I leave naught. Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing, 170The 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, See on the promontory which I named. And that--some supple courtier of my heirShall 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!" 180 Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind. Is this apparent, when thou turn'st to museUpon 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 lookedOn all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, 190Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage--Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deducedThe 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 eachGrow 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 200And 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 putLike 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 chooseFor man, thy last premeditated work(If I might add a glory to the scheme)That a third thing should stand apart from both, 210A quality arise within his soul, Which, intro-active, made to superviseAnd feel the force it has, may view itself, And so be happy. " Man might live at firstThe animal life: but is there nothing more?In due time, let him critically learnHow he lives; and, the more he gets to knowOf his own life's adaptabilities, The more joy-giving will his life become. Thus man, who hath this quality, is best. 220 But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said:"Let progress end at once--man make no stepBeyond the natural man, the better beast, Using his senses, not the sense of sense. "In man there's failure, only since he leftThe lower and inconscious forms of life. We called it an advance, the rendering plainMan'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. 230This grew the only life, the pleasure-house, Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul, Which whole surrounding flats of natural lifeSeemed 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 capabilityFor joy, spread round about us, meant for us, 240Inviting us; and still the soul craves all, And still the flesh replies, "Take no jot moreThan ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad!Nay, so much less as that fatigue has broughtDeduction to it. " We struggle, fain to enlargeOur 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. 250They praise a fountain in my garden hereWherein a Naiad sends the water-bowThin from her tube; she smiles to see it rise. What if I told her, it is just a threadFrom 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 tubePast power to widen or exchange--what bootsTo know she might spout oceans if she could?She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread; 260And so a man can use but a man's joyWhile 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; 'tis 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, 0 king, with thy profound discouragement, 270Who 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 oneWith artist-gifts--to such a man as IWho 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) 280With feeling joy? confound the knowing howAnd showing how to live (my faculty)With actually living?--OtherwiseWhere is the artist's vantage o'er the king?Because in my great epos I displayHow divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act--Is this as though I acted? if I paint, Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young?Methinks I'm older that I bowed myselfThe many years of pain that taught me art! 290Indeed, to know is something, and to proveHow 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 love-odes: thy fair slave's an ode. I get to sing of love, when grown too grayFor 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! 300 "But, " sayest thou--(and I marvel, I repeat, To find thee trip on such a mere word) "whatThou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die:Sappho survives, because we sing her songs, And AEschylus, because we read his plays!"Why, if they live still, let them come and takeThy 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 310Grows more acute, my soul (intensifiedBy 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 escapeWhen 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, 320I, 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 needSome future state revealed to us by Zeus, Unlimited in capabilityFor joy, as this is in desire for joy, --To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us:That, stung by straitness of our life, made straitOn purpose to make prized the life at large-- 330Freed 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 arightWhere to deliver what he bears of thineTo one called Paulus; we have heard his fame 340Indeed, 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, 0 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 350Who 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. NOTES "Cleon" expresses the approach of Greek thought at the time ofChrist towards the idea of immortality as made known by Cleon, aGreek poet writing in reply to a Greek patron whose princely giftsand letter asking comment on the philosophical significance of deathhave just reached him. The important conclusions reached by Cleonin his answer are that the composite mind is greater than the mindsof the past, because it is capable of accomplishing much in manylines