Rather by grinning ‘Cheat, thy gold is brass!’
Than granting ‘Perfect piece of purest ore!
Still, is it less good mintage, this of mine?’
Well, and these right and sound results of soul
I’ the strong and healthy one wise man, — shall such
Be vainly sought for, scornfully renounced
I’ the multitude that make the entity —
The people? — to what purpose, if no less,
In power and purity of soul, below
The reach of the unit than, by multiplied
Might of the body, vulgarized the more,
Above, in thick and threefold brutishness?
See! you accept such one wise man, myself:
Wiser or less wise, still I operate
From my own stock of wisdom, nor exact
Of other sort of natures you admire,
That whoso rhymes a sonnet pays a tax,
Who paints a landscape dips brush at his cost,
Who scores a septett true for strings and wind
Mulcted must be — else how should I impose
Properly, attitudinize aright,
Did such conflicting claims as these divert
Hohenstiel-Schwangau from observing me?
Therefore, what I find facile, you be sure,
With effort or without it, you shall dare —
You, I aspire to make my better self
And truly the Great Nation. No more war
For war’s sake, then! and, — seeing, wickedness
Springs out of folly, no more foolish dread
O’ the neighbor waxing too inordinate
A rival, through his gain of wealth and ease!
What? — keep me patient, Powers! — the people here,
Earth presses to her heart, nor owns a pride
Above her pride i’ the race all flame and air
And aspiration to the boundless Great,
The incommensurably Beautiful —
Whose very falterings groundward come of flight
Urged by a pinion all too passionate
For heaven and what it holds of gloom and glow:
Bravest of thinkers, bravest of the brave
Doers, exalt in Science, rapturous
In Art, the — more than all — magnetic race
To fascinate their fellows, mould mankind
Hohenstiel-Schwangau-fashion, — these, what? — these
Will have to abdicate their primacy
Should such a nation sell them steel untaxed,
And such another take itself, on hire
For the natural sennight, somebody for lord
Unpatronized by me whose back was turned?
Or such another yet would fain build bridge,
Lay rail, drive tunnel, busy its poor self
With its appropriate fancy: so there’s — flash —
Hohenstiel-Schwangau up in arms at once!
Genius has somewhat of the infantine:
But of the childish, not a touch nor taint
Except through self-will, which, being foolishness,
Is certain, soon or late, of punishment
Which Providence avert! — and that it may
Avert what both of us would so deserve,
No foolish dread o’ the neighbor, I enjoin!
By consequence, no wicked war with him,
While I rule!
”Does that mean — no war at all
When just the wickedness I here proscribe
Comes, haply, from the neighbor? Does my speech
Precede the praying that you beat the sword
To ploughshare, and the spear to pruning-hook,
And sit down henceforth under your own vine
And fig-tree through the sleepy summer month,
Letting what hurly-burly please explode
On the other side the mountain-frontier? No,
Beloved! I foresee and I announce
Necessity of warfare in one case,
For one cause: one way, I bid broach the blood
O’ the world. For truth and right, and only right
And truth, — right, truth, on the absolute scale of God,
No pettiness of man’ s admeasurement, —
In such case only, and for such one cause,
Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide
Hands energetic to the uttermost!
Lie not! Endure no lie which needs your heart
And hand to push it out of mankind’s path —
No lie that lets the natural forces work
Too long ere lay it plain and pulverized —
Seeing man’s life lasts only twenty years!
And such a lie, before both man and God,
Proving, at this time present, Austria’s rule
O’er Italy, — for Austria’s sake the first,
Italy’s next, and our sake last of all,
Come with me and deliver Italy!
Smite hip and thigh until the oppressor leave
Free from the Adriatic to the Alps
The oppressed one! We were they who laid her low
In the old bad day when Villany braved Truth
And Right, and laughed ‘Henceforward, God deposed,
Satan we set to rule for evermore
I’ the world!’ — whereof to stop the consequence,
And for atonement of false glory there
Gaped at and gabbled over by the world,
I purpose to get God enthroned again
For what the world will gird at as sheer shame
I’ the cost of blood and treasure. ‘All for naught —
Not even, say, some patch of province, splice
O’ the frontier? — some snug honorarium-fee
Shut into glove and pocketed apace?’
(Questions Sagacity) ‘in deference
To the natural susceptibility
Of folks at home, unwitting of that pitch
You soar to, and misdoubting if Truth, Right
And the other such augustnesses repay
Expenditure in coin o’ the realm, — but prompt
To recognize the cession of Savoy
And Nice as marketable value!’ No,
Sagacity, go preach to Metternich,
And, sermon ended, stay where he resides!
