Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Clear the desk-velvet of dust.)

  Here’s you book, younger folks shelve!

  Played I not off-hand and runningly,

  Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve?

  Here’s what should strike, could one handle it cunningly:

  Help the axe, give it a helve!

  Page after page as I played,

  Every bar’s rest, where one wipes

  Sweat from one’s brow, I looked up and surveyed,

  O’er my three claviers, yon forest of pipes

  Whence you still peeped in the shade.

  Sure you were wishful to speak,

  You, with brow ruled like a score,

  Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek,

  Like two great breves, as they wrote them of yore,

  Each side that bar, your straight beak!

  Sure you said — ”Good, the mere notes!

  ”Still, couldst thou take my intent,

  “Know what procured me our Company’s votes —

  ”A master were lauded and sciolists shent,

  “Parted the sheep from the goats!”

  Well then, speak up, never flinch!

  Quick, ere my candle’s a snuff

  — Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch —

  I believe in you, but that’s not enough:

  Give my conviction a clinch!

  First you deliver your phrase

  — Nothing propound, that I see,

  Fit in itself for much blame or much praise —

  Answered no less, where no answer needs be:

  Off start the Two on their ways.

  Straight must a Third interpose,

  Volunteer needlessly help;

  In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,

  So the cry’s open, the kennel’s a-yelp,

  Argument’s hot to the close.

  One dissertates, he is candid;

  Two must discept, — has distinguished;

  Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;

  Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished:

  Back to One, goes the case bandied.

  One says his say with a difference;

  More of expounding, explaining!

  All now is wrangle, abuse and vociferance;

  Now there’s a truce, all’s subdued, self-restraining;

  Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

  One is incisive, corrosive;

  Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;

  Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;

  Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:

  Five. . . O Danaides, O Sieve!

  Now, they ply axes and crowbars;

  Now, they prick pins at a tissue

  Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s

  Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?

  Where is our gain at the two-bars?

  Est fuga, volitur rota.

  One we drift: where looms the dim port?

  One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;

  Something is gained, if one caught but the import —

  Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!

  What with affirming, denying,

  Holding, risposting, subjoining,

  All’s like. . . it’s like. . . for an instant I’m trying. . .

  There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining

  Under those spider-webs lying!

  So your fugue broadens and thickens,

  Greatens and deepens and lengthens,

  Till we exclaim — ”But where’s the music, the dickens?

  ”Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens

  “ — Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?”

  I for man’s effort am zealous:

  Prove me such censure unfounded!

  Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous -

  Hopes ‘t was for something, his organ-pipes sounded,

  Tiring three boys at the bellows?

  Is it your moral of life?

  Such a web, simple and subtle,

  Weave we in earth here in impotent strife,

  Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,

  Death ending all with a knife?

  Over our heads truth and nature —

  Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,

  Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature —

  God’s gold just shining its last where that lodges,

  Palled beneath man’s usurpature.

  So we o’ershroud stars and roses,

  Cherub and trophy and garland;

  Nothings grow something which quietly closes

  Heaven’s earnest eye: not a glimpse of the far land

  Gets through our comments and glozes.

  Ah but traditions, inventions,

  (Say we and make up a visage)

  So many men with such various intentions,

  Down the past ages, must know more than this age!

  Leave we the web its dimensions!

  Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,

  Proved a mere mountain in labour?

  Better submit; try again; what’s the clef?

  ’Faith, ‘t is no trifle for pipe and for tabor —

  Four flats, the minor in F.

  Friend, your fugue taxes the finger:

  Learning it once, who would lose it?

  Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,

  Truth’s golden o’er us although we refuse it —

  Nature, thro’ cobwebs we string her.

  Hugues! I advise meâ poenâ

  (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)

  Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!

  Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,

  Blare out the mode Palestrina.

  While in the roof, if I’m right there,

  . . . Lo you, the wick in the socket!

  Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!

  Down it dips, gone like a rocket.

  What, you want, do you, to come unawares,

  Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,

  And find a poor devil has ended his cares

  At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?

  Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

  Bishop Blougram’s Apology

  NO more wine? then we’ll push back chairs and talk.

  A final glass for me, tho’; cool, i’faith!

  We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.

  It’s different, preaching in basilicas,

  And doing duty in some masterpiece

  Like 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

  Cost 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 ‘tis our engagement: don’t you know,

  I promised, if you’d watch a dinner out,

  We’d see truth dawn together? — truth that peeps

  Over the glasses’ edge when dinner’s done,

  And body gets its sop and holds its noise

  And leaves soul free a little. Now’s the time —

  ‘T is break of day! You do despise me then.

  And if I say, “despise me,” — never fear —

  I know you do not in a certain sense —

  Not in my arm-chair, for example: here,

  I well imagine you respect my place

  ( Status, entourage, worldly circumstance)

  Quite to its value — very much indeed:

  — Are up to the protesting eyes of you

  In pride at being seated
here for once —

  You’ll turn it to such capital account!

  When 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 seen

  Something of mine he relished, some review:

  He’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!”

  Che ch’é, 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

  Is 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

  Never 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 reached

  My 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,

  Because 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 Pope

  At 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 less

  I boast of my ideal realized,

  Is nothing in the balance when opposed

  To 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 life

  Provided it could be, — but, finding first

  What may be, then find how to make it fair

  Up to our means: a very different thing!

  No abstract intellectual plan of life

  Quite 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

  Each 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 list

  Of 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

  They 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!

  ‘Twere pleasant could Correggio’s fleeting glow

  Hang full in face of one where’er one roams,

  Since he more than the others brings with him

  Italy’s self, — the marvellous Modenese!

  Yet ‘twas not on your list before, perhaps.

  — Alas, friend, here’s the agent . . . is’t the name?

  The captain, or whoever’s master here —

  You see him screw his face up; what’s his cry

  Ere 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 overhauls

  Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board

  Bare — why, you cut a figure at the first

  While sympathetic landsmen see you off;

  Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,

  You peep up from your utterly naked boards

  Into 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!”

  And meantime you bring nothing: never mind —

  You’ve proved your artist-nature: what you don’t

  You 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; criticize!

  What’s wrong? why won’t you be a bishop too?

  Why first, you don’t believe, you don’t and can’t,

  (Not statedly, that is, and fixedly

  And absolutely and exclusively)

  In any revelation called divine.

  No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains

  But 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.

  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 lie

  I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,

  So give up hope accordingly to solve —

  (To you, and over the wine). Our dogmas then

  With both of us, though in unlike degree,

  Missing full credence — overboard with them!

  I mean t
o 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 fixed

  To-day, to-morrow and for ever, 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’s

  The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,

  Make 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 fears

  As 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.

  There 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 hit

  Some sense, in which it might be, after all.

  Why not, “The Way, the Truth, the Life?”

  — That way

  Over the mountain, which who stands upon

  Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;

  While, if he views it from the waste itself,

  Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,

  Not vague, mistakeable! what’s a break or two

  Seen from the unbroken desert either side?

  And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)

  What if the breaks themselves should prove at last

  The most consummate of contrivances

  To 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 unbelief

  Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,

  For 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 colours on the board:

  Why not confess then, where I drop the faith

  And 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 unbelief

  Left to a man’s choice, — we’ll proceed a step,

  Returning to our image, which I like.

  A man’s choice, yes — but a cabin-passenger’s —

  The man made for the special life o’ the world —