Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  “Wilt thou fall at the very last

  “Breathless, half in trance

  “With the thrill of the great deliverance,

  “Into our arms for evermore;

  “And thou shalt know, those arms once curled

  “About thee, what we knew before,

  “How love is the only good in the world.

  “Henceforth be loved as heart can love,

  “Or brain devise, or hand approve!

  “Stand up, look below,

  “It is our life at thy feet we throw

  “To step with into light and joy;

  “Not a power of life but we employ

  “To satisfy thy nature’s want;

  “Art thou the tree that props the plant,

  “Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree —

  “Canst thou help us, must we help thee?

  “If any two creatures grew into one,

  “They would do more than the world has done.

  “Though each apart were never so weak,

  “Ye vainly through the world should seek

  “For the knowledge and the might

  “Which in such union grew their right:

  “So, to approach at least that end,

  “And blend, — as much as may be, blend

  “Thee with us or us with thee,

  “As climbing plant or propping tree,

  “Shall some one deck thee, over and down,

  “Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?

  “Fix his heart’s fruit for thy garland crown,

  “Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,

  “Die on thy boughs and disappear

  “While not a leaf of thine is sere?

  “Or is the other fate in store,

  “And art thou fitted to adore,

  “To give thy wondrous self away,

  “And take a stronger nature’s sway?

  “I foresee and could foretell

  “Thy future portion, sure and well —

  “But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,

  “Let them say what thou shalt do!

  “Only be sure thy daily life,

  “In its peace or in its strife,

  “Never shall be unobserved:

  “We pursue thy whole career,

  “And hope for it, or doubt, or fear, —

  “Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,

  “We are beside thee in all thy ways,

  “With our blame, with our praise,

  “Our shame to feel, our pride to show,

  “Glad, angry — but indifferent, no!

  “Whether it be thy lot to go,

  “For the good of us all, where the haters meet

  “In the crowded city’s horrible street;

  “Or thou step alone through the morass

  “Where never sound yet was

  “Save the dry quick clap of the stork’s bill,

  “For the air is still, and the water still,

  “When the blue breast of the dipping coot

  “Dives under, and all is mute.

  “So, at the last shall come old age,

  “Decrepit as befits that stage;

  “How else wouldst thou retire apart

  “With the hoarded memories of thy heart,

  “And gather all to the very least

  “Of the fragments of life’s earlier feast,

  “Let fall through eagerness to find

  “The crowning dainties yet behind?

  “Ponder on the entire past

  “Laid together thus at last,

  “When the twilight helps to fuse

  “The first fresh with the faded hues,

  “And the outline of the whole,

  “As round eve’s shades their framework roll,

  “Grandly fronts for once thy soul.

  “And then as, ‘mid the dark, a glean

  “Of yet another morning breaks,

  “And like the hand which ends a dream,

  “Death, with the might of his sunbeam,

  “Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,

  “Then — ”

  Ay, then indeed something would happen!

  But what? For here her voice changed like a bird’s;

  There grew more of the music and less of the words;

  Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen

  To paper and put you down every syllable

  With those clever clerkly fingers,

  All I’ve forgotten as well as what lingers

  In this old brain of mine that’s but ill able

  To give you even this poor version

  Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering

  — More fault of those who had the hammering

  Of prosody into me and syntax,

  And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!

  But to return from this excursion, —

  Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,

  The peace most deep and the charm completest,

  There came, shall I say, a snap —

  And the charm vanished!

  And my sense returned, so strangely banished,

  And, starting as from a nap,

  I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,

  With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I

  Down from the casement, round to the portal,

  Another minute and I had entered, —

  When the door opened, and more than mortal

  Stood, with a face where to my mind centred

  All beauties I ever saw or shall see,

  The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.

  She was so different, happy and beautiful,

  I felt at once that all was best,

  And that I had nothing to do, for the rest,

  But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.

  Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;

  I saw the glory of her eye,

  And the brow’s height and the breast’s expanding,

  And I was hers to live or to die.

  As for finding what she wanted,

  You know God Almighty granted

  Such little signs should serve wild creatures

  To tell one another all their desires,

  So that each knows what his friend requires,

  And does its bidding without teachers.

  I preceded her; the crone

  Followed silent and alone;

  I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered

  In the old style; both her eyes had slunk

  Back to their pits; her stature shrunk;

  In short, the soul in its body sunk

  Like a blade sent home to its scabbard.

  We descended, I preceding;

  Crossed the court with nobody heeding,

  All the world was at the chase,

  The courtyard like a desert-place,

  The stable emptied of its small fry;

  I saddled myself the very palfrey

  I remember patting while it carried her,

  The day she arrived and the Duke married her.

  And, do you know, though it’s easy deceiving

  Oneself in such matters, I can’t help believing

  The lady had not forgotten it either,

  And knew the poor devil so much beneath her

  Would have been only too glad for her service

  To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,

  But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it,

  Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it:

  For though the moment I began setting

  His saddle on my own nag of Berold’s begetting,

  (Not that I meant to be obtrusive)

  She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,

  By a single rapid finger’s lifting,

  And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,

  And a little shake of the head, refused me, —

  I sa
y, although she never used me,

  Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,

  And I ventured to remind her,

  I suppose with a voice of less steadiness

  Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,

  — Something to the effect that I was in readiness

  Whenever God should please she needed me, —

  Then, do you know, her face looked down on me

  With a look that placed a crown on me,

  And she felt in her bosom, — mark, her bosom —

  And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,

  Dropped me — ah, had it been a purse

  Of silver, my friend, or gold that’s worse,

  Why, you see, as soon as I found myself

  So understood, — that a true heart so may gain

  Such a reward, — I should have gone home again,

  Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!

