Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Is, whether you’re — not grateful — but more pleased.

  Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!

  This hour has been an hour! Another smile?

  If you would sit thus by me every night

  I should work better, do you comprehend?

  I mean that I should earn more, give you more.

  See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star;

  Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall,

  The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.

  Come from the window, love, — come in, at last,

  Inside the melancholy little house

  We built to be so gay with. God is just.

  King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights

  When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,

  The walls become illumined, brick from brick

  Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,

  That gold of his I did cement them with!

  Let us but love each other. Must you go?

  That Cousin here again? he waits outside?

  Must see you — you, and not with me? Those loans?

  More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?

  Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?

  While hand and eye and something of a heart

  Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth?

  I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit

  The grey remainder of the evening out,

  Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly

  How I could paint, were I but back in France,

  One picture, just one more — the Virgin’s face,

  Not yours this time! I want you at my side

  To hear them — that is, Michel Agnolo —

  Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.

  Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.

  I take the subjects for his corridor,

  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,

  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 to-night.

  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.

  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 to-night.

  This must suffice me here. What would one have?

  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.

  Before

  I.

  LET them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far.

  God must judge the couple: leave them as they are

  — Whichever one’s the guiltless, to his glory,

  And whichever one the guilt’s with, to my story!

  II.

  Why, you would not bid men, sunk in such a slough,

  Strike no arm out further, stick and stink as now,

  Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,

  Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoilment?

  III.

  Who’s the culprit of them? How must he conceive

  God — the queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve,

  ‘Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her:

  Still, one must not be too much in earnest, either!

  IV.

  Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes;

  Then go live his life out! Life will try his nerves,

  When the sky, which noticed all, makes no disclosure,

  And the earth keeps up her terrible composure.

  V.

  Let him pace at pleasure, past the walls of rose,

  Pluck their fruits when grape-trees graze him as he goes!

  For he ‘gins to guess the purpose of the garden,

  With the sly mute thing, beside there, for a warden.

  VI.

  What’s the leopard-dog-thing, constant at his side,

  A leer and lie in every eye of its obsequious hide?

  When will come an end to all the mock obeisance,

  And the price appear that pays for the misfeasance?

  VII.

  So much for the culprit. Who’s the martyred man?

  Let him bear one stroke more, for be sure he can!

  He that strove thus evil’s lump with good to leaven,

  Let him give his blood at last and get his heaven!

  VIII.

  All or nothing, stake it! Trust she God or no?

  Thus far and no farther? farther? be it so!

  Now, enough of your chicane of prudent pauses,

  Sage provisos, sub-intents and saving-clauses!

  IX.

  Ah, “forgive” you bid him? While God’s champion lives,

  Wrong shall be resisted: dead, why, he forgives.

  But you must not end my friend ere you begin him;

  Evil stands not crowned on earth, while breath is in him.

  X.

  Once more — Will the wronger, at this last of all,

  Dare to say, “I did wrong,” rising in his fall?

  No? — Let go then! Both the fighters to their places!

  While I count three, step you back as many paces!

  After

  TAKE the cloak from his face, and at first

  Let the corpse do its worst!

  How he lies in his rights of a man!

  Death has done all death can.

  And, absorbed in the new life he leads,

  He recks not, he heeds

  Nor his wrong nor my vengeance — both strike

  On his senses alike,

  And are lost in the solemn and strange

  Surprise of the change.

  Ha, what avails death to erase

  His offence, my disgrace?

  I would we were boys as of old

  In the field, by the fold —

  His outrage, God’s patience, man’s scorn

  Were so easily borne!

  I stand here now, he lies in his place:

  Cover the face!

  In Three Days

  I.

  SO, I shall see her in three days

  And just one night, but nights are short,

  Then two long hours, and that is morn.

  See how I come, unchanged, unworn —

  Feel, where my life broke off from thine,

  How fresh the splinters keep and fine, —

  Only a touch and we combine!

  II.

  Too long, this time of year, the days!

  But nights — at least the nights are short.

  As night shows where her one moon is,

  A hand’s-breadth of pure light and bliss,

  So life’s night gives my lady b
irth

  And my eyes hold her! What is worth

  The rest of heaven, the rest of earth?

  III.

  O loaded curls, release your store

  Of warmth and scent, as once before

  The tingling hair did, lights and darks

  Out-breaking into fairy sparks,

  When under curl and curl I pried

  After the warmth and scent inside,

  Thro’ lights and darks how manifold —

  The dark inspired, the light controlled!

  As early Art embrowned the gold.

  IV.

  What great fear — should one say, “Three days

  That change the world might change as well

  Your fortune; and if joy delays,

  Be happy that no worse befell!”

