Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

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Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 21

by Robert Browning


  Of this his problem) grew, that even-tide,

  Gigantic with its power of joy, beside

  The world’s eternity of impotence

  To profit though at his whole joy’s expense.

  “Make nothing of my day because so brief?

  “Rather make more: instead of joy, use grief

  “Before its novelty have time subside!

  “Wait not for the late savour, leave untried

  “Virtue, the creaming honey-wine, quick squeeze

  “Vice like a biting spirit from the lees

  “Of life! Together let wrath, hatred, lust,

  “All tyrannies in every shape, be thrust

  “Upon this Now, which time may reason out

  “As mischiefs, far from benefits, no doubt;

  “But long ere then Sordello will have slipt

  “Away; you teach him at Goito’s crypt,

  “There ‘s a blank issue to that fiery thrill.

  “Stirring, the few cope with the many, still:

  “So much of sand as, quiet, makes a mass

  “Unable to produce three tufts of grass,

  “Shall, troubled by the whirlwind, render void

  “The whole calm glebe’s endeavour: be employed!

  “And e’en though somewhat smart the Crowd for this,

  “Contribute each his pang to make your bliss,

  “‘T is but one pang — one blood-drop to the bowl

  “Which brimful tempts the sluggish asp uncowl

  “At last, stains ruddily the dull red cape,

  “And, kindling orbs grey as the unripe grape

  “Before, avails forthwith to disentrance

  “The portent, soon to lead a mystic dance

  “Among you! For, who sits alone in Rome?

  “Have those great hands indeed hewn out a home,

  “And set me there to live? Oh life, life-breath,

  “Life-blood, — ere sleep, come travail, life ere death!

  “This life stream on my soul, direct, oblique,

  “But always streaming! Hindrances? They pique:

  “Helps? such... but why repeat, my soul o’ertops

  “Each height, then every depth profoundlier drops?

  “Enough that I can live, and would live! Wait

  “For some transcendent life reserved by Fate

  “To follow this? Oh, never! Fate, I trust

  “The same, my soul to; for, as who flings dust,

  “Perchance (so facile was the deed) she chequed

  “The void with these materials to affect

  “My soul diversely: these consigned anew

  “To nought by death, what marvel if she threw

  “A second and superber spectacle

  “Before me? What may serve for sun, what still

  “Wander a moon above me? What else wind

  “About me like the pleasures left behind,

  “And how shall some new flesh that is not flesh

  “Cling to me? What ‘s new laughter? Soothes the fresh

  “Sleep like sleep? Fate ‘s exhaustless for my sake

  “In brave resource: but whether bids she slake

  “My thirst at this first rivulet, or count

  “No draught worth lip save from some rocky fount

  “Above i’ the clouds, while here she ‘s provident

  “Of pure loquacious pearl, the soft tree-tent

  “Guards, with its face of reate and sedge, nor fail

  “The silver globules and gold-sparkling grail

  “At bottom? Oh, ‘t were too absurd to slight

  “For the hereafter the to-day’s delight!

  “Quench thirst at this, then seek next well-spring: wear

  “Home-lilies ere strange lotus in my hair!

  “Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart

  “Offer to serve, contented for my part

  “To give life up in service, — only grant

  “That I do serve; if otherwise, why want

  “Aught further of me? If men cannot choose

  “But set aside life, why should I refuse

  “The gift? I take it — I, for one, engage

  “Never to falter through my pilgrimage —

  “Nor end it howling that the stock or stone

  “Were enviable, truly: I, for one,

  “Will praise the world, you style mere anteroom

  “To palace — be it so! shall I assume

  “ — My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope,

  “My mouth the smirk, before the doors fly ope

  “One moment? What? with guarders row on row,

  “Gay swarms of varletry that come and go,

  “Pages to dice with, waiting-girls unlace

  “The plackets of, pert claimants help displace,

  “Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for, — laugh

  “At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff

  “‘Cross Beetle-brows the Usher’s shoulder, — why

  “Admitted to the presence by and by,

  “Should thought of having lost these make me grieve

  “Among new joys I reach, for joys I leave?

  “Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone,

  “Are floor-work there! But do I let alone

  “That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule

  “Once and for ever? — Floor-work? No such fool!

  “Rather, were heaven to forestall earth, I ‘d say

  “I, is it, must be blest? Then, my own way

  “Bless me! Giver firmer arm and fleeter foot,

  “I ‘ll thank you: but to no mad wings transmute

  “These limbs of mine — our greensward was so soft!

  “Nor camp I on the thunder-cloud aloft:

  “We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus

  “Engines subservient, not mixed up with us.

