Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  To special interests, make common cause

  Against the adversary — or perchance

  Mere dullard to his own plain interest!

  Which of us will you choose? — since needs must be

  Some one o’ the warring causes you incline

  To hold, i’ the main, has right and should prevail:

  Why not adopt and give it prevalence?

  Choose strict Faith or lax Incredulity, —

  King, Caste and Cultus — or the Rights of Man,

  Sovereignty of each Proudhon o’er himself,

  And all that follows in just consequence!

  Go free the stranger from a foreign yoke;

  Or stay, concentrate energy at home;

  Succeed! — when he deserves, the stranger will.

  Comply with the Great Nation’s impulse, print

  By force of arms, — since reason pleads in vain,

  And, mid the sweet compulsion, pity weeps, —

  Hohenstiel-Schwangau on the universe!

  Snub the Great Nation, cure the impulsive itch

  With smartest fillip on a restless nose

  Was ever launched by thumb and finger! Bid

  Hohenstiel-Schwangau first repeal the tax

  On pig-tails and pomatum, and then mind

  Abstruser matters for next century!

  Is your choice made? Why then, act up to choice!

  Leave the illogical touch now here now there

  I’ the way of work, the tantalizing help

  First to this, then the other opposite:

  The blowing hot and cold, sham policy,

  Sure ague of the mind and nothing more,

  Disease of the perception or the will,

  That fain would hide in a fine name! Your choice,

  Speak it out and condemn yourself there-by!”

  Well, Leicester-square is not the Residenz:

  Instead of shrugging shoulder, turning friend

  The deaf ear, with a wink to the police —

  I’ll answer — by a question, wisdom’s mode.

  How many years, o’ the average, do men

  Live in this world? Some score, say computists.

  (Quintuple me that term and give mankind

  The likely hundred, and with all my heart

  I’ll take your task upon me, work your way,

  Concentrate energy on some one cause:

  Since, counseller, I also have my cause,

  My flag, my faith in its effect, my hope

  In its eventual triumph for the good

  O’ the world. And once upon a time, when I

  Was like all you, mere voice and nothing more,

  Myself took wings, soared sunward, and thence sang

  “Look where I live i’ the loft, come up to me,

  Groundlings, nor grovel longer! gain this height,

  And prove you breathe here better than below!

  Why, what emancipation far and wide

  Will follow in a trice! They too can soar,

  Each tenant of the earth’s circumference

  Claiming to elevate humanity,

  They also must attain such altitude,

  Live in the luminous circle that surrounds

  The planet, not the leaden orb itself.

  Press out, each point, from surface to yon verge

  Which one has gained and guaranteed your realm!”

  Ay, still my fragments wander, music-fraught,

  Sighs of the soul, mine once, mine now, and mine

  Forever! Crumbled arch, crushed aqueduct,

  Alive with tremors in the shaggy growth

  Of wild-wood, crevice-sown, that triumphs there

  Imparting exultation to the hills!

  Sweep of the swathe when only the winds walk

  And waft my words above the grassy sea

  Under the blinding blue that basks o’er Rome, —

  Hear ye not still — ”Be Italy again”?

  And ye, what strikes the panic to your heart?

  Decrepit council-chambers, — where some lamp

  Drives the unbroken black three paces off

  From where the graybeards huddle in debate,

  Dim cowls and capes, and midmost glimmers one

  Like tarnished gold, and what they say is doubt,

  And what they think is fear, and what suspends

  The breath in them is not the plaster-patch

  Time disengages from the painted wall

  Where Rafael moulderingly bids adieu,

  Nor tick of the insect turning tapestry

  Which a queen’s finger traced of old, to dust;

  But some word, resonant, redoubtable,

  Of who once felt upon his head a hand

  Whereof the head now apprehends his foot.

  “Light in Rome, Law in Rome, and Liberty

  O’ the soul in Rome — the free Church, the free State!

  Stamp out the nature that’s best typified

  By its embodiment in Peter’s Dome,

  The scorpion-body with the greedy pair

  Of outstretched nippers, either colonnade

  Agape for the advance of heads and hearts!”

  There’s one cause for you! one and only one,

  For I am vocal through the universe,

  I’ the workshop, manufactory, exchange

  And market-place, sea-port and custom-house

  O’ the frontier: listen if the echoes die —

  “Unfettered commerce! Power to speak and hear,

  And print and read! The universal vote!

  Its rights for labor!” This, with much beside,

  I spoke when I was voice and nothing more,

  But altogether such an one as you

  My censors. “Voice, and nothing more, indeed!”

  Re-echoes round me: “that’s the censure, there’s

  Involved the ruin of you soon or late!

