Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, —

  But, flinging (so to speak) life’s gates too wide,

  Making a clear house of it too suddenly,

  The first conceit that entered might inscribe

  Whatever it was minded on the wall

  So plainly at that vantage, as it were,

  (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent

  Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls

  The just-returned and new-established soul

  Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart

  That henceforth she will read or these or none.

  And first — the man’s own firm conviction rests

  That he was dead (in fact they buried him)

  — That he was dead and then restored to life

  By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:

  — ’Sayeth, the same bade “Rise,” and he did rise.

  “Such cases are diurnal,” thou wilt cry.

  Not so this figment! — not, that such a fume,

  Instead of giving way to time and health,

  Should eat itself into the life of life,

  As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!

  For see, how he takes up the after-life.

  The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew,

  Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,

  The body’s habit wholly laudable,

  As much, indeed, beyond the common health

  As he were made and put aside to show.

  Think, could we penetrate by any drug

  And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,

  And bring it clear and fair, by three days’ sleep!

  Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?

  This grown man eyes the world now like a child.

  Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,

  Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,

  To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,

  Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the case, —

  He listened not except I spoke to him,

  But folded his two hands and let them talk,

  Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.

  And that’s a sample how his years must go.

  Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,

  Should find a treasure, — can he use the same

  With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,

  And take at once to his impoverished brain

  The sudden element that changes things,

  That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand

  And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?

  Is he not such an one as moves to mirth —

  Warily parsimonious, when no need,

  Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?

  All prudent counsel as to what befits

  The golden mean, is lost on such an one

  The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law.

  So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say,

  Increased beyond the fleshly faculty —

  Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,

  Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven:

  The man is witless of the size, the sum,

  The value in proportion of all things,

  Or whether it be little or be much.

  Discourse to him of prodigious armaments

  Assembled to besiege his city now,

  And of the passing of a mule with gourds —

  ‘Tis one! Then take it on the other side,

  Speak of some trifling fact — he will gaze rapt

  With stupor at its very littleness,

  (Far as I see) as if in that indeed

  He caught prodigious import, whole results;

  And so will turn to us the bystanders

  In ever the same stupor (note this point)

  That we too see not with his opened eyes.

  Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,

  Preposterously, at cross purposes.

  Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look

  For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,

  Or pretermission of the daily craft!

  While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child

  At play or in the school or laid asleep,

  Will startle him to an agony of fear,

  Exasperation, just as like. Demand

  The reason why — ”‘Tis but a word,” object —

  “A gesture” — he regards thee as our lord

  Who lived there in the pyramid alone

  Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,

  We both would unadvisedly recite

  Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his,

  Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst

  All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.

  Thou and the child have each a veil alike

  Thrown o’er your heads, from under which ye both

  Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match

  Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!

  He holds on firmly to some thread of life —

  (It is the life to lead perforcedly)

  Which runs across some vast distracting orb

  Of glory on either side that meagre thread,

  Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet —

  The spiritual life around the earthly life:

  The law of that is known to him as this,

  His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.

  So is the man perplext with impulses

  Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,

  Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,

  And not along, this black thread through the blaze —

  “It should be” baulked by “here it cannot be.”

  And oft the man’s soul springs into his face

  As if he saw again and heard again

  His sage that bade him “Rise” and he did rise.

  Something, a word, a tick of the blood within

  Admonishes: then back he sinks at once

  To ashes, who was very fire before,

  In sedulous recurrence to his trade

  Whereby he earneth him the daily bread;

  And studiously the humbler for that pride,

  Professedly the faultier that he knows

  God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life.

  Indeed the especial marking of the man

  Is prone submission to the heavenly will —

  Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.

  ‘Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last

  For that same death which must restore his being

  To equilibrium, body loosening soul

  Divorced even now by premature full growth:

  He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live

  So long as God please, and just how God please.

  He even seeketh not to please God more

  (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.

  Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach

  The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be,

  Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:

  How can he give his neighbour the real ground,

  His own conviction? Ardent as he is —

  Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old

  “Be it as God please” reassureth him.

  I probed the sore as thy disciple should:

  “How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness

  Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march

  To stamp out like a little spark thy town,

  Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?”

  He merely looked with his large eyes on me.

  The man is apathetic, you deduce?

  Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,

  Able and weak, affects the very brutes

  And birds — how say I? flowers of th
e field —

  As a wise workman recognizes tools

  In a master’s workshop, loving what they make.

  Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:

  Only impatient, let him do his best,

  At ignorance and carelessness and sin —

  An indignation which is promptly curbed:

  As when in certain travels I have feigned

  To be an ignoramus in our art

  According to some preconceived design,

  And happed to hear the land’s practitioners,

  Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,

  Prattle fantastically on disease,

  Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace!

  Thou wilt object — why have I not ere this

  Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene

  Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,

  Conferring with the frankness that befits?

  Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech

  Perished in a tumult many years ago,

  Accused, — our learning’s fate, — of wizardry,

  Rebellion, to the setting up a rule

  And creed prodigious as described to me.

  His death, which happened when the earthquake fell

  (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss

  To occult learning in our lord the sage

  Who lived there in the pyramid alone)

  Was wrought by the mad people — that’s their wont!

  On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,

  To his tried virtue, for miraculous help —

  How could he stop the earthquake? That’s their way!

  The other imputations must be lies:

  But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,

  In mere respect for any good man’s fame.

  (And after all, our patient Lazarus

  Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?

  Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech

  ‘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 ‘t awhile!

  — ’Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,

  Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,

  Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,

  And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,

  And must have so avouched himself, in fact,

  In hearing of this very Lazarus

  Who saith — but why all this of what he saith?