  “Better move palpably through heaven: nor, freed

  “Of flesh, forsooth, from space to space proceed

  “‘Mid flying synods of worlds! No: in heaven’s marge

  “Show Titan still, recumbent o’er his targe

  “Solid with stars — the Centaur at his game,

  “Made tremulously out in hoary flame!

  “Life! Yet the very cup whose extreme dull

  “Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full,

  “Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed

  “So oft a better life this life concealed,

  “And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path

  “Have hunted fearlessly — the horrid bath,

  “The crippling-irons and the fiery chair.

  “‘T was well for them; let me become aware

  “As they, and I relinquish life, too! Let

  “What masters life disclose itself! Forget

  “Vain ordinances, I have one appeal —

  “I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel;

  “So much is truth to me. What Is, then? Since

  “One object, viewed diversely, may evince

  “Beauty and ugliness — this way attract,

  “That way repel, — why gloze upon the fact?

  “Why must a single of the sides be right?

  “What bids choose this and leave the opposite?

  “Where ‘s abstract Right for me? — in youth endued

  “With Right still present, still to be pursued,

  “Thro’ all the interchange of circles, rife

  “Each with its proper law and mode of life,

  “Each to be dwelt at ease in: where, to sway

  “Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey

  “Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart,

  “Or, like a sudden thought of God’s, to start

  “Up, Brutus in the presence, then go shout

  “That some should pick the unstrung jewels out —

  “Each, well!”

  And, as in moments when the past

  Gave part
ially enfranchisement, he cast

  Himself quite through mere secondary states

  Of his soul’s essence, little loves and hates,

  Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid

  By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade,

  And on into the very nucleus probe

  That first determined there exist a globe.

  As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved,

  So seemed Sordello’s closing-truth evolved

  By his flesh-half’s break-up; the sudden swell

  Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well,

  Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness,

  Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less,

  All qualities, in fine, recorded here,

  Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere,

  Urgent on these, but not of force to bind

  Eternity, as Time — as Matter — Mind,

  If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert

  Their attributes within a Life: thus girt

  With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct

  Quite otherwise — with Good and Ill distinct,

  Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result —

  Contrived to render easy, difficult,

  This or the other course of... what new bond

  In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond

  Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good

  To its arrangements. Once this understood,

  As suddenly he felt himself alone,

  Quite out of Time and this world: all was known.

  What made the secret of his past despair?

  — Most imminent when he seemed most aware

  Of his own self-sufficiency: made mad

  By craving to expand the power he had,

  And not new power to be expanded? — just

  This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust,

  Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time

  On Matter: let the Soul’s attempt sublime

  Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent

  By more or less that deed’s accomplishment,

  And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid?

  Let the employer match the thing employed,

  Fit to the finite his infinity,

  And thus proceed for ever, in degree

  Changed but in kind the same, still limited

  To the appointed circumstance and dead

  To all beyond. A sphere is but a sphere;

  Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here;

  Since to the spirit’s absoluteness all

  Are like. Now, of the present sphere we call

  Life, are conditions; take but this among

  Many; the body was to be so long

  Youthful, no longer: but, since no control

  Tied to that body’s purposes his soul,

  She chose to understand the body’s trade

  More than the body’s self — had fain conveyed

  Her boundless to the body’s bounded lot.

  Hence, the soul permanent, the body not, —

  Scarcely its minute for enjoying here, —

  The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer,

  Run o’er its capabilities and wring

  A joy thence, she held worth experiencing:

  Which, far from half discovered even, — lo,

  The minute gone, the body’s power let go

  Apportioned to that joy’s acquirement! Broke

  Morning o’er earth, he yearned for all it woke —

  From the volcano’s vapour-flag, winds hoist

  Black o’er the spread of sea, — down to the moist

  Dale’s silken barley-spikes sullied with rain,

  Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again —

  The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great

  To the soul’s absoluteness. Meditate

  Too long on such a morning’s cluster-chord

  And the whole music it was framed afford, —

  The chord’s might half discovered, what should pluck

  One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck.

  And then no marvel if the spirit, shown

  A saddest sight — the body lost alone

  Through her officious proffered help, deprived

  Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived, —

  Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence, —

  Vain-gloriously were fain, for recompense,

  To stem the ruin even yet, protract

  The body’s term, supply the power it lacked

  From her infinity, compel it learn

  These qualities were only Time’s concern,

  And body may, with spirit helping, barred —

  Advance the same, vanquished — obtain reward,

  Reap joy where sorrow was intended grow,

  Of Wrong make Right, and turn Ill Good below.

