She ‘ll lay a real one, laudably deceived,
Daily for weeks to come. I ‘ve told my lie,
And seen truth follow, marvels none of mine;
All was not cheating, sir, I ‘m positive!
I don’t know if I move your hand sometimes
When the spontaneous writing spreads so far,
If my knee lifts the table all that height,
Why the inkstand don’t fall off the desk a-tilt,
Why the accordion plays a prettier waltz
Than I can pick out on the piano-forte,
Why I speak so much more than I intend,
Describe so many things I never saw.
I tell you, sir, in one sense, I believe
Nothing at all, — that everybody can,
Will, and does cheat: but in another sense
I’m ready to believe my very self —
That every cheat’s inspired, and every lie
Quick with a germ of truth.
You ask perhaps
Why I should condescend to trick at all
If I know a way without it? This is why!
There’s a strange secret sweet self-sacrifice
In any desecration of one’s soul
To a worthy end, — isn’t it Herodotus
(I wish I could read Latin!) who describes
The single gift o’ the land’s virginity,
Demanded in those old Egyptian rites,
(I’ve but a hazy notion — help me, sir!)
For one purpose in the world, one day in a life,
One hour in a day — thereafter, purity,
And a veil thrown o’er the past for evermore!
Well, now, they understood a many things
Down by Nile city, or wherever it was!
I’ve always vowed, after the minute’s lie,
And the end’s gain, — truth should be mine henceforth.
This goes to the root o’ the matter, sir, — this plain
Plump fact: accept it and unlock with it
The wards of many a puzzle!
Or, finally,
Why should I set so fine a gloss on things?
What need I care? I cheat in self-defence,
And there’s my answer to a world of cheats!
Cheat? To be sure, sir! What ‘s the world worth else?
Who takes it as he finds, and thanks his stars?
Don’t it want trimming, turning, furbishing up
And polishing over? Your so-styled great men,
Do they accept one truth as truth is found,
Or try their skill at tinkering? What’s your world?
Here are you born, who are, I’ll say at once,
Of the luckiest kind, whether in head and heart,
Body and soul, or all that helps them both.
Well, now, look back: what faculty of yours
Came to its full, had ample justice done
By growing when rain fell, biding its time,
Solidifying growth when earth was dead,
Spiring up, broadening wide, in seasons due?
Never! You shot up and frost nipped you off,
Settled to sleep when sunshine bade you sprout;
One faculty thwarted its fellow: at the end,
All you boast is “I had proved a topping tree
“In other climes” — yet this was the right clime
Had you foreknown the seasons. Young, you’ve force
Wasted like well-streams: old, — oh, then indeed,
Behold a labyrinth of hydraulic pipes
Through which you’d play off wondrous waterwork;
Only, no water ‘s left to feed their play.
Young, — you ‘ve a hope, an aim, a love: it ‘s tossed
And crossed and lost: you struggle on, some spark
Shut in your heart against the puffs around,
Through cold and pain; these in due time subside,
Now then for age’s triumph, the hoarded light
You mean to loose on the altered face of things, —
Up with it on the tripod! It ‘s extinct.
Spend your life’s remnant asking, which was best,
Light smothered up that never peeped forth once,
Or the cold cresset with full leave to shine?
Well, accept this too, — seek the fruit of it
Not in enjoyment, proved a dream on earth,
But knowledge, useful for a second chance,
Another life, — you ‘ve lost this world — you ‘ve gained
Its knowledge for the next. What knowledge, sir,
Except that you know nothing? Nay, you doubt
Whether ‘t were better have made you man or brute,
If aught be true, if good and evil clash.
No foul, no fair, no inside, no outside,
There’s your world!
Give it me! I slap it brisk
With harlequin’s pasteboard sceptre: what ‘s it now?
Changed like a rock-flat, rough with rusty weed,
At first wash-over o’ the returning wave!
All the dry dead impracticable stuff
Starts into life and light again; this world
Pervaded by the influx from the next.
I cheat, and what ‘s the happy consequence?
You find full justice straightway dealt you out,
Each want supplied, each ignorance set at ease,
Each folly fooled. No life-long labour now
As the price of worse than nothing! No mere film
Holding you chained in iron, as it seems,
Against the outstretch of your very arms
And legs i’ the sunshine moralists forbid!
What would you have? Just speak and, there, you see!
You ‘re supplemented, made a whole at last,
Bacon advises, Shakespeare writes you songs,
And Mary Queen of Scots embraces you.