  What small fear — if another says,

  “Three days and one short night beside

  May throw no shadow on your ways;

  But years must teem with change untried,

  With chance not easily defied,

  With an end somewhere undescried.”

  No fear! — or if a fear be born

  This minute, it dies out in scorn.

  Fear? I shall see her in three days

  And one night, now the nights are short,

  Then just two hours, and that is morn.

  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,

  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,

  — Sweetly too.

  If I spoke a word,

  First of all

  Up his cheek the colour sprang,

  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

  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

  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,

  — 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

  — 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 —

  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 perplext

  Grows belief!

  Well, this cold clay clod

  Was man’s heart:

  Crumble it — and what comes next?

  Is it God?

  Old Pictures in Florence

  I.

  THE MORN when first it thunders in March,

  The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say.

  As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch

  Of the villa-gate this warm March day,

  No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled

  In the valley beneath where, white and wide

  And washed by the morning water-gold,

  Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

  II.

  River and bridge and street and square

  Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,

  Through the live translucent bath of air,

  As the sights in a magic crystal ball.

  And of all I saw and of all I praised,

  The most to praise and the best to see

  Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised:

  But why did it more than startle me?

  III.

  Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,

  Could you play me false who loved you so?

  Some slights if a certain heart endures

  Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know!

  Faith — I perceive not why I should care

  To break a silence that suits them best,

  But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear

  When I find a Giotto join the rest.

  IV.

  On the arch where olives overhead

  Print the blue sky with twig and leaf,

  (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed)

  ’Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief,

  And mark through the winter afternoons,

  By a gift God grants me now and then,

  In the mild decline of those suns like moons,

  Who walked in Florence, besides her men.

  V.

  They might chirp and chaffer, come and go

  For pleasure or profit, her men alive —

  My business was hardly with them, I trow,

  But with empty cells of the human hive;

  — With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,

  The church’s apsis, aisle or nave,

  Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch —

  Its face set full for the sun to shave.

  VI.

  Wherever a fresco peels and drops,

  Wherever an outline weakens and wanes

  Till the latest life in the painting stops,

  Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains!

  One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick,

  Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster,

  — A lion who dies of an ass’s kick,

  The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

  VII.

  For oh, this world and the wrong it does

  They are safe in heaven with their backs to it,

  The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz

  Round the works of, you of the little wit!

  Do their eyes contract to the earth’s old scope,

  Now that they see God face to face,

  And have all attained to be poets, I hope?

  ’Tis their holiday now, in any case.

  VIII.

  Much they reck of your praise and you!

  But the wronged great souls — can they be quit

  Of a world where their work is all to do,

  Where you style them, you of the little wit,

  Old Master This and Early the Other,

  Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows:

  A younger
succeeds to an elder brother,

  Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

  IX.

  And here where your praise might yield returns,

  And a handsome word or two give help,

  Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns

  And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.

  What, not a word for Stefano there,

  Of brow once prominent and starry,

  Called Nature’s Ape and the world’s despair

  For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.)

  X.

  There stands the Master. Study, my friends,

  What a man’s work comes to! So he plans it,

  Performs it, perfects it, makes amends

  For the toiling and moiling, and there’s its transit!

  Happier the thrifty blind-folk labour,

  With upturned eye while the hand is busy,

  Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbour!

  ’Tis looking downward that makes one dizzy.

  XI.

  If you knew their work you would deal your dole.

  May I take upon me to instruct you?

  When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,

  Thus much had the world to boast in fruct —

  The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken,

  Which the actual generations garble,

  Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken)

  And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.

  XII.

  So you saw yourself as you wished you were,

  As you might have been, as you cannot be;

  Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there:

  And grew content in your poor degree

  With your little power, by those statues’ godhead,

  And your little scope, by their eyes’ full sway,

  And your little grace, by their grace embodied,

  And your little date, by their forms that stay.

  XIII.

  You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am?

  Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.

  You would prove a model? The Son of Priam

  Has yet the advantage in arms’ and knees’ use.

  You’re wroth — can you slay your snake like Apollo?

  You’re grieved — still Niobe’s the grander!

  You live — there’s the Racers’ frieze to follow —

  You die — there’s the dying Alexander.

  XIV.

  So, testing your weakness by their strength,

  Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty,

  Measured by Art in your breadth and length,

  You learned — to submit is a mortal’s duty.

  — When I say “you” ‘tis the common soul,

  The collective, I mean: the race of Man

  That receives life in parts to live in a whole,

  And grow here according to God’s clear plan.

  XV.

  Growth came when, looking your last on them all,

  You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day

  And cried with a start — What if we so small