of activity, and of sympathizing with each of those simplegreat minds that had reached the highest possible perfection "at onepoint. " It is, indeed, the necessary next step in development, though all classes of mind fit into the perfected mosaic of life, noone achievement blotting out any other. This soul and minddevelopment he deduces from the physical development he sees abouthim. But since with the growth of human consciousness and theincrease of knowledge comes greater capability to the soul for joywhile the failure of physical powers shuts off the possibility ofrealizing joy, it would have been better had man been left withnothing higher than mere sense like the brutes. Dismissing the ideaof immortality through one's works as unsatisfactory to theindividual, he finally concludes that a long and happy life is allthere is to be hoped for, since, had the future life which he hassometimes dared to hope for been possible, Zeus would long beforehave revealed it. He dismisses the preaching of one Paulus asuntenable. "As certain also of your own poets have said": this motto hints thatPaul's speech at Athens (Acts 17. 22-28) suggests and justifiesBrowning's conception of such Greek poets as Cleon seeking "theLord, if haply they might feel after him. " Paul's quotation, "Forwe are also his offspring, " is from the "Phoenomena" by Aratus, aGreek poet of his own town of Tarsus. 1. Sprinkled isles: probably the Sporades, so named because theywere scattered, and in opposition to the Cyclades, which formed acircle around Delos. 51. Phare: light-house. The French authority, Allard, says thatthough there is no mention in classical writings of any light-housein Greece proper, it is probable that there was one at the port ofAthens as well as at other points in Greece. There were certainlyseveral along both shores of the Hellespont, besides the famousfather of all light-houses, on the island of Pharos, nearAlexandria. Hence the French name for light-house, phare. 53. Poecile: the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures byPolygnotus the Thasian. 60. Combined the moods: in Greek music the scales were called moodsor modes, and were subject to great variation in the arrangement oftones and semitones. 83. Rhomb . . . Lozenge . . . Trapezoid: all four-sided forms, butdiffering as to the parallel arrangement of their sides and theobliquity of their angles. 140. Terpander: musician of Lesbos (about 650 B. C. ), who addedthree strings to the four-stringed Greek lyre. 141. Phidias: the Athenian sculptor (about 430 B. C. ) --and hisfriend: Pericles, ruler of Athens (444-429 B. C. ). Plutarch speaksof their friendship in his Life of Pericles. 304. Sappho: poet of Lesbos, supreme among lyricists (about 600B. C. ). Only fragments of her verse remain. 305. AEschylus: oldest of the three great Athenian dramatists(525-472 B. C. ). 340. Paulus; we have have heard his fame: Paul's mission to theGentiles carried him to many of the islands in the AEgean Sea aswell as to Athens and Corinth (Acts 13-21). RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI 1842 II know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceivesFirst, when he visits, last, too, when he leavesThe world; and, vainly favored, it repaysThe day-long glory of his steadfast gazeBy no change of its large calm front of snow. And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know, He cannot have perceived, that changes everAt his approach; and, in the lost endeavorTo live his life, has parted, one by one, With all a flower's true graces, for the grace 10Of being but a foolish mimic sun, With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. Men nobly call by many a name the MountAs over many a land of theirs its largeCalm front of snow like a triumphal targeIs reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie, Each to its proper praise and own account:Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively. IIOh, Angel of the East, one, one gold lookAcross the waters to this twilight nook, 20--The far sad waters. Angel, to this nook! IIIDear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed?Go!--saying ever as thou dost proceed, That I, French Rudel, choose for my deviceA sunflower outspread like a sacrificeBefore its idol. See! These inexpertAnd hurried fingers could not fail to hurtThe woven picture; 't is a woman's skillIndeed; but nothing baffled me, so, illOr well, the work is finished. Say, men feed 30On songs I sing, and therefore bask the beesOn my flower's breast as on a platform broad:But, as the flower's concern is not for theseBut solely for the sun, so men applaudIn vain this Rudel, he not looking hereBut to the East--the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear! NOTES "Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli": Rudel symbolizes his love as theaspiration of the sunflower that longs only to become like the sun, so losing a flower's true grace, while the sun does not evenperceive the flower. He imagines himself as a pilgrim revealing tothe Lady of Tripoli by means of this symbol the entire sinking ofself in his love for her. Even men's praise of his songs is no moreto him than the bees which bask on a sunflower are to it. Rudel was a Provencal troubadour, and lived in the twelfth century. The Crusaders, returning from the East, spread abroad wonderfulreports of the