  Voice, — when its promise beat the empty air:

  And nothing more, — when solid earth’s your stage,

  And we desiderate performance, deed

  For word, the realizing all you dreamed

  In the old days: now, for deed, we find at door

  O’ the council-chamber posted, mute as mouse,

  Hohenstiel-Schwangau, sentry and safeguard

  O’ the graybeards all a-chuckle, cowl to cape,

  Who challenge Judas, — that’s endearment’s style, —

  To stop their mouths or let escape grimace,

  While they keep cursing Italy and him.

  The power to speak, hear, print and read is ours?

  “Ay, we learn where and how, when clapped inside

  A convict-transport bound for cool Cayenne!

  The universal vote we have: its urn,

  We also have where votes drop, fingered-o’er

  By the universal Prefect. Say, Trade’s free

  And Toil turned master out o’ the slave it was:

  What then? These feed man’s stomach, but his soul

  Craves finer fare, nor lives by bread alone,

  As somebody says somewhere. Hence you stand

  Proved and recorded either false or weak,

  Faulty in promise or performance: which?”

  Neither, I hope. Once pedestalled on earth,

  To act not speak, I found earth was not air.

  I saw that multitude of mine, and not

  The nakedness and nullity of air

  Fit only for a voice to float in free.

  Such eyes I saw that craved the light alone,

  Such mouths that wanted bread and nothing else,

  Such hands that supplicated handiwork,

  Men with the wives, and women with the babes,

  Yet all these pleading just to live, not die!

  Did I believe one whit less in belief

  Take truth for falsehood, wish the voice revoked

  That told the truth to heaven for earth to hear?

  No, this should be, and
shall; but when and how?

  At what expense to these who average

  Your twenty years of life, my computists?

  “Not bread alone” but bread before all else

  For these: the bodily want serve first, said I;

  If earth-space and the life-time help not here,

  Where is the good of body having been?

  But, helping body, if we somewhat balk

  The Soul of finer fare, such food’s to find

  Elsewhere and afterward — all indicates,

  Even this self-same fact that soul can starve

  Yet body still exist its twenty years:

  While, stint the body, there’s an end at once

  O’ the revel in the fancy that Rome’s free,

  And superstition’s fettered, and one prints

  Whate’er one pleases and who pleases reads

  The same, and speaks out and is spoken to,

  And divers hundred thousand fools may vote

  A vote untampered with by one wise man,

  And so elect Barabbas deputy

  In lieu of his concurrent. I who trace

  The purpose written on the face of things,

  For my behoof and guidance — (whoso needs

  No such sustainment, sees beneath my signs,

  Proves, what I take for writing, penmanship,

  Scribble and flourish with no sense for me

  O’ the sort I solemnly go spelling out, —

  Let him! there’s certain work of mine to show

  Alongside his work: which gives warranty

  Of shrewder vision in the workman — judge!)

  I who trace Providence without a break

  I’ the plan of things, drop plumb on this plain print

  Of an intention with a view to good,

  That man is made in sympathy with man

  At outset of existence, so to speak;

  But in dissociation, more and more,

  Man from his fellow, as their lives advance

  In culture; still humanity, that’s born

  A mass, keeps flying off, fining away

  Ever into a multitude of points,

  And ends in isolation, each from each:

  Peerless above i’ the sky, the pinnacle, —

  Absolute contact, fusion, all below

  At the base of being. How comes this about?

  This stamp of God characterizing man

  And nothing else but man in the universe —

  That, while he feels with man (to use man’s speech)

  I’ the little Things of life, its fleshly wants

  Of food and rest and health and happiness,

  Its simplest spirit-motions, loves and hates,

  Hopes, fears, soul-cravings on the ignoblest scale,

  O’ the fellow-creature, — owns the bond at base, —

  He tends to freedom and divergency

  In the upward progress, plays the pinnacle

  When life’s at greatest (grant again the phrase!

  Because there’s neither great nor small in life).

  “Consult thou for thy kind that have the eyes

  To see, the mouths to eat, the hands to work,

  Men with the wives, and women with the babes!”

  Prompts Nature. “Care thou for thyself alone

  I’ the conduct of the mind God made thee with!

  Think, as if man had never thought before!

  Act, as if all creation hung attent

  On the acting of such faculty as thine,

  To take prime pattern from thy masterpiece!”

  Nature prompts also: neither law obeyed

  To the uttermost by any heart and soul

  We know or have in record: both of them

  Acknowledged blindly by whatever man

  We ever knew or heard of in this world.

  “Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact

  Made plain as pikestaff?” modern Science asks.

  “That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump

  Once on a time; he kept an after course

  Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,

  Till he attained to be an ape at last

  Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock

  In aught the natural pride” . . . Friend, banish fear,

  The natural humility replies!

