Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Swallows and curlews!

  Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below

  Live, for they can, there:

  This man decided not to Live but Know —

  Bury this man there?

  Here — here’s his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,

  Lightnings are loosened,

  Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,

  Peace let the dew send!

  Lofty designs must close in like effects:

  Loftily lying,

  Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects,

  Living and dying.

  One Way of Love

  I.

  ALL June I bound the rose in sheaves.

  Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves

  And strew them where Pauline may pass.

  She will not turn aside? Alas!

  Let them lie. Suppose they die?

  The chance was they might take her eye.

  II.

  How many a month I strove to suit

  These stubborn fingers to the lute!

  To-day I venture all I know.

  She will not hear my music? So!

  Break the string; fold music’s wing:

  Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!

  III.

  My whole life long I learned to love.

  This hour my utmost art I prove

  And speak my passion — Heaven or hell?

  She will not give me heaven? ‘Tis well!

  Lose who may — I still can say,

  Those who win heaven, blest are they!

  Another Way of Love

  I.

  JUNE was not over

  Though past the fall,

  And the best of her roses

  Had yet to blow,

  When a man I know

  (But shall not discover,

  Since ears are dull,

  And time discloses)

  Turned him and said with a man’s true air,

  Half sighing a smile in a yawn, as ‘twere, —

  “If I tire of your June, will she greatly care?”

  II.

  Well, dear, in-doors with you!

  True, serene deadness

  Tries a man’s temper.

  What’s in the blossom

  June wears on her bosom?

  Can it clear scores with you?

  Sweetness and redness.

  Eadem semper!

  Go, let me care for it greatly or slightly!

  If June mends her bowers now, your hand left unsightly

  By plucking the roses, — my June will do rightly.

  III.

  And after, for pastime,

  If June be refulgent

  With flowers in completeness,

  All petals, no prickles,

  Delicious as trickles

  Of wine poured at mass-time, —

  And choose One indulgent

  To redness and sweetness:

  Or if, with experience of man and of spider,

  June use my June-lightning, the strong insect-ridder,

  And stop the fresh spinning, — why, June will consider.

  Transcendentalism:

  A Poem In Twelve Books

  STOP playing, poet! may a brother speak?

  ‘Tis you speak, that’s your error. Song’s our art:

  Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts

  Instead of draping them in sighs and sounds.

  — True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!

  But why such long prolusion and display,

  Such turning and adjustment of the harp,

  And taking it upon your breast at length,

  Only to speak dry words across its strings?

  Stark-naked thought is in request enough —

  Speak prose and holloa it till Europe hears!

  The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,

  Which helps the hunter’s voice from Alp to Alp —

  Exchange our harp for that, — who hinders you?

  But here’s your fault; grown men want thought, you think;

  Thought’s what they mean by verse, and seek in verse:

  Boys seek for images and melody,

  Men must have reason — so you aim at men.

  Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, ‘tis true,

  We see and hear and do not wonder much.

  If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!

  As Swedish Bœhme never cared for plants

  Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,

  He noticed all at once that plants could speak,

  Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.

  That day the daisy had an eye indeed —

  Colloquised with the cowslip on such themes!

  We find them extant yet in Jacob’s prose.

  But by the time youth slips a stage or two

  While reading prose in that tough book he wrote,

  (Collating, and emendating the same

  And settling on the sense most of our mind)

  We shut the clasps and find life’s summer past.

  Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss —

  Another Bœhme with a tougher book

  And subtler meanings of what roses say, —

  Or some stout Mage like him of Halderstadt,

  John, who made things Bœhme wrote thoughts about?

  He with a “look you!” vents a brace of rhymes,

  And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,

  Over us, under, round us every side,

  Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs

  And musty volumes, Bœhme’s book and all, —

  Buries us with a glory, young once more,

  Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

  So come, the harp back to your heart again!

  You are a poem, though your poem’s naught.

  The best of all you did before, believe,

  Was your own boy’s-face o’er the finer chords

  Bent, following the cherub at the top

  That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.

  Misconceptions

  I.

  THIS is a spray the Bird clung to,

  Making it blossom with pleasure,

  Ere the high tree-top she sprang to,

  Fit for her nest and her treasure.

  Oh, what a hope beyond measure

  Was the poor spray’s, which the flying feet hung to, —

  So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

  II.

  This is a heart the Queen leant on,

  Thrilled in a minute erratic,

  Ere the true bosom she bent on,

  Meet for love’s regal dalmatic.

  Oh, what a fancy ecstatic

  Was the poor heart’s, ere the wanderer went on —

  Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!

  One Word More

  To E. B. B.

  I

  THERE they are, my fifty men and women

  Naming me the fifty poems finished!

  Take them, Love, the book and me together:

  Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

  II

  Rafael made a century of sonnets,

  Made and wrote them in a certain volume

  Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil

  Else he only used to draw Madonnas:

  These, the world might view — but one, the volume.

  Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.

  Did she live and love it all her lifetime

  Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,

  Die, and let it drop beside her pillow

  Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,

  Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving,

  Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,

  Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?

  III

  You
and I would rather read that volume,

  (Taken to his beating bosom by it)

  Lean and list the bosom — beats of Rafael,

  Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas —

  Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno,

  Her, that visits Florence in a vision,

  Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre —

  Seen by us and all the world in circle.

  IV

  You and I will never read that volume.

  Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple

  Guarded long the treasure — book and loved it.

  Guido Reni dying, all Bologna

  Cried, and the world cried too, “Ours, the treasure!”

  Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.

  V

  Dante once prepared to paint an angel:

  Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.”

  While he mused and traced it and retraced it,

  (Peradventure with a pen corroded

  Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,

  When, his left-hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked,

  Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,

  Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment,

  Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,

  Let the wretch go festering through Florence) —

  Dante, who loved well because he hated,

  Hated wickedness that hinders loving,

  Dante standing, studying his angel, —

  In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

  Says he — ”Certain people of importance”

  (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to)

  “Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet,”

  Says the poet — ”Then I stopped my painting.”

  VI

  You and I would rather see that angel,

  Painted by the tenderness of Dante,

  Would we not? — than read a fresh Inferno.

  VII

  You and I will never see that picture.

  While he mused on love and Beatrice,

  While he softened o’er his outlined angel,

  In they broke, those “people of importance:”

  We and Bice bear the loss forever.

  VIII

  What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture?

  IX

  This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not

  Once, and only once, and for one only,

  (Ah, the price!) to find his love a language

  Fit and fair and simple and sufficient —

  Using nature that’s an art to others,

  Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature,

  Ay, of all the artists living, loving,

  None but would forego his proper dowry, —

  Does he paint? he fain would write a poem, —

  Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,

  Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,

  Once and only once, and for one only,

  So to be the man and leave the artist,

  Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.

  X

  Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!

  He who smites the rock and spreads the water,

  Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,

  Even he, the minute makes immortal,

  Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute.

  Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.

  While he smites, how can he but remember,

  So he smote before, in such a peril,

  When they stood and mocked — ”Shall smiting help us?”

  When they drank and sneered — ”A stroke is easy!”

  When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,

  Throwing him for thanks — ”But drought was pleasant.”

  Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;

  Thus the doing savors of disrelish;

  Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;

  O’er — importuned brows becloud the mandate,

  Carelessness or consciousness — the gesture.

  For he bears an ancient wrong about him,

  Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,

  Hears, yet one time more, the ‘customed prelude —

  “How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?”

  Guesses what is like to prove the sequel —

  “Egypt’s flesh pots — nay, the drought was better.”

  XI

  Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!

  Theirs, the Sinai — forehead’s cloven brilliance,

  Right — arm’s rod — sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat.

  Never dares the man put off the prophet.

  XII

  Did he love one face from out the thousands,

  (Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely,

  Were she but the Æthiopian bondslave,)

  He would envy yon dumb patient camel,

  Keeping a reserve of scanty water

  Meant to save his own life in the desert;

  Ready in the desert to deliver

  (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)

  Hoard and life together for his mistress.

  XIII

  I shall never, in the years remaining,

  Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,

  Make you music that should all — express me;

  So it seems: I stand on my attainment.

  This of verse alone, one life allows me;

  Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

  Other heights in other lives, God willing:

  All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

  XIV

  Yet a semblance of resource avails us —

  Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it.

  Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,

  Lines I write the first time and the last time.

  He who works in fresco, steals a hairbrush,

  Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,

  Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,

  Makes a strange art of an art familiar,

  Fills his lady’s missal — marge with flowerets.

  He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver,

  Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.

  He who writes, may write for once as I do.

  XV

  Love, you saw me gather men and women,

  Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy,

  Enter each and all, and use their service,

  Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem.

  Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows,

  Hope and fears, belief and disbelieving:

  I am mine and yours — the rest be all men’s,

  Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty,

  Let me speak this once in my true person,

  Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea,

  Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence:

  Pray you, look on these my men and women,

  Take and keep my fifty poems finished;

  Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!

  Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

  XVI

  Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self!

  Here in London, yonder late in Florence,

  Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured,

  Curving on a sky imbrued with color,

  Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,

  Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth.

  Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,

  Rounder ‘twixt the cypresses and rounder,

  Perfect till the nightingales applauded.

  Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,

  Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs,

  Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver,

  Goes
dispiritedly, glad to finish.

  XVII

  What, there’s nothing in the moon noteworthy?

  Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,

  Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),

  All her magic (‘tis the old sweet mythos),

  She would turn a new side to her mortal,

  Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman —

  Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,

  Blind to Galileo on his turret,

  Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even!

  Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal —

  When she turns round, comes again in heaven,

  Opens out anew for worse or better!

  Proves she like some portent of an iceberg

  Swimming full upon the ship it founders,

  Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals?

  Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire

  Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain?

  Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu

  Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest,

  Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire.

  Like the bodied heaven in his clearness

  Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,

  When they ate and drank and saw God also!

  XVIII

  What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.

  Only this is sure — the sight were other,

  Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence,

  Dying now impoverished here in London.

  God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures

  Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

  One to show a woman when he loves her!

  XIX

  This I say of me, but think of you, Love!

  This to you — yourself my moon of poets!

  Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder,

  Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!

  There, in turn I stand with them and praise you —

  Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.

  But the best is when I glide from out them,

  Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,

  Come out on the other side, the novel

  Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,

  Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

  XX

  Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,

  Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno,

  Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it,

  Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom!

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Browning wrote the poems in this collection in London, where he had returned with his son after his wife’s death. It was his first publication after a nine year interval. At this time, Browning’s reputation was uncertain, though following the publication of Dramatis Personae and The Ring and the Book, he finally achieved the critical attention that had eluded him for so long. Dramatis Personae is composed of dramatic soliloquies, featuring a range of narrators in situations that reveal an aspect of their personality to the reader. Concerning themes of religion and marital distress, the poems are darker than the works in Men and Women, marking a turning point in Browning’s poetic style.