Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 76
How shall the sage detect in yon expanse
The star which chose to stoop and stay for us?
Unroll the records! Hailed ye such advance
Indeed, and did your hope evanish thus?
Watchers of twilight, is the worst averred?
We shall not look up, know ourselves are seen,
Speak, and be sure that we again are heard,
Acting or suffering, have the disk’s serene
Reflect our life, absorb an earthly flame,
Nor doubt that, were mankind inert and numb,
Its core had never crimsoned all the same,
Nor, missing ours, its music fallen dumb?
Oh, dread succession to a dizzy post,
Sad sway of sceptre whose mere touch appals,
Ghastly dethronement, cursed by those the most
On whose repugnant brow the crown next falls!
THIRD SPEAKER
I.
Witless alike of will and way divine,
How heaven’s high with earth’s low should intertwine!
Friends, I have seen through your eyes: now use mine!
II.
Take the least man of all mankind, as I;
Look at his head and heart, find how and why
He differs from his fellows utterly:
III.
Then, like me, watch when nature by degrees
Grows alive round him, as in Arctic seas
(They said of old) the instinctive water flees
IV.
Toward some elected point of central rock,
As though, for its sake only, roamed the flock
Of waves about the waste: awhile they mock
V.
With radiance caught for the occasion, — hues
Of blackest hell now, now such reds and blues
As only heaven could fitly interfuse, —
VI.
The mimic monarch of the whirlpool, king
O’ the current for a minute: then they wring
Up by the roots and oversweep the thing,
VII.
And hasten off, to play again elsewhere
The same part, choose another peak as bare,
They find and flatter, feast and finish there.
VIII.
When you see what I tell you, — nature dance
About each man of us, retire, advance,
As though the pageant’s end were to enhance
IX.
His worth, and — once the life, his product, gained —
Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustained,
And show thus real, a thing the North but feigned —
X.
When you acknowledge that one world could do
All the diverse work, old yet ever new,
Divide us, each from other, me from you, —
XI.
Why, where’s the need of Temple, when the walls
O’ the world are that? What use of swells and falls
From Levites’ choir, Priests’ cries, and trumpet-calls?
XII.
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows.
Ben Karshook’s Wisdom
[Karshook=Thistle]
“WOULD a man ‘scape the rod?”
Rabbi Ben Karshook saith,
“See that he turn to God
The day before his death.”
“Ay could a man enquire
When it shall come!” I say,
The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire —
”Then let him turn to-day! “
Quoth a young Sadducee:
”Reader of many rolls,
Is it so certain we
Have, as they tell us, souls?”
“Son, there is no reply!”
The Rabbi bit his beard:
“Certain, a soul have I —
We may have none,” he sneer’d.
Thus Karshook, the Hiram’s-Hammer,
The Right-hand Temple-column,
Taught babes in grace their grammar,
And struck the simple, solemn.
Rome, April 27, 1854
Sonnet
EYES, calm beside thee, (Lady, could’st thou know!)
May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears:
I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low
Their passionate praises reach thee — my cheek wears
Alone no wonder when thou passest by;
Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply
To the irrepressible homage which doth glow
On every lip but mine: if in thine ears
Their accents linger — and thou dost recall
Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,
Beside each votarist whose lighted brow
Wore worship like an aureole, “O’er them all
My beauty,” thou wilt murmur, “did prevail
Save that one only:” — Lady, could’st thou know!
Was written on August 17th, 1834, and published in
“The Monthly Repository,” 1834.
THE RING AND THE BOOK
By far Browning’s most successful poem during his lifetime, The Ring and the Book is considered by many to be the poet’s masterpiece. It is a long dramatic narrative poem — in essence a verse novel similar to the form of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin — composed of 21,000 lines and published in four volumes from 1868 to 1869.
The poem narrates the story of a murder trial in Rome in 1698. The impoverished nobleman Count Guido Franceschini is found guilty of murdering his young wife Pompilia Comparini and her parents, having suspected his wife of an affair with a young cleric. When found guilty and sentenced to death, Franceschini appeals to Pope Innocent XII to overturn the conviction. Comprising twelve books, The Ring and the Book features nine dramatic monologues spoken by different narrators involved in the case, creating a rich sense of verisimilitude, as different accounts of the same events create a level of realism unprecedented in the poetry of the time.