beauty, learning, and wit of the Countess of Tripoli, a small duchy on the Mediterranean, north of Palestine. Rudel, although never having seen her, fell in love with her and composedsongs in honor of her beauty, and finally set out to the East inpilgrim's garb. On his way he was taken ill, but lived to reach theport of Tripoli. The countess, being told of his arrival, went onboard the vessel. When Rudel heard she was coming, he revived, saidshe had restored him to life by her coming, and that he was willingto die, having seen her. He died in her arms; she gave him a richand honorable burial in a sepulchre of porphyry on which wereengraved verses in Arabic. ONE WORD MORE TO E. B. B. 1855 [Originally appended to the collection of Poems called "Men andWomen, " the greater portion of which has now been, more correctly, distributed under the other titles of this edition. -R. B. ] IThere they are, my fifty men and womenNaming me the fifty poems finished!Take them, Love, the book and me together:Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. IIRafael made a century of sonnets, Made and wrote them in a certain volumeDinted with the silver-pointed pencilElse he only used to draw Madonnas:These, the world might view--but one, the volume. Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. 10Did she live and love it all her life-time?Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, Die, and let it drop beside her pillowWhere 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?You and I would rather read that volume, (Taken to his beating bosom by it)Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 20Would 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. IVYou and I will never read that volume. Guido Reni, like his own eye's appleGuarded long the treasure-book and loved it. Guido Reni dying, all BolognaCried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!" 30Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. VDante 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 corrodedStill 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, 40Let 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. "You and I would rather see that angel, 50Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno. VIIYou 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 bear the loss forever. VIIIWhat of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture?This: no artist lives and loves, that longs notOnce, and only once, and for one only, 60(Ah, the prize !) to find his love a languageFit 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, 70So to be the man and leave the artist, Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. IXWherefore? 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, 80When 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, 90Sees 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. " XOh, 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. XIDid he love one face from out the thousands, 100(Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave), He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty waterMeant 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. XIII shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 110Make 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! XIIIYet 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. 120He 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 thro' bronze, may breathe thro' silver, Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. He who writes, may write for once as I do. XIVLove, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 130Enter 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 tears, 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, 140Take 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. 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, 150Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, Perfect till the nightingales applauded. Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. XVIWhat, 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 ('tis the old sweet mythos), 160She 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 icebergSwimming full upon the ship it founders, 170Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?Proves she as the paved work of a sapphireSeen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?Moses, Aaron, Nadab and AbihuClimbed and saw the very God, the Highest, Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. Like the bodied heaven in his clearnessShone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, When they ate and drank and saw God also! XVIIWhat were seen? None knows, none ever shall know. 180Only 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 creaturesBoasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her! XVIIIThis 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! 