Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)

by Robert Browning

  Finish the portrait out of hand – there, there,

  And throw him in another thing or two

  If he demurs; the whole should prove enough

  To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside,

  [240] What’s better and what’s all I care about,

  Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!

  Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,

  The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

  I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.

  I regret little, I would change still less.

  Since there my past life lies, why alter it?

  The very wrong to Francis! – it is true

  I took his coin, was tempted and complied,

  And built this house and sinned, and all is said.

  [250] My father and my mother died of want.

  Well, had I riches of my own? you see

  How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.

  They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:

  And I have laboured somewhat in my time

  And not been paid profusely. Some good son

  Paint my two hundred pictures – let him try!

  No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. Yes,

  You loved me quite enough, it seems tonight.

  This must suffice me here. What would one have?

  [260] In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance –

  Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,

  Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,

  For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me

  To cover – the three first without a wife,

  While I have mine! So – still they overcome

  Because there’s still Lucrezia, – as I choose.

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

  In a Year

  I

  Never any more,

  While I live,

  Need I hope to see his face

  As before.

  Once his love grown chill,

  Mine may strive:

  Bitterly we re-embrace,

  Single still.

  II

  Was it something said,

  [10] Something done,

  Vexed him? was it touch of hand,

  Turn of head?

  Strange! that very way

  Love begun: I as little understand

  Love’s decay.

  III

  When I sewed or drew,

  I recall

  How he looked as if I sung,

  [20] – Sweetly too.

  If I spoke a word,

  First of all

  Up his cheek the colour sprung,

  Then he heard.

  IV

  Sitting by my side,

  At my feet,

  So he breathed but air I breathed,

  Satisfied!

  I, too, at love’s brim

  [30] Touched the sweet:

  I would die if death bequeathed

  Sweet to him.

  V

  ‘Speak, I love thee best!’

  He exclaimed: ‘Let thy love my own foretell!’

  I confessed: ‘Clasp my heart on thine

  Now unblamed, Since upon thy soul as well

  [40] Hangeth mine!’

  VI

  Was it wrong to own,

  Being truth?

  Why should all the giving prove

  His alone?

  I had wealth and ease,

  Beauty, youth:

  Since my lover gave me love,

  I gave these.

  VII

  That was all I meant,

  [50] – To be just,

  And the passion I had raised,

  To content.

  Since he chose to change

  Gold for dust,

  If I gave him what he praised

  Was it strange?

  VIII

  Would he loved me yet,

  On and on,

  While I found some way undreamed

  [60] – Paid my debt!

  Gave more life and more,

  Till, all gone,

  He should smile ‘She never seemed

  Mine before.

  IX

  ‘What, she felt the while,

  Must I think?

  Love’s so different with us men!’

  He should smile:

  ‘Dying for my sake –

  [70] White and pink!

  Can’t we touch these bubbles then

  But they break?’

  X

  Dear, the pang is brief,

  Do thy part,

  Have thy pleasure! How perplexed

  Grows belief!

  Well, this cold clay clod

  Was man’s heart:

  Crumble it, and what comes next?

  [80] Is it God?

  Cleon

  ‘As certain also of your own poets have said’ –

  Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,

  Lily on lily, that o’erlace the sea,

  And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps ‘Greece’) –

  To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!

  They give thy letter to me, even now:

  I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.

  The master of thy galley still unlades

  Gift after gift; they block my court at last

  And pile themselves along its portico

  [10] Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee:

  And one white she-slave from the group dispersed

  Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work

  Pavement, at once my nation’s work and gift,

  Now covered with this settle-down of doves),

  One lyric woman, in her crocus vest

  Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands

  Commends to me the strainer and the cup

  Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.

  [20] Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence!

  For so shall men remark, in such an act

  Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,

  Thy recognition of the use of life;

  Nor call thy spirit barely adequate

  To help on life in straight ways, broad enough

  For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest.

  Thou, in the daily building of thy tower, –

  Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil,

  Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth,

  Or when the general work ’mid good acclaim

  [30] Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect, –

  Didst ne’er engage in work for mere work’s sake –

  Had’st ever in thy heart the luring hope

  Of some eventual rest a-top of it,

  Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed,

  Thou first of men mightst look out to the East:

  The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun.

  For this, I promise on thy festival

  To pour libation, looking o’er the sea,

  Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak

  [40] Thy great words, and describe thy royal face –

  Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most,

  Within the eventual element of calm.

  Thy letter’s first requirement meets me here.

  It is as thou hast heard: in one short life

  I, Cleon, have effected all those things

  Thou wonderingly dost enumerate.

  That epos on thy hundred plates of gold

  Is mine, – and also mine the little chant,

  So sure to rise from every fishing-bark

  [50] When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net.

  The image of the sun-god on the phare,

  Men turn from the sun’s self to see, is mine;

  The Poecile, o’er-storied its whole length,

  As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too.

 
I know the true proportions of a man

  And woman also, not observed before;

  And I have written three books on the soul,

  Proving absurd all written hitherto,

  And putting us to ignorance again.

  [60] For music, – why, I have combined the moods,

  Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine;

  Thus much the people know and recognize,

  Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not.

  We of these latter days, with greater mind

  Than our forerunners, since more composite,

  Look not so great, beside their simple way,

  To a judge who only sees one way at once,

  One mind-point and no other at a time, –

  Compares the small part of a man of us

  [70] With some whole man of the heroic age,

  Great in his way – not ours, nor meant for ours.

  And ours is greater, had we skill to know:

  For, what we call this life of men on earth,

  This sequence of the soul’s achievements here

  Being, as I find much reason to conceive,

  Intended to be viewed eventually

  As a great whole, not analysed to parts,

  But each part having reference to all, –

  How shall a certain part, pronounced complete,

  [80] Endure effacement by another part?