Thus it goes on, not quite like life perhaps,
But so near, that the very difference piques,
Shows that e’en better than this best will be —
This passing entertainment in a hut
Whose bare walls take your taste since, one stage more,
And you arrive at the palace: all half real,
And you, to suit it, less than real beside,
In a dream, lethargic kind of death in life,
That helps the interchange of natures, flesh
Transfused by souls, and such souls! Oh, ‘t is choice!
And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,
Seem nigh on bursting, — if you nearly see
The real world through the false, — what do you see?
Is the old so ruined? You find you ‘re in a flock
O’ the youthful, earnest, passionate — genius, beauty,
Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:
And all depose their natural rights, hail you,
(That ‘s me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,
Participate in Sludgehood — nay, grow mine,
I veritably possess them — banish doubt,
And reticence and modesty alike!
Why, here ‘s the Golden Age, old Paradise
Or new Eutopia! Here ‘s true life indeed,
And the world well won now, mine for the first time!
And all this might be, may be, and with good help
Of a little lying shall be: so, Sludge lies!
Why, he ‘s at worst your poet who sings how Greeks
That never were, in Troy which never was,
Did this or the other impossible great thing!
He’s Lowell — it ‘s a world (you smile applause),
Of his own invention — wondrous Longfellow,
Surprising Hawthorne! Sludge does more than they,
And acts the books they write: the more his praise!
But why do I mount to poets? Take plain prose —
Dealers in common sense, set these at wor
k,
What can they do without their helpful lies?
Each states the law and fact and face o’ the thing
Just as he’d have them, finds what he thinks fit,
Is blind to what missuits him, just records
What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest.
It ‘s a History of the World, the Lizard Age,
The Early Indians, the Old Country War,
Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please,
All as the author wants it. Such a scribe
You pay and praise for putting life in stones,
Fire into fog, making the past your world.
There’s plenty of “How did you contrive to grasp
“The thread which led you through this labyrinth?
“How build such solid fabric out of air?
“How on so slight foundation found this tale?
“Biography, narrative?” or, in other words,
“How many lies did it require to make
“The portly truth you here present us with?”
“Oh,” quoth the penman, purring at your praise,
“‘T is fancy all; no particle of fact:
“I was poor and threadbare when I wrote that book
“‘Bliss in the Golden City.’ I, at Thebes?
“We writers paint out of our heads, you see!”
“ — Ah, the more wonderful the gift in you,
“The more creativeness and godlike craft!”
But I, do I present you with my piece,
It ‘s “What, Sludge? When my sainted mother spoke
“The verses Lady Jane Grey last composed
“About the rosy bower in the seventh heaven
“Where she and Queen Elizabeth kept house, —
“You made the raps? ‘T was your invention that?
“Cur, slave and devil!” — eight fingers and two thumbs
Stuck in my throat!
Well, if the marks seem gone
‘T is because stiffish cock-tail, taken in time,
Is better for a bruise than arnica.
There, sir! I bear no malice: ‘t isn’t in me.
I know I acted wrongly: still, I ‘ve tried
What I could say in my excuse, — to show
The devil ‘s not all devil . . . I don’t pretend,
He’s angel, much less such a gentleman
As you, sir! And I’ve lost you, lost myself,
Lost all-l-l-l- . . .
No — are you in earnest, sir?
O yours, sir, is an angel’s part! I know
What prejudice prompts, and what’s the common course
Men take to soothe their ruffled self-conceit:
Only you rise superior to it all!
No, sir, it don’t hurt much; it ‘s speaking long
That makes me choke a little: the marks will go!
What? Twenty V-notes more, and outfit too,
And not a word to Greeley? One — one kiss
O’ the hand that saves me! You’ll not let me speak,
I well know, and I ‘ve lost the right, too true!
But I must say, sir, if She hears (she does)
Your sainted . . . Well, sir, — be it so! That’s, I think,
My bed-room candle. Good-night!!Bl-l-less you, sir.
R-r-r, you brute-beast and blackguard! Cowardly scamp!
I only wish I dared burn down the house
And spoil your sniggering! Oh what, you’re the man
You ‘re satisfied at last? You ‘ve found out Sludge?
We ‘ll see that presently: my turn, sir, next!
I too can tell my story: brute, — do you hear? —
You throttled your sainted mother, that old hag,
In just such a fit of passion: no, it was . . .
To get this house of hers, and many a note
Like these. . . I’ll pocket them, however . . . five,
Ten, fifteen . . . ay, you gave her throat the twist,
Or else you poisoned her! Confound the cuss!