190There, 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 novelSilent silver lights and darks undreamed of, Where I hush and bless myself with silence. XIXOh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it, 200Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom! R. B. NOTES "One Word More" is the dedication to Elizabeth Barrett Browningwhich was appended to "Men and Women" as first published when itcontained fifty poems since distributed under other titles. The poet, recalling how Rafael when he would all-express his love, wrote sonnets to the loved one, and how Dante prepared to paint anangel for Beatrice, draws the conclusion that there is no artist butlongs to give expression to his supreme love in some other art thanhis own which would be the medium of a spontaneous, natural outburstof feeling in a way impossible in the familiar forms of his own art. Thus he would gain a man's joy and miss the artist's sorrow, for, like the miracles of Moses, the work of the artist is subject to thecold criticism of the world, which expects him nevertheless alwaysto be the artist, and has no sympathy for him as a man. Since thereis no other art but poetry in which it is possible for Browning toexpress himself, he will at least drop his accustomed dramatic formand speak in his own person; though it be poor, let it stand as asymbol for all-expression. Yet does she not know him, for he hasshown her his soul-side as one might imagine the moon showinganother side to a mortal lover, which would remain forever as much amystery to the outside world as the vision seen by Moses, etc. Similarly, he has admired the side his moon of poets has shown thewhole world in her poetry, but he blesses himself with the thoughtof the other side which he alone has seen. 5. Century of sonnets: Rafael is known to have written four lovesonnets on the back of sketches for his wall painting, the"Disputa, " which are still preserved in collections, one of them inthe British Museum. The Italian text of these sonnets with Englishtranslations are given in Wolzogen's Life of him translated byF. E. Bunntt. Did he ever write a hundred? It is supposed thatthe lost book once owned by Guido Reni, apparently the one referredto in stanza iv, was a book of drawings. Perhaps these also boresonnets on their backs, or Browning guessed they did. 10. Who that one: Margarita, a girl Rafael met and loved in Rome, two portraits of whom exist--one in the Barberini Palace, Rome, theother in the Pitti, in Florence. They resemble the Sistine andother Madonnas by Rafael. 21. Madonnas, etc. : "San Sisto, " now in Dresden; "Foligno, " in theVatican, Rome; the one in Florence is called "del Granduca, " andrepresents her appearing in a vision; the one in the Louvre, called"La Belle Jardinire, " is seated in a garden among lilies. 32. Dante once, etc. : "On that day, " writes Dante, "Vita Nuova, "xxxv, "which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of thecitizens of eternal life, remembering of her as I sat alone, Ibetook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certaintablets. " That this lady was Beatrice Portinari, as Browningsupposes, Dante's devotion to her, in both "The New Life" and "TheDivine Comedy, " should leave no doubt. Yet the literalness ofMr. W. M. Rossetti makes him obtuse here, as he and othercommentators seem to be in their understanding of Browningthroughout this stanza. Browning evidently contrasts Dante'stenderness here towards Beatrice with the remorselessness of his penin the "Inferno" (see Cantos 32 and 33), where he stigmatized hisenemies as if using their very flesh for his parchment, so that everafter in the eyes of all Florence they seemed to bear the marks ofthe poet's hate of their wickedness. It was people of this sort, grandees of the town, Browning fancies, who again "hinder loving, "breaking in upon the poet and seizing him unawares forsooth at thisintimate moment of loving artistry. "Chancing to turn my head, "Dante continues, "I perceived that some were standing beside me towhom I should have given courteous greeting, and that they wereobserving what I did: also I learned afterwards that they had beenthere a while before I perceived them. " The tender moment was over. He stopped the painting, simply saying, "Another was with me. " 74. He who smites the rock: Moses, whose experience in smiting therock for water (Exodus 17. 1-7; Numbers 20. 1-11) is likened to thesorrow of the artist, serving a reckless world. 97. Sinai-forehead's . . . Brilliance: Exodus 19. 9, 16; 34. 30. 101. Jethro's daughter: Moses' wife, Zipporah (Exodus 2. 16, 21). 102. AEthiopian bondslave: Numbers 12. 1. 122. Liberal hand: the free hand of the fresco-painter cramped to dothe exquisite little designs fit for the missal marge = margin of aPrayer-book. 150. Samminiato: San Miniato, a church in Florence. 161. Turn a new side, etc. : the side turned away from the earthwhich our world never sees. 163. Zoroaster: (589-513 B. C. ), founder of the Persian religion, and worshipper of light, whose habit it was to observe the heavensfrom his terrace, 164. Galileo: (1564-1642), constructor of the first telescope, leading him to discover that the Milky Way was an assemblage ofstarry worlds, and the earth a planet revolving on its axis andabout an orbit, for which opinion he was tried and condemned. Whenforced to retire from his professorship at Padua, he continued hisobservations from his own house in Florence. 164. Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats: Homer celebrates the moon in the"Hymn to Diana" (see Shelley's translation), and makes Artemisupbraid her brother Phoebus when he claims that it is not meet forgods to concern themselves with mortals (Iliad, xxi. 470). Keats, in "Endymion, " sings of her love for a mortal. 174. Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, etc. : Exodus 24. 1, 10.