  Do you suppose, even I, poor potentate,

  Hohenstiel-Schwangau, who once ruled the roast, —

  I was born able at all points to ply

  My tools? or did I have to learn my trade,

  Practise as exile ere perform as prince?

  The world knows something of my ups and downs:

  But grant me time, give me the management

  And manufacture of a model me,

  Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw, —

  Why, there’s no social grade, the sordidest,

  My embryo potentate should blink and ‘scape.

  King, all the better he was cobbler once,

  He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes

  Life to who sweeps the doorway. But life’s hard,

  Occasion rare; you cut probation short,

  And, being half-instructed, on the stage

  You shuffle through your part as best you can,

  And bless your stars, as I do. God takes time,

  I like the thought He should have lodged me once

  I’ the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,

  The mansion and the palace; made me learn

  The feel o’ the first, before I found myself

  Loftier i’ the last, not more emancipate;

  From first to last of lodging, I was I,

  And not at all the place that harbored me.

  Do I refuse to follow farther yet

  I’ the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,

  Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place

  Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusk?

  As well account that way for many a thrill

  Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers

  Called Nature: animate, inanimate,

  In parts or in the whole, there’s something there

  Man-like that somehow meets the man in me.

  My pulse goes altogether with the heart

  O’ the Persian, that old Xerxes, when he stayed

  His march to conquest of the world, a day

  I’ the desert, for the sake of one superb

  Plane-tree which queened it there in solitude:

  Giving her neck its necklace, and each arm

  Its armlet, suiting soft waist, snowy side,

  With cincture and apparel. Yes, I lodged

  In those successive tenements; perchance

  Taste yet the straitness of them while I stretch

  Limb and enjoy new liberty the more.

  And some abodes are lost or ruinous;

  Some, patched-up and pieced-out, and so transformed

  They still accommodate the traveller

  His day of lifetime. O you count the links,

  Descry no bar of the unbroken man?

  Yes, — and who welds a lump of ore, suppose

  He likes to make a chain and not a bar,

  And reach by link on link, link small, link large,

  Out to the due length — why, there’s forethought still

  Outside o’ the series, forging at one end,

  While at the other there’s no matter what

  The kind of critical intelligence

  Believing that last link had last but one

  For parent, and no link was, first of all,

  Fitted to anvil, hammered into shape.

  Else, I accept the doctrine, and deduce

  This duty, that I recognize mankind,

  In all its height and depth and length and breadth.

  Mankind i’ the main have little wants, not large:

  I, being of will and power to help, i’ the main,

  Ma
nkind, must help the least wants first. My friend,

  That is, my foe, without such power and will,

  May plausibly concentrate all he wields,

  And do his best at helping some large want,

  Exceptionally noble cause, that’s seen

  Subordinate enough from where I stand.

  As he helps, I helped once, when like himself,

  Unable to help better, work more wide;

  And so would work with heart and hand to-day,

  Did only computists confess a fault,

  And multiply the single score by five,

  Five only, give man’s life its hundred years.

  Change life, in me shall follow change to match!

  Time were then, to work here, there, everywhere,

  By turns and try experiment at ease!

  Full time to mend as well as mar: why wait

  The slow and sober uprise all around

  O’ the building? Let us run up, right to roof,

  Some sudden marvel, piece of perfectness,

  And testify what we intend the whole!

  Is the world losing patience? “Wait!” say we:

  “There’s time: no generation needs to die

  Unsolaced; you’ve a century in store!”

  But, no: I sadly let the voices wing

  Their way i’ the upper vacancy, nor test

  Truth on this solid as I promised once.

  Well, and what is there to be sad about?

  The world’s the world, life’s life, and nothing else.

  ‘T is part of life, a property to prize,

  That those o’ the higher sort engaged i’ the world,

  Should fancy they can change its ill to good,

  Wrong to right, ugliness to beauty: find

  Enough success in fancy turning fact,

  To keep the sanguine kind in countenance

  And justify the hope that busies them:

  Failure enough, — to who can follow change

  Beyond their vision, see new good prove ill

  I’ the consequence, see blacks and whites of life

  Shift square indeed, but leave the chequered face

  Unchanged i’ the main, — failure enough for such,

  To bid ambition keep the whole from change,

  As their best service. I hope naught beside.

  No, my brave thinkers, whom I recognize,

  Gladly, myself the first, as, in a sense,

  All that our world’s worth, flower and fruit of man!

  Such minds myself award supremacy

  Over the common insignificance,

  When only Mind’s in question, — Body bows

  To quite another government, you know.

  Be Kant crowned king o’ the castle in the air!

  Hans Slouch, — his own, and children’s mouths to feed

  I’ the hovel on the ground, — wants meat, nor chews

  “The Critique of Pure Reason” in exchange.