O’ the frontier, while inside the mainland lie,
Quite undisputed-for in solitude,
Whole cities plague may waste or famine sap:
What if the sun crumble, the sands encroach,
While he looks on sublimely at his ease?
How does their ruin touch the empire’s bound?
And is this little all that was to be?
Where is the gloriously-decisive change,
The immeasurable metamorphosis
Of human clay to divine gold, we looked
Should, in some poor sort, justify the price?
Had a mere adept of the Rosy Cross
Spent his life to consummate the Great Work,
Would not we start to see the stuff it touched
Yield not a grain more than the vulgar got
By the old smelting-process years ago?
If this were sad to see in just the sage
Who should profess so much, perform no more,
What is it when suspected in that Power
Who undertook to make and made the world,
Devised and did effect man, body and soul,
Ordained salvation for them both, and yet . . .
Well, is the thing we see, salvation?
I
Put no such dreadful question to myself,
Within whose circle of experience burns
The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness, — God:
I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:
When I outlive the faith there is a sun,
When I lie, ashes to the very soul, —
Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,
“He died in dark whence never morn arose.”
While I see day succeed the deepest night —
How can I speak but as I know? — my speech
Must be, throughout the darkness, “It will end:”
“The light that did burn, will burn!” Clouds obscure —
But for which obscuration all were bright?
Too hastily concluded! Sun-suffused,
A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze, —
Better the very clarity of heaven:
The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
What but the weakness in a faith supplies
The incentive to humanity, no strength
Absolute, irresistible, comports?
How can man love but what he yearns to help?
And that which men think weakness within strength,
But angels know for strength and stronger yet —
What were it else but the first things made new,
But repetition of the miracle,
The divine instance of self-sacrifice
That never ends and aye begins for man?
So, never I miss footing in the maze,
No, — I have light nor fear the dark at all.
But are mankind not real, who pace outside
My petty circle, the world measured me?
And when they stumble even as I stand,
Have I a right to stop ears when they cry,
As they were phantoms, took the clouds for crags,
Tripped and fell, where the march of man might move?
Beside, the cry is other than a ghost’s,
When out of the old time there pleads some bard,
Philosopher, or both and — whispers not,
But words it boldly. “The inward work and worth
“Of any mind, what other mind may judge
“Save God who only knows the thing He made,
“The veritable service He exacts?
“It is the outward product men appraise.
“Behold, an engine hoists a tower aloft:
“‘I looked that it should move the mountain too!”
“Or else ‘Had just a turret toppled down,
“Success enough!’ — may say the Machinist
“Who knows what less or more result might be:
“But we, who see that done we cannot do,
“‘A feat beyond man’s force,’ we men must say.
“Regard me and that shake I gave the world!
“I was born, not so long before Christ’s birth,
“As Christ’s birth haply did precede thy day, —
“But many a watch, before the star of dawn:
“Therefore I lived, — it is thy creed affirms,
“Pope Innocent, who art to answer me! —
“Under conditions, nowise to escape,
“Whereby salvation was impossible.
“Each impulse to achieve the good and fair,
“Each aspiration to the pure and true,
“Being without a warrant or an aim,
“Was just as sterile a felicity
“As if the insect, born to spend his life
“Soaring his circles, stopped them to describe
“(Painfully motionless in the mid-air)
“Some word of weighty counsel for man’s sake,
“Some ‘Know thyself’ or ‘Take the golden mean!’
“ — Forwent his happy dance and the glad ray,
“Died half an hour the sooner and was dust.
“I, born to perish like the brutes, or worse,
“Why not live brutishly, obey my law?
“But I, of body as of soul complete,
“A gymnast at the games, philosopher
“I’ the schools, who painted, and made music, — all
“Glories that met upon the tragic stage
“When the Third Poet’s tread surprised the Two, —
“Whose lot fell in a land where life was great
“And sense went free and beauty lay profuse,
“I, untouched by one adverse circumstance,
“Adopted virtue as my rule of life,
“Waived all reward, and loved for loving’s sake,
“And, what my heart taught me, I taught the world,
“And have been teaching now two thousand years.
“Witness my work, — plays that should please, forsooth!
“‘They might please, they may displease, they shall teach,
“‘For truth’s sake,’ so I said, and did, and do.