The poem was based on a real-life example. Browsing in a flea market in Florence in 1860, Browning discovered a large volume of written case statements relating to the 1698 Franceschini case, which he bought on the spot. Later to be known as the ‘Yellow Book’ after the colour of its aged covers, the volume struck Browning as an excellent basis for a poem, though he struggled to find a suitable use for it. Following his wife’s death and his return to England, Browning revived his old plan for a long poem based on the Roman murder case almost eight years after buying the volume. The first book features a narrator, possibly Browning himself, who relates the story of how he came across the Yellow Book in the market, before giving a broad outline of the plot.
The Ring and the Book is celebrated for its psychological and spiritual insight that entirely restored Browning’s flagging reputation to being among the first rank of English poets, finally dispelling the critical censure of Sordello from thirty years ago.
Browning, following the commercial and critical success of this poem
CONTENTS
The Ring and the Book
Half-Rome
The Other Half-Rome
Tertium Quid
Count Guido Franceschini
Giuseppe Caponsacchi
Pompilia
Dominus Hyacinthus de Archangelis
Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius
The Pope
Guido
The Book and the Ring
The first edition
The title page of the first volume
The Ring and the Book
DO you see this Ring?
’Tis Rome-work, made to match
(By Castellani’s imitative craft)
Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn,
After a dropping April; found alive
Spark-like ‘mid unearthed slope-side figtree-roots
That roof
old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see,
Yet crisp as jewel-cutting. There’s one trick,
(Craftsmen instruct me) one approved device
And but one, fits such slivers of pure gold
As this was, — such mere oozings from the mine,
Virgin as oval tawny pendent tear
At beehive-edge when ripened combs o’erflow, —
To bear the file’s tooth and the hammer’s tap:
Since hammer needs must widen out the round,
And file emboss it fine with lily-flowers,
Ere the stuff grow a ring-thing right to wear.
That trick is, the artificer melts up wax
With honey, so to speak; he mingles gold
With gold’s alloy, and, duly tempering both,
Effects a manageable mass, then works.
But his work ended, once the thing a ring,
Oh, there’s repristination! Just a spirt
O’ the proper fiery acid o’er its face,
And forth the alloy unfastened flies in fume;
While, self-sufficient now, the shape remains,
The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness,
Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:
Prime nature with an added artistry —
No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? ‘Tis a figure, a symbol, say;
A thing’s sign: now for the thing signified.
Do you see this square old yellow Book, I toss
I’ the air, and catch again, and twirl about
By the crumpled vellum covers, — pure crude fact
Secreted from man’s life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since?
Examine it yourselves! I found this book,
Gave a lira for it, eightpence English just,
(Mark the predestination!) when a Hand,
Always above my shoulder, pushed me once,
One day still fierce ‘mid many a day struck calm,
Across a Square in Florence, crammed with booths,
Buzzing and blaze, noontide and market-time;
Toward Baccio’s marble, — ay, the basement-ledge
O’ the pedestal where sits and menaces
John of the Black Bands with the upright spear,
‘Twixt palace and church, — Riccardi where they lived,
His race, and San Lorenzo where they lie.
This book, — precisely on that palace-step
Which, meant for lounging knaves o’ the Medici,
Now serves re-venders to display their ware, —
‘Mongst odds and ends of ravage, picture-frames
White through the worn gilt, mirror-sconces chipped,
Bronze angel-heads once knobs attached to chests,
(Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade)
Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude,
Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry
Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts
In baked earth (broken, Providence be praised!)
A wreck of tapestry, proudly-purposed web
When reds and blues were indeed red and blue,
Now offered as a mat to save bare feet
(Since carpets constitute a cruel cost)
Treading the chill scagliola bedward: then
A pile of brown-etched prints, two crazie each,
Stopped by a conch a-top from fluttering forth
— Sowing the Square with works of one and the same
Master, the imaginative Sienese
Great in the scenic backgrounds — (name and fame
None of you know, nor does he fare the worse:)
From these . . . Oh, with a Lionard going cheap
If it should prove, as promised, that Joconde
Whereof a copy contents the Louvre! — these
I picked this book from. Five compeers in flank
Stood left and right of it as tempting more —
A dog’s-eared Spicilegium, the fond tale
O’ the Frail One of the Flower, by young Dumas,
Vulgarised Horace for the use of schools,
The Life, Death, Miracles of Saint Somebody,
Saint Somebody Else, his Miracles, Death and Life, —
With this, one glance at the lettered back of which,
And “Stall!” cried I: a lira made it mine.
Here it is, this I toss and take again;
Small-quarto size, part print part manuscript:
A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man’s life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing’s restorative
I’ the touch and sight.