  Was the thing done? – then, what’s to do again?

  See, in the chequered pavement opposite,

  Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb,

  And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid –

  He did not overlay them, superimpose

  The new upon the old and blot it out,

  But laid them on a level in his work,

  Making at last a picture; there it lies.

  So, first the perfect separate forms were made,

  [90] The portions of mankind; and after, so,

  Occurred the combination of the same.

  For where had been a progress, otherwise?

  Mankind, made up of all the single men, –

  In such a synthesis the labour ends.

  Now mark me! those divine men of old time

  Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point

  The outside verge that rounds our faculty;

  And where they reached, who can do more than reach?

  It takes but little water just to touch

  [100] At some one point the inside of a sphere,

  And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest

  In due succession: but the finer air

  Which not so palpably nor obviously,

  Though no less universally, can touch

  The whole circumference of that emptied sphere,

  Fills it more fully than the water did;

  Holds thrice the weight of water in itself

  Resolved into a subtler element.

  And yet the vulgar call the sphere first full

  [110] Up to the visible height – and after, void;

  Not knowing air’s more hidden properties.

  And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus

  To vindicate his purpose in our life:

  Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?

  Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out,

  That he or other god descended here

  And, once for all, showed simultaneously

  What, in its nature, never can be shown,

  Piecemeal or in succession; – showed, I say,

  [120] The worth both absolute and relative

  Of all his children from the birth of time,

  His instruments for all appointed work.

  I now go on to image, – might we hear

  The judgement which should give the due to each,

  Show where the labour 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.

  [130] The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far,

  Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock;

  The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe;

  The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet;

  The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers;

  That young and tender crescent-moon, thy slave,

  Sleeping above her robe as buoyed by clouds,

  Refines upon the women of my youth.

  What, and the soul alone deteriorates?

  I have not chanted verse like Homer, no –

  [140] Nor swept string like Terpander, no – nor carved

  And painted men like Phidias and his friend:

  I am not great as they are, point by point.

  But I have entered into sympathy

  With these four, running these into one soul,

  Who, separate, ignored each other’s art.

  Say, is it nothing that I know them all?

  The wild flower was the larger; I have dashed

  Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup’s

  Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit,

  [150] And show a better flower if not so large:

  I stand myself. Refer this to the gods

  Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare

  (All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext

  That such a gift by chance lay in my hand,

  Discourse of lightly or depreciate?

  It might have fallen to another’s hand: what then?

  I pass too surely: let at least truth stay!

  And next, of what thou followest on to ask.

  This being with me as I declare, O king,

  [160] My works, in all these varicoloured kinds,

  So done by me, accepted so by men –

  Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men’s hearts)

  I must not be accounted to attain

  The very crown and proper end of life?

  Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up,

  I face death with success in my right hand:

  Whether I fear death less than dost thyself

  The fortunate of men? ‘For’ (writest thou)

  ‘Thou leavest much behind, while I leave naught.

  [170] Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing,

  The pictures men shall study; while my life,

  Complete and whole now in its power and joy,

  Dies altogether with my brain and arm,

  Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself?

  The brazen statue to o’erlook my grave,

  Set on the promontory which I named.

  And that – some supple courtier of my heir

  Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps,

  To fix the rope to, which best drags it down.

  [180] I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!’

  Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind.

  Is this apparent, when thou turn’st to muse

  Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief,

  That admiration grows as knowledge grows?

  That imperfection means perfection hid,

  Reserved in part, to grace the after-time?

  If, in the morning of philosophy,

  Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived,

  Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked

  [190] On all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird,

  Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage –

  Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced

  The perfectness of others yet unseen.

  Conceding which, – had Zeus then questioned thee

  ‘Shall I go on a step, improve on this,

  Do more for visible creatures than is done?’

  Thou wouldst have answered, ‘Ay, by making each

  Grow conscious in himself – b
y that alone.

  All’s perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock,

  [200] The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims

  And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight,

  Till life’s mechanics can no further go –

  And all this joy in natural life is put

  Like fire from off thy finger into each,

  So exquisitely perfect is the same.

  But ’tis pure fire, and they mere matter are;

  It has them, not they it: and so I choose

  For man, thy last premeditated work

  (If I might add a glory to the scheme)

  [210] That a third thing should stand apart from both,

  A quality arise within his soul,

  Which, intro-active, made to supervise

  And feel the force it has, may view itself,

  And so be happy.’ Man might live at first

  The animal life: but is there nothing more?

  In due time, let him critically learn

  How he lives; and, the more he gets to know

  Of his own life’s adaptabilities,

  The more joy-giving will his life become.

  [220] Thus man, who hath this quality, is best.

  But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said:

  ‘Let progress end at once, – man make no step

  Beyond the natural man, the better beast,

  Using his senses, not the sense of sense.’

  In man there’s failure, only since he left

  The lower and inconscious forms of life.

  We called it an advance, the rendering plain

  Man’s spirit might grow conscious of man’s life,

  And, by new lore so added to the old,

  [230] Take each step higher over the brute’s head.

  This grew the only life, the pleasure-house,

  Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul,

  Which whole surrounding flats of natural life

  Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to;

  A tower that crowns a country. But alas,

  The soul now climbs it just to perish there!

  For thence we have discovered (’tis no dream –

  We know this, which we had not else perceived)

  That there’s a world of capability

  [240] For joy, spread round about us, meant for us,

  Inviting us; and still the soul craves all,

  And still the flesh replies, ‘Take no jot more

  Than ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad!

  Nay, so much less as that fatigue has brought

  Deduction to it.’ We struggle, fain to enlarge

  Our bounded physical recipiency,

  Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,

  Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,

  It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,

  [250] As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.

  They praise a fountain in my garden here