  And the result is, the poor body soon

  Sinks under what was meant a wondrous boon,

  Leaving its bright accomplice all aghast.

  So much was plain then, proper in the past;

  To be complete for, satisfy the whole

  Series of spheres — Eternity, his soul

  Needs must exceed, prove incomplete for, each

  Single sphere — Time. But does our knowledge reach

  No farther? Is the cloud of hindrance broke

  But by the failing of the fleshly yoke,

  Its loves and hates, as now when death lets soar

  Sordello, self-sufficient as before,

  Though during the mere space that shall elapse

  ‘Twixt his enthralment in new bonds perhaps?

  Must life be ever just escaped, which should

  Have been enjoyed? — nay, might have been and would,

  Each purpose ordered right — the soul ‘s no whit

  Beyond the body’s purpose under it.

  Like yonder breadth of watery heaven, a bay,

  And that sky-space of water, ray for ray

  And star for star, one richness where they mixed

  As this and that wing of an angel, fixed,

  Tumultuary splendours folded in

  To die — would soul, proportioned thus, begin

  Exciting discontent, or surelier quell

  The body if, aspiring, it rebel?

  But how so order life? Still brutalize

  The soul, the sad world’s way, with muffled eyes

  To all that was before, all that shall be

  After this sphere — all and each quality

  Save some sole and immutable Great, Good

  And Beauteous whither fate has loosed its hood

  To follow? Never may some soul see All

  — The Great Before and After, and the Small

  Now, yet be saved by this the simplest lore,

  And take the single course prescribed before,

  As the king-bird with ages on his plumes

  Travels to die in his ancestral glooms?

  But where descry the Love that shall select

  That course? Here is a soul whom, to affect,

  Nature has plied with all her means, from trees

  And flowers e’en to the Multitude! — and these,

  Decides he save or no? One word to end!

  Ah my Sordello, I this once befriend

  And speak for you. Of a Power above you still

  Which, utterly incomprehensible,

  Is out of rivalry, which thus you can

  Love, tho’ unloving all conceived by man —

  What need! And of — none the minutest duct

  To that out-nature, nought that would instruct

  And so let rivalry begin to live —

  But of a Power its representative

  Who, being for authority the same,

  Communication different, should claim

  A course, the first chose but this last revealed —

  This Human clear, as
that Divine concealed —

  What utter need!

  What has Sordello found?

  Or can his spirit go the mighty round,

  End where poor Eglamor begun? So, says

  Old fable, the two eagles went two ways

  About the world: where, in the midst, they met,

  Though on a shifting waste of sand, men set

  Jove’s temple. Quick, what has Sordello found?

  For they approach — approach — that foot’s rebound

  Palma? No, Salinguerra though in mail;

  They mount, have reached the threshold, dash the veil

  Aside — and you divine who sat there dead,

  Under his foot the badge: still, Palma said,

  A triumph lingering in the wide eyes,

  Wider than some spent swimmer’s if he spies

  Help from above in his extreme despair,

  And, head far back on shoulder thrust, turns there

  With short quick passionate cry: as Palma pressed

  In one great kiss, her lips upon his breast,

  It beat.

  By this, the hermit-bee has stopped

  His day’s toil at Goito: the new-cropped

  Dead vine-leaf answers, now ‘t is eve, he bit,

  Twirled so, and filed all day: the mansion ‘s fit,

  God counselled for. As easy guess the word

  That passed betwixt them, and become the third

  To the soft small unfrighted bee, as tax

  Him with one fault — so, no remembrance racks

  Of the stone maidens and the font of stone

  He, creeping through the crevice, leaves alone.

  Alas, my friend, alas Sordello, whom

  Anon they laid within that old font-tomb,

  And, yet again, alas!

  And now is ‘t worth

  Our while bring back to mind, much less set forth

  How Salinguerra extricates himself

  Without Sordello? Ghibellin and Guelf

  May fight their fiercest out? If Richard sulked

  In durance or the Marquis paid his mulct,

  Who cares, Sordello gone? The upshot, sure,

  Was peace; our chief made some frank overture

  That prospered; compliment fell thick and fast

  On its disposer, and Taurello passed

  With foe and friend for an outstripping soul,

  Nine days at least. Then, — fairly reached the goal, —

  He, by one effort, blotted the great hope

  Out of his mind, nor further tried to cope

  With Este, that mad evening’s style, but sent

  Away the Legate and the League, content

  No blame at least the brothers had incurred,

  — Dispatched a message to the Monk, he heard

  Patiently first to last, scarce shivered at,

  Then curled his limbs up on his wolfskin mat

  And ne’er spoke more, — informed the Ferrarese

 

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