Hohenstiel-Schwangau, you and I must march
The other road! war for the hate of war,
Not love, this once!” So Italy was free.
What else noteworthy and commendable
I’ the man’s career? — that he was resolute —
No trepidation, much less treachery
On his part, should imperil from its poise
The ball o’ the world, heaved up at such expense
Of pains so far, and ready to rebound,
Let but a finger maladroitly fall,
Under pretence of making fast and sure
The inch gained by late volubility,
And run itself back to the ancient rest
At foot o’ the mountain. Thus he ruled, gave proof
The world had gained a point, progressive so,
By choice, this time, as will and power concurred,
O’ the fittest man to rule; not chance of birth,
Or such-like dice-throw. Oft Sagacity
Was at his ear: “Confirm this clear advance,
Support this wise procedure! You, elect
O’ the people, mean to justify their choice
And out-king all the kingly imbeciles;
But that’s just half the enterprise: remains
You find them a successor like yourself,
In head and heart and eye and hand and aim,
Or all done’s undone; and whom hope to mould
So like you as the pupil Nature sends,
The son and heir’s completeness which you lack?
Lack it no longer! Wed the pick o’ the world,
Where’er you think you find it. Should she be
A queen, — tell Hohenstielers-Schwangauese
‘So do the old enthroned decrepitudes
Acknowledge, in the rotten hearts of them,
Their knell is knolled, they hasten to make peace
With the new order, recognize in me!
Your right to constitute what king you will,
Cringe therefore crown in hand and bride on arm,
To both of us: we triumph, I suppose!’
Is it the other sort of rank? bright eye,
Soft smile, and so forth, all her queenly boast?
Undaunted the exordium — ’I, the man
O’ the people, with the people mate myself:
So stand, so fall. Kings, keep your crowns and brides!
Our progeny (if Providence agree)
Shall live to tread the baubles underfoot
And bid the scarecrows consort with their kin.
For son, as for his sire, be the free wife
In the free state!’”
That is, Sagacity
Would prop up one more lie, the most of all
Pernicious fancy that the son and heir
Receives the genius from the sire, himself
Transmits as surely, — ask experience else!
Which answers, — never was so plain a truth
As that God drops his seed of heavenly flame
Just where He wills on earth: sometimes where man
Seems to tempt — such the accumulated store
Of faculties one spark to fire the heap;
Sometimes where, fire-ball-like, it falls upon
The naked unpreparedness of rock,
Burns, beaconing the nations through their night.
Faculties, fuel for the flame? All helps
Come, ought to come, or come not, crossed by chance,
From culture and transmission. What’s your want
I’ the son and heir? Sympathy, aptitude,
Teachableness, the fuel for the flame?
You’ll have them for your pains: but the flame’s self,
The novel thought of God shall light the world?
No, poet, though your offspring rhyme and chime
I’ the cradle, — painter, no, for all your pet
Draws his first eye, beats Salvatore’s boy, —
And thrice no, statesman, should your progeny
Tie bib and tucker with no tape but red,
And make a foolscap kite of protocols!
Critic and copyist and bureaucrat
To heart’s content! The seed o’ the apple-tree
Brings forth another tree which bears a crab:
‘Tis the great gardener grafts the excellence
On wildings where he will.
”How plain I view,
Across those misty years ‘twixt me and Rome” —
(Such the man’s answer to Sagacity)
“The little wayside temple, half-way down
To a mild river that makes oxen white
Miraculously, un-mouse-colors skin,
Or so the Roman country people dream!
I view that sweet small shrub-embedded shrine
On the declivity, was sacred once
To a transmuting Genius of the land,
Could touch and turn its dunnest natures bright,
— Since Italy means the Land of the Ox, we know.
Well, how was it the due succession fell
From priest to priest who ministered i’ the cool
Calm fane o’ the Clitumnian god? The sire
Brought forth a son and sacerdotal sprout
Endowed instinctively with good and grace
To suit the gliding gentleness below —
Did he? Tradition tells another tale.
Each priest obtained his predecessor’s staff,
Robe, fillet and insignia, blamelessly,
By springing out of ambush, soon or late,
And slaying him: the initiative rite
Simply was murder, save that murder took,
I’ the case, another and religious name.
So it was once, is now, shall ever be
With genius and its priesthood in this world:
The new power slays the old — but handsomely.
There he lies, not diminished by an inch
Of stature that he graced the altar with,
Though somebody of other bulk and build
Cries ‘What a goodly personage lies here
Reddening the water where the bulrush roots!