Where was my head? I ought to have prophesied
He ‘ll die in a year and join her: that ‘s the way.
I don’t know where my head is: what had I done?
How did it all go? I said he poisoned her,
And hoped he ‘d have grace given him to repent,
Whereon he picked this quarrel, bullied me
And called me cheat: I thrashed him, — who could help?
He howled for mercy, prayed me on his knees
To cut and run and save him from disgrace:
I do so, and once off, he slanders me.
An end of him! Begin elsewhere anew!
Boston’s a hole, the herring-pond is wide,
V-notes are something, liberty still more.
Beside, is he the only fool in the world?
Apparent Failure
“We shall soon lose a celebrated building.”
Paris Newspaper.
I.
NO, for I ‘ll save it! Seven years since,
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your Prince;
Saw, made my bow, and went my way
Walking the heat and headache off,
I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,
Cavour’s appeal and Buol’s replies,
So sauntered till — what met my eyes?
II.
Only the Doric little Morgue!
The dead-house where you show your drowned
Petrarch’s Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,
Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.
One pays one’s debt in such a case;
I plucked up heart and entered, — stalked,
Keeping a tolerable face
Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked
Let them! No Briton’s to be baulked!
III.
First came the silent gazers; next,
A screen of glass, we’re thankful for;
Last, the sight’s self, the sermon’s text,
The three men who did most abhor
Their life in Paris yesterday,
So killed themselves: and now, enthroned
Each on his copper couch, they lay
Fronting me, waiting to be owned.
I thought, and think, their sin’s atoned.
IV.
Poor men, God made, and all for that!
The reverence struck me; o’er each head
Religiously was hung its hat,
Each coat dripped by the owner’s bed,
Sacred from touch: each had his berth,
His bounds, his proper place of rest,
Who last night tenanted on earth
Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast, —
Unless the plain asphalte seemed best.
V.
How did it happen, my poor boy?
You wanted to be Buonaparte
And have the Tuileries for toy,
And could not, so it broke your heart?
You, old one by his side, I judge,
Were red as blood, a socialist.
A leveller! Does the Empire grudge
You’ve gained what no Republic missed?
Be quiet, and unclench your fist!
VI.
And this — why, he was red in vain,
Or black, — poor fellow that is blue!
What fancy was it turned your brain?
Oh, women were the prize for you!
Money gets women, cards and dice
Get money, and ill-luck gets just
The copper couch and one clear nice
Cool squirt of water o’er your bust,
The right thing to extinguish lust!
VII.
It’s wiser being good than bad;
It’s safer being meek than fierce:
It’s fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pi
erce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can’t end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.
Epilogue
FIRST SPEAKER, as David
I.
ON the first of the Feast of Feasts,
The Dedication Day,
When the Levites joined the Priests
At the Altar in robed array,
Gave signal to sound and say, —
II.
When the thousands, rear and van,
Swarming with one accord
Became as a single man
(Look, gesture, thought and word)
In praising and thanking the Lord, —
III.
When the singers lift up their voice,
And the trumpets made endeavour,
Sounding, “In God rejoice!”
Saying, “In Him rejoice
“Whose mercy endureth for ever!” —
IV.
Then the Temple filled with a cloud,
Even the House of the Lord;
Porch bent and pillar bowed:
For the presence of the Lord,
In the glory of His cloud,
Had filled the House of the Lord.
SECOND SPEAKER, as Renan
Gone now! All gone across the dark so far,
Sharpening fast, shuddering ever, shutting still,
Dwindling into the distance, dies that star
Which came, stood, opened once! We gazed our fill
With upturned faces on as real a Face
That, stooping from grave music and mild fire,
Took in our homage, made a visible place
Through many a depth of glory, gyre on gyre,
For the dim human tribute. Was this true?
Could man indeed avail, mere praise of his,
To help by rapture God’s own rapture too,
Thrill with a heart’s red tinge that pure pale bliss?
Why did it end? Who failed to beat the breast,
And shriek, and throw the arms protesting wide,
When a first shadow showed the star addressed
Itself to motion, and on either side
The rims contracted as the rays retired;
The music, like a fountain’s sickening pulse,
Subsided on itself; awhile transpired
Some vestige of a Face no pangs convulse,
No prayers retard; then even this was gone,
Lost in the night at last. We, lone and left
Silent through centuries, ever and anon
Venture to probe again the vault bereft
Of all now save the lesser lights, a mist
Of multitudinous points, yet suns, men say —
And this leaps ruby, this lurks amethyst,
But where may hide what came and loved our clay?
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 75