‘Twixt tree and tree, a tent whence the red pennon made
Its vivid reach for home and ocean-idleness —
And where, my heart surmised, at that same moment, — yes, —
Tugging her tricot on, — yet tenderly, lest stitch
Announce the crack of doom, reveal disaster which
Our Pornic’s modest stock of merceries in vain
Were ransacked to retrieve, — there, cautiously a-strain,
(My heart surmised) must crouch in that tent’s corner, curved
Like Spring-month’s russet moon, some girl by fate reserved
To give me once again the electric snap and spark
Which prove, when finger finds out finger in the dark
O’ the world, there’s fire and life and truth there, link but hands
And pass the secret on. Lo, link by link, expands
The circle, lengthens out the chain, till one embrace
Of high with low is found uniting the whole race,
Not simply you and me and our Fifine, but all
The world: the Fair expands into the Carnival,
And Carnival again to . . . ah, but that’s my dream!
XCII.
I somehow played the piece: remarked on each old theme
I’ the new dress; saw how food o’ the soul, the stuff that’s made
To furnish man with thought and feeling, is purveyed
Substantially the same from age to age, with change
Of the outside only for successive feasters. Range
The banquet-room o’ the world, from the dim farthest head
O’ the table, to its foot, for you and me bespread,
This merry morn, we find sufficient fare, I trow.
But, novel? Scrape away the sauce; and taste, below,
The verity o’ the viand, — you shall perceive there went
To board-head just the dish which other condiment
Makes palatable now: guests came, sat down, fell-to,
Rose up, wiped mouth, went way, — lived, died, — and never knew
That generations yet should, seeking sustenance,
Still find the selfsame fare, with somewhat to enhance
Its flavour, in the kind of cooking. As with hates
And loves and fears and hopes, so with what emulates
The same, expresses hates, loves, fears and hopes in Art:
The forms, the themes — no one without its counterpart
Ages ago; no one but, mumbled the due time
I’ the mouth of the eater, needs be cooked again in rhyme,
Dished up anew in paint, sauce-smothered fresh in sound,
To suit the wisdom-tooth, just cut, of the age, that’s found
With gums obtuse to gust and smack which relished so
The meat o’ the meal folk made some fifty years ago.
But don’t suppose the new was able to efface
The old without a struggle, a pang! The commonplace
Still clung about his heart, long after all the rest
O’ the natural man, at eye and ear, was caught, confessed
The charm of change, although wry lip and wrinkled nose
Owned ancient virtue more conducive to repose
Than modern nothings roused to somethings by some shred
Of pungency, perchance garlic in amber’s stead.
And so on, till one day, another age, by due
Rotation, pries, sniffs, smacks, discovers old is new,
And sauce, our sires pronounced insipid, proves again
Sole piquant, may resume its titillating reign —
With music, most of all the arts, since change is there
The law, and not the lapse: the precious means the rare,
And not the absolute in all good save surprise.
So I remarked upon our Schumann’s victories
Over the commonplace, how faded phrase grew fine,
And palled perfection — piqued, upstartled by that brine,
His pickle — bit the mouth and burnt the tongue aright,
Beyond the merely good no longer exquisite:
Then took things as I found, and thanked without demur
The pretty piece — played through that movement, you prefer,
Where dance and shuffle past, — he scolding while she pouts,
She canting while he calms, — in those eternal bouts
Of age, the dog — with youth, the cat — by rose-festoon
Tied teasingly enough — Columbine, Pantaloon:
She, toe-tips and staccato, — legato shakes his poll
And shambles in pursuit, the senior. Fi la folle !
Lie to him! get his gold and pay its price! begin
Your trade betimes, nor wait till you ‘ve wed Harlequin
And need, at the week’s end, to play the duteous wife,
And swear you still love slaps and leapings more than life!
Pretty! I say.
XCIII.
And so, I somehow-nohow played
The whole o’ the pretty piece; and then . . . whatever weighed
My eyes down, furled the films about my wits? suppose,
The morning-bath, — the sweet monotony of those
Three keys, flat, flat and flat, never a sharp at all, —
Or else the brain’s fatigue, forced even here to fall
Into the same old track, and recognize the shift
From old to new, and back to old again, and, — swift
Or slow, no matter, — still the certainty of change,
Conviction we shall find the false, where’er we range,
In art no less than nature: or what if wrist were numb,
And over-tense the muscle, abductor of the thumb,
Taxed by those tenths’ and twelfths’ unconscionable stretch?
Howe’er it came to pass, I soon was far to fetch —
Gone off in company with Music!
XCIV.
Whither bound
Except for Venice? She it was, by instinct found
Carnival-country proper, who far below the perch
Where I was pinnacled, showed, opposite, Mark’s Church,
And, underneath, Mark’s Square, with those two lines of street,
Procuratié -sides, each leading to my feet —
Since from above I gazed, however I got there.
XCV.
And what I gazed upon was a prodigious Fair,
Concourse immense of men and women, crowned or casqued,
Turbaned or tiar’d, wreathed, plumed, hatted or wigged, but masked —
Always masked, — only, how? No face-shape, beast or bird,
Nay, fish and reptile even, but someone had preferred,
From out its frontispiece, feathered or scaled or curled,
To make the vizard whence himself should view the world,
And where the world believed himself was manifest.
Yet when you came to look, mixed up among the rest
More funnily by far, were masks to imitate
Humanity’s mishap: the wrinkled brow, bald pate
And rheumy eyes of Age, peak’d chin and parchment chap,
Were signs of day-work done, and wage-time near, — mishap
Merely; but, Age