  It was a little plait of hair

  Such as friends in a convent make

  To wear, each for the other’s sake, —

  This, see, which at my breast I wear,

  Ever did (rather to Jacynth’s grudgment),

  And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.

  And then, — and then, — to cut short, — this is idle,

  These are feelings it is not good to foster, —

  I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,

  And the palfrey bounded, — and so we lost her.

  XVI.

  When the liquor’s out, why clink the cannakin?

  I did think to describe you the panic in

  The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin,

  And what was the pitch of his mother’s yellowness,

  How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib

  Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,

  When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness —

  But it seems such child’s play,

  What they said and did with the lady away!

  And to dance on, when we’ve lost the music,

  Always made me — and no doubt makes you — sick.

  Nay, to my mind, the world’s face looked so stern

  As that sweet form disappeared through the postern,

  She that kept it in constant good humour,

  It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.

  But the world thought otherwise and went on,

  And my head’s one that its spite was spent on:

  Thirty years are fled since that morning,

  And with them all my head’s adorning.

  Nor did the old Duchess die outright,

  As you expect, of suppressed spite,

  The natural end of every adder

  Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder:

  But she and her son agreed, I take it,

  That no one should touch on the story to wake it,

  For the wound in the Duke’s pride rankled fiery,

  So, they made no search and small inquiry —

  And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I’ve

  Noticed the couple were never inquisitive,

  But told them they’re folks the Duke don’t want here,

  And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.

  Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,

  And the old one was in the young one’s stead,

  And took, in her place, the household’s head,

  And a blessed time the household had of it!

  And were I not, as a man may say, cautious

  How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,

  I could favour you with sundry touches

  Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess

  Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness

  (To get on faster) until at last her

  Cheek grew to be one master-plaster

  Of mucus and focus from mere use of ceruse

  In short, she grew from scalp to udder

  Just the object to make you shudder.

  XVII.

  You’re my friend —

  What a thing friendship is, world without end!

  How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up

  As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,

  And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,

  Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,

  Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids —

  Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids;

  Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, —

  Gives your life’s hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts

  Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees

  Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease!

  I have seen my little Lady once more,

  Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,

  For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;

  I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:

  And now it is made — why, my heart’s blood, that went trickle,

  Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,

  Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,

  And genially floats me about the giblets.

  I’ll tell you what I intend to do:

  I must see this fellow his sad life thro’

  — He is our Duke, after all,

  And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.

  My father was born here, and I inherit

  His fame, a chain he bound his son with;

  Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,

  But there’s no mine to blow up and get done with:

  So, I must stay till the end of the chapter:

  For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,

  Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,

  Some day or other, his head in a morion

  And breast in a hauberk, his heels he’ll kick up,

  Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.

  And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,

  And its leathern sheath lie o’ergrown with a blue crust,

  Then I shall scrape together my earnings;

  For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes,

  And our children all went the way of the roses —

  It’s a long lane that knows no turnings —

  One needs but little tackle to travel in;

  So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:

  And for a stall, what beats the javelin

  With which his boars my father pinned you?

  And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,

  Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,

  I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!

  Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.

  What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all;

  Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.

  When we mind labour, then only, we’re too old —

  What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?

  And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,

  (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)

  I hope to get safely out of the turmoil

  And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,

  And find my lady, or hear the last news of her

  From some old thief and son of Lucifer,

  His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,

  Sunburned all over like an Æthiop:

  And when my Cotnar begins to operate

  And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,

  And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,

  I shall drop in with — as if by accident —

  “You never knew, then, how it all ended,

  “What fortune good or bad attended

  “The little lady your Queen befriended?”

  — And wh
en that’s told me, what’s remaining?

  This world’s too hard for my explaining —

  The same wise judge of matters equine

  Who still preferred some slim four-year-old

  To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold,

  And for strong Cotnar drank French weak wine,

  He also must be such a lady’s scorner!

  Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau:

  Now up, now down, the world’s one see-saw.

  — So, I shall find out some snug corner

  Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,

  Turn myself round and bid the world good night;

  And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet’s blowing

  Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)

  To a world where will be no furtiner throwing

  Pearls before swine that can’t value them. Amen!

  Earth’s Immortalities

  Fame

  SEE, as the prettiest graves will do in time,

  Our poet’s wants the freshness of its prime;

  Spite of the sexton’s browsing horse, the sods

  Have struggled thro’ its binding osier-rods;

  Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry,

  Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by;

  How the minute grey lichens, plate o’er plate,

  Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date!

  Love

  So, the year’s done with

  (Love me for ever!)

  All March begun with,

  April’s endeavour;

  May-wreaths that bound me

  June needs must sever;

  Now snows fall round me,

  Quenching June’s fever —

  (Love me for ever!)

  Song

  I.

  NAY but you, who do not love her,

  Is she not pure gold, my mistress?

  Holds earth aught — speak truth — above her?

  Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,

  And this last fairest tress of all,

  So fair, see, ere I let it fall?

  II.

  Because, you spend your lives in praising;

  To praise, you search the wide world over;

  Then why not witness, calmly gazing,

  If earth holds aught — speak truth — above her?

  Above this tress, and this, I touch

  But cannot praise, I love so much!

  The Boy and the Angel

  MORNING, evening, noon and night,

  “Praise God!; sang Theocrite.

  Then to his poor trade he turned,

  Whereby the daily meal was earned.

  Hard he laboured, long and well;

  O’er his work the boy’s curls fell:

  But ever, at each period,

  He stopped and sang, “Praise God!”

  Then back again his curls he threw,

  And cheerful turned to work anew.

  Said Blaise, the listening monk, “Well done;