“Five hundred years ere Paul spoke, Felix heard, —
“How much of temperance and righteousness,
“Judgment to come, did I find reason for,
“Corroborate with my strong style that spared
“No sin, nor swerved the more from branding brow
“Because the sinner was called Zeus and God?
“How nearly did I guess at that Paul knew?
“How closely come, in what I represent
“As duty, to his doctrine yet a blank?
“And as that limner not untruly limns
“Who draws an object round or square, which square
“Or round seems to the unassisted eye,
“Though Galileo’s tube display the same
“Oval or oblong, — so, who controverts
“I rendered rightly what proves wrongly wrought
“Beside Paul’s picture? Mine was true for me.
“I saw that there are, first and above all,
“The hidden forces, blind necessities,
“Named Nature, but the thing’s self unconceived:
“Then follow, — how dependent upon these,
“We know not, how imposed above ourselves,
“We well know, — what I name the gods, a power
“Various or one; for great and strong and good
“Is there, and little, weak and bad there too,
“Wisdom and folly: say, these make no God, —
“What is it else that rules outside man’s self?
“A fact then, — always, to the naked eye, —
“And, so, the one revealment possible
“Of what were unimagined else by man.
“Therefore, what gods do, man may criticise,
“Applaud, condemn, — how
should he fear the truth?
“But likewise have in awe because of power,
“Venerate for the main munificence,
“And give the doubtful deed its due excuse
“From the acknowledged creature of a day
“To the Eternal and Divine. Thus, bold
“Yet self-mistrusting, should man bear himself,
“Most assured on what now concerns him most —
“The law of his own life, the path he prints, —
“Which law is virtue and not vice, I say, —
“And least inquisitive where least search skills,
“I’ the nature we best give the clouds to keep.
“What could I paint beyond a scheme like this
“Out of the fragmentary truths where light
“Lay fitful in a tenebrific time?
“You have the sunrise now, joins truth to truth,
“Shoots life and substance into death and void;
“Themselves compose the whole we made before:
“The forces and necessity grow God, —
“The beings so contrarious that seemed gods,
“Prove just His operation manifold
“And multiform, translated, as must be,
“Into intelligible shape so far
“As suits our sense and sets us free to feel:
“What if I let a child think, childhood-long,
“That lightning, I would have him spare his eye,
“Is a real arrow shot at naked orb?
“The man knows more, but shuts his lids the same:
“Lightning’s cause comprehends nor man nor child
“Why then, my scheme, your better knowledge broke,
“Presently readjusts itself, the small
“Proportioned largelier, parts and whole named new:
“So much, no more two thousand years have done!
“Pope, dost thou dare pretend to punish me,
“For not descrying sunshine at midnight,
“Me who crept all-fours, found my way so far —
“While thou rewardest teachers of the truth,
“Who miss the plain way in the blaze of noon, —
“Though just a word from that strong style of mine,
“Grasped honestly in hand as guiding-staff,
“Had pricked them a sure path across the bog,
“That mire of cowardice and slush of lies
“Wherein I find them wallow in wide day?”
How should I answer this Euripides?
Paul, — ’tis a legend, — answered Seneca,
But that was in the day-spring; noon is now
We have got too familiar with the light.
Shall I wish back once more that thrill of dawn?
When the whole truth-touched man burned up, one fire?
— Assured the trial, fiery, fierce, but fleet,
Would, from his little heap of ashes, lend
Wings to the conflagration of the world
Which Christ awaits ere He make all things new —
So should the frail become the perfect, rapt
From glory of pain to glory of joy; and so,
Even in the end, — the act renouncing earth,
Lands, houses, husbands, wives and children here, —
Begin that other act which finds all, lost,
Regained, in this time even, a hundredfold,
And, in the next time, feels the finite love
Blent and embalmed with its eternal life.
So does the sun ghastlily seem to sink
In those north parts, lean all but out of life,
Desist a dread mere breathing-stop, then slow
Reassert day, begin the endless rise.
Was this too easy for our after-stage?
Was such a lighting-up of faith, in life,
Only allowed initiate, set man’s step
In the true way by help of the great glow?
A way wherein it is ordained he walk,
Bearing to see the light from heaven still more
And more encroached on by the light of earth,
Tentatives earth puts forth to rival heaven,
Earthly incitements that mankind serve God
For man’s sole sake, not God’s and therefore man’s,
Till at last, who distinguishes the sun
From a mere Druid fire on a far mount?