That memorable day
(June was the month, Lorenzo named the Square)
I leaned a little and overlooked my prize
By the low railing round the fountain-source
Close to the statue, where a step descends:
While clinked the cans of copper, as stooped and rose
Thick-ankled girls who brimmed them, and made place
For marketmen glad to pitch basket down,
Dip a broad melon-leaf that holds the wet,
And whisk their faded fresh. And on I read
Presently, though my path grew perilous
Between the outspread straw-work, piles of plait
Soon to be flapping, each o’er two black eyes
And swathe of Tuscan hair, on festas fine;
Through fire-irons, tribes of tongs, shovels in sheaves,
Skeleton bedsteads, wardrobe-drawers agape,
Rows of tall slim brass lamps with dangling gear, —
And worse, cast clothes a-sweetening in the sun:
None of them took my eye from off my prize.
Still read I on, from written title-page
To written index, on, through street and street,
At the Strozzi, at the Pillar, at the Bridge;
Till, by the time I stood at home again
In Casa Guidi by Felice Church,
Under the doorway where the black begins
With the first stone-slab of the staircase cold,
I had mastered the contents, knew the whole truth
Gathered together, bound up in this book,
Print three-fifths, written supplement the rest.
“Romana Homicidiorum” — nay,
Better translate — ”A Roman murder-case:
“Position of the entire criminal cause
“Of Guido Franceschini, nobleman,
“With certain Four the cutthroats in his pay,
“Tried, all five, and found guilty and put to death
“By heading or hanging as befitted ranks,
“At Rome on February Twenty-Two,
“Since our salvation Sixteen Ninety Eight:
“Wherein it is disputed if, and when,
“Husbands may kill adulterous wives, yet ‘scape
“The customary forfeit.”
Word for word,
So ran the title-page: murder, or else
Legitimate punishment of the other crime,
Accounted murder by mistake, — just that
And no more, in a Latin cramp enough
When the law had her eloquence to launch,
But interfilleted with Italian streaks
When testimony stooped to mother-tongue, —
That, was this old square yellow book about.
Now, as the ingot, ere the ring was forged,
Lay gold (beseech you, hold that figure fast!)
So, in this book lay absolutely truth,
Fanciless fact, the documents indeed,
Primary lawyer-pleadings for, against,
The aforesaid Five; real summed-up circumstance
Adduced in proof of these on either side,
Put forth and printed, as the practice w
as,
At Rome, in the Apostolic Chamber’s type,
And so submitted to the eye o’ the Court
Presided over by His Reverence
Rome’s Governor and Criminal Judge, — the trial
Itself, to all intents, being then as now
Here in the book and nowise out of it;
Seeing, there properly was no judgment-bar,
No bringing of accuser and accused,
And whoso judged both parties, face to face
Before some court, as we conceive of courts.
There was a Hall of Justice; that came last:
For justice had a chamber by the hall
Where she took evidence first, summed up the same,
Then sent accuser and accused alike,
In person of the advocate of each,
To weigh that evidence’ worth, arrange, array
The battle. ‘Twas the so-styled Fisc began,
Pleaded (and since he only spoke in print
The printed voice of him lives now as then)
The public Prosecutor — ”Murder’s proved;
“With five . . . what we call qualities of bad,
“Worse, worst, and yet worse still, and still worse yet;
“Crest over crest crowning the cockatrice,
“That beggar hell’s regalia to enrich
“Count Guido Franceschini: punish him!”
Thus was the paper put before the court
In the next stage (no noisy work at all),
To study at ease. In due time like reply
Came from the so-styled Patron of the Poor,
Official mouthpiece of the five accused
Too poor to fee a better, — Guido’s luck
Or else his fellows’, which, I hardly know, —
An outbreak as of wonder at the world,
A fury fit of outraged innocence,
A passion of betrayed simplicity:
“Punish Count Guido? For what crime, what hint
“O’ the colour of a crime, inform us first!
“Reward him rather! Recognise, we say,
“In the deed done, a righteous judgment dealt!
“All conscience and all courage, — there’s our Count
“Charactered in a word; and, what’s more strange,
“He had companionship in privilege,
“Found four courageous conscientious friends:
“Absolve, applaud all five, as props of law,
“Sustainers of society! — perchance
“A trifle over-hasty with the hand
“To hold her tottering ark, had tumbled else;
“But that’s a splendid fault whereat we wink,
“Wishing your cold correctness sparkled so!”