  Why write of trivial matters, things of price

  Calling at every moment for remark?

  I noticed on the margin of a pool

  Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,

  Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

  Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,

  Which, now that I review it, needs must seem

  Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!

  Nor I myself discern in what is writ

  Good cause for the peculiar interest

  And awe indeed this man has touched me with.

  Perhaps the journey’s end, the weariness

  Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:

  I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills

  Like an old lion’s cheek teeth. Out there came

  A moon made like a face with certain spots

  Multiform, manifold, and menacing:

  Then a wind rose behind me. So we met

  In this old sleepy town at unaware,

  The man and I. I send thee what is writ.

  Regard it as a chance, a matter risked

  To this ambiguous Syrian — he may lose,

  Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.

  Jerusalem’s repose shall make amends

  For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;

  Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

  The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?

  So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too —

  So, through the thunder comes a human voice

  Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here!

  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!

  Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,

  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,

  And thou must love me who have died for thee!”

  The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

  Mesmerism

  I.

  ALL I believed is true!

  I am able yet

  All I want, to get

  By a method as strange as new:

  Dare I trust the same to you?

  II.

  If at night, when doors are shut,

  And the wood-worm picks,

  And the death-watch ticks,

  And the bar has a flag of smut,

  And a cat’s in the water-butt —

  III.

  And the socket floats and flares,

  And the house-beams groan,

  And a foot unknown

  Is surmised on the garret-stairs,

  And the locks slip unawares —

  IV.

  And the spider, to serve his ends,

  By a sudden thread,

  Arms and legs outspread,

  On the table’s midst descends,

  Comes to find, God knows what friends! —

  V.

  If since eve drew in, I say,

  I have sat and brought

  (So to speak) my thought

  To bear on the woman away,

  Till I felt my hair turn grey —

  VI.

  Till I seemed to have and hold,

  In the vacancy

  ’Twixt the wall and me,

  From the hair-plait’s chestnut gold

  To the foot in its muslin fold —

  VII.

  Have and hold, then and there,

  Her, from head to foot,

  Breathing and mute,

  Passive and yet aware,

  In the grasp of my steady stare —

  VIII.

  Hold and have, there and then,

  All her body and soul

  That completes my Whole,

  All that women add to men,

  In the clutch of my steady ken —

  IX.

  Having and holding, till

  I imprint her fast

  On the void at last

  As the sun does whom he will

  By the calotypist’s skill —

  X.

  Then, — if my heart’s strength serve,

  And through all and each

  Of the veils I reach

  To her soul and never swerve,

  Knitting an iron nerve —

  XI.

  Command her soul to advance

  And inform the shape

  Which has made escape

  And before my countenance

  Answers me glance for glance —

  XII.

  I, still with a gesture fit

  Of my hands that best

  Do my soul’s behest,

  Pointing the power from it,

  While myself do steadfast sit —

  XIII.

  Steadfast and still the same

  On my object bent,

  While the hands give vent

  To my ardour and my aim

  And break into very flame —

  XIV.

  Then I reach, I must believe,

  Not her soul in vain,

  For to me again

  It reaches, and past retrieve

  Is wound in the toils I weave —

  XV.

  And must follow as I require,

  As befits a thrall,

  Bringing flesh and all,

  Essence and earth-attire,

  To the source of the tractile fire —


  XVI.

  Till the house called hers, not mine,

  With a growing weight

  Seems to suffocate

  If she break not its leaden line

  And escape from its close confine —

  XVII.

  Out of doors into the night!

  On to the maze

  Of the wild wood-ways,

  Not turning to left nor right

  From the pathway, blind with sight —

  XVIII.

  Making thro’ rain and wind

  O’er the broken shrubs,

  ’Twixt the stems and stubs,

  With a still, composed, strong mind,

  Nor a care for the world behind —

  XIX.

  Swifter and still more swift,

  As the crowding peace

  Doth to joy increase

  In the wide blind eyes uplift

  Thro’ the darkness and the drift!

  XX.

  While I — to the shape, I too

  Feel my soul dilate

  Nor a whit abate,

  And relax not a gesture due,

  As I see my belief come true —

  XXI.

  For, there! have I drawn or no

  Life to that lip?

  Do my fingers dip

  In a flame which again they throw

  On the cheek that breaks a-glow?

  XXII.

  Ha! was the hair so first?

  What, unfilleted,

  Made alive, and spread

  Through the void with a rich outburst,

  Chestnut gold-interspersed!

  XXTII.

  Like the doors of a casket-shrine,

  See, on either side,

  Her two arms divide

  Till the heart betwixt makes sign,

  Take me, for I am thine!

  XXIV.

  Now — now — the door is heard!

  Hark, the stairs! and near —

  Nearer — and here —

  Now! and at call the third

  She enters without a word.

  XXV.

  On doth she march and on

  To the fancied shape —

  It is, past escape,

  Herself, now — the dream is done

  And the shadow and she are one.

  XXVI.

  First I will pray. Do Thou

  That ownest the soul,

  Yet wilt grant control

  To another, nor disallow

  For a time, restrain me now!

  XXVII.

  I admonish me while I may,

  Not to squander guilt,

  Since require Thou wilt

  At my hand its price one day

  What the price is, who can say?

  A Serenade at the Villa

  I.

  THAT was I, you heard last night,

  When there rose no moon at all,

  Nor, to pierce the strained and tight

  Tent of heaven, a planet small:

  Life was dead and so was light.

  II.

  Not a twinkle from the fly,

  Not a glimmer from the worm;