More praise to him who with his subtle prism
Shall decompose both beams and name the true.
In such sense, who is last proves first indeed;
For how could saints and martyrs fail see truth
Streak the night’s blackness? Who is faithful now,
Untwists heaven’s pure white from the yellow flare
O’ the world’s gross torch, without a foil to help
Produce the Christian act, so possible
When in the way stood Nero’s cross and stake, —
So hard now that the world smiles “Rightly done!
“It is the politic, the thrifty way,
“Will clearly make you in the end returns
“Beyond our fool’s sport and improvidence:
“We fools go thro’ the cornfield of this life,
“Pluck ears to left and right and swallow raw,
“ — Nay, tread, at pleasure, a sheaf underfoot,
“To get the better at some poppy-flower, —
“Well aware we shall have so much wheat less
“In the eventual harvest: you meantime
“Waste not a spike, — the richlier will you reap!
“What then? There will be always garnered meal
“Sufficient for our comfortable loaf,
“While you enjoy the undiminished prize!”
Is it not this ignoble confidence,
Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
Makes the old heroism impossible?
Unless . . . what whispers me of times to come?
What if it be the mission of that age,
My death will usher into life, to shake
This torpor of assurance from our creed,
Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
The formidable danger back, we drove
Long ago to the distance and the dark?
No wild beast now prowls round the infant camp;
We have built wall and sleep in city safe:
But if the earthquake try the towers, that laugh
To think they once saw lions rule outside,
Till man stand out again, pale, resolute,
Prepared to die, — that is, alive at last?
As we broke up that old faith of the world,
Have we, next age, to break up this the new —
Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report —
Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
Through increased faith in thing reports belie?
Must we deny, — do they, these Molinists,
At peril of their body and their soul, —
Recognised truths, obedient to some truth
Unrecognised yet, but perceptible? —
Correct the portrait by the living face,
Man’s God, by God’s God in the mind of man?
Then, for the few that rise to the new height,
The many that must sink to the old depth,
The multitude found fall away! A few,
E’en ere the new law speak clear, keep the old,
Preserve the Christian level, call good good
And evil evil (even though razed and blank
The old titles stand), thro’ custom, habitude,
And all they may mistake for finer sense
O’ the fact than reason warrants, — as before,
They hope perhaps, fear not impossibly.
Surely some one Pompilia in the world
Will say “I know the right place by foot’s feel,
“I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?”
&nb
sp; But what a multitude will fall, perchance,
Quite through the crumbling truth subjacent late,
Sink to the next discoverable base,
Rest upon human nature, take their stand
On what is fact, the lust and pride of life!
The mass of men, whose very souls even now
Seem to need re-creating, — so they slink
Worm-like into the mud light now lays bare, —
Whose future we dispose of with shut eyes
“They are baptised, — grafted, the barren twigs,
“Into the living stock of Christ: may bear
“One day, till when they lie death-like, not dead,” —
Those who with all the aid of Christ lie thus,
How, without Christ, whither unaided, sink?
What but to this rehearsed before my eyes?
Do not we end, the century and I?
The impatient antimasque treads close on kibe
O’ the very masque’s self it will mock, — on me,
Last lingering personage, the impatient mime
Pushes already, — will I block the way?
Will my slow trail of garments ne’er leave space
For pantaloon, sock, plume, and castanet?
Here comes the first experimentalist
In the new order of things, — he plays a priest;
Does he take inspiration from the Church,
Directly make her rule his law of life?
Not he: his own mere impulse guides the man —
Happily sometimes, since ourselves admit
He had danced, in gaiety of heart, i’ the main
The right step in the maze we bade him foot.
What if his heart had prompted to break loose
And mar the measure? Why, we must submit
And thank the chance that brought him safely through.
Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.
Can he teach others how to quit themselves,
Prove why this step was right, while that were wrong?
How should he? “Ask your hearts as I asked mine,
“And get discreetly through the morrice so;
“If your hearts misdirect you, — quit the stage,
“And make amends, — be there amends to make.”
Such is, for the Augustine that was once,
This Canon Caponsacchi we see now.
“And my heart answers to another tune,”
Puts in the Abate, second in the suite,
“I have my taste too, and tread no such step!
“You choose the glorious life, and may, for me,
“Who like the lowest of life’s appetites, —
“What you judge, — but the very truth of joy
“To my own apprehension which must judge.
“Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!
“I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;
“Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 128