May I conduct the service in his place,
Decently and in order, as did he,
And, as he did not, keep a wary watch
When meditating ‘neath yon willow shade!’
Find out your best man, sure the son of him
Will prove best man again, and, better still
Somehow than best, the grandson-prodigy!
You think the world would last another day
Did we so make us masters of the trick
Whereby the works go, we could pre-arrange
Their play and reach perfection when we please?
Depend on it, the change and the surprise
Are part o’ the plan: ‘tis we wish steadiness;
Nature prefers a motion by unrest,
Advancement through this force which jostles that.
And so, since much remains i’ the world to see,
Here’s the world still, affording God the sight.”
Thus did the man refute Sagacity
Ever at this old whisper in his ear:
“Here are you picked out, by a miracle,
And placed conspicuously enough, folks say
And you believe, by Providence outright
Taking a new way — nor without success —
To put the world upon its mettle: good!
But Fortune alternates with Providence;
Resource is soon exhausted. Never count
On such a happy hit occurring twice!
Try the old method next time!”
”Old enough,”
(At whisper in his ear, the laugh outbroke)
“And mode the most discredited of all,
By just the men and women who make boast
They are kings and queens thereby! Mere self-defence
Should teach them, on one chapter of the law
Must be no sort of trifling — chastity:
They stand or fall, as their progenitors
Were chaste or unchaste. Now, run eye around
My crowned acquaintance, give each life its look
And no more, — why, you’d think each life was led
Purposely for example of what pains
Who leads it took to cure the prejudice,
And prove there’s nothing so unprovable
As who is who, what son of what a sire,
And, — inferentially — how faint the chance
That the next generation needs to fear
Another fool o’ the selfsame type as he
Happily regnant now by right divine
And luck o’ the pillow! No: select your lord
By the direct employment of your brains
As best you may, — bad as the blunder prove,
A far worse evil stank beneath the sun
When some legitimate blockhead managed so
Matters that high time was to interfere,
Though interference came from hell itself
And not the blind mad miserable mob
Happily ruled so long by pillow-luck
And divine right, by lies in short, not truth.
And meanwhile use the allotted minute . . . ”
One, —
Two, three, four, five — yes, five the pendule warns!
Eh? Why, this wild work wanders past all bound
And bearing! Exile, Leicester-square, the life
I’ the old gay miserable time, rehearsed,
Tried on again like cast clothes, still to serve
Ata
pinch, perhaps? “Who’s who?” was aptly asked,
Since certainly I am not I! since when?
Where is the bud-mouthed arbitress? A nod
Out-Homering Homer! Stay — there flits the clue
I fain would find the end of! Yes, — ”Meanwhile,
Use the allotted minute!” Well, you see,
(Veracious and imaginary Thiers,
Who map out thus the life I might have led,
But did not, — all the worse for earth and me —
Doff spectacles, wipe pen, shut book, decamp!)
You see ‘tis easy in heroics! Plain
Pedestrian speech shall help me perorate.
Ah, if one had no need to use the tongue!
How obvious and how easy ‘tis to talk
Inside the soul, a ghostly dialogue —
Instincts with guesses, — instinct, guess, again
With dubious knowledge, half-experience: each
And all the interlocutors alike
Subordinating, — as decorum bids,
Oh, never fear! but still decisively, —
Claims from without that take too high a tone,
— (“God wills this, man wants that, the dignity
Prescribed a prince would wish the other thing”) —
Putting them back to insignificance
Beside one intimatest fact — myself
Am first to be considered, since I live
Twenty years longer and then end, perhaps!
But, where one ceases to soliloquize,
Somehow the motives, that did well enough
I’ the darkness, when you bring them into light
Are found, like those famed cave-fish, to lack eye
And organ for the upper magnitudes.
The other common creatures, of less fine
Existence, that acknowledge earth and heaven,
Have it their own way in the argument.
Yes, forced to speak, one stoops to say — one’s aim
Was — what it peradventure should have been:
To renovate a people, mend or end
That bane come of a blessing meant the world —
Inordinate culture of the sense made quick
By soul, — the lust o’ the flesh, lust of the eye,
And pride of life, — and, consequent on these,
The worship of that prince o’ the power o’ the air
Who paints the cloud and fills the emptiness
And bids his votaries, famishing for truth,
Feed on a lie.
Alack, one lies oneself
Even in the stating that one’s end was truth,
Truth only, if one states as much in words!
Give me the inner chamber of the soul
For obvious easy argument! ‘tis there
One pits the silent truth against a lie —
Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird,
Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine,
Steel spurs, and the whole armory o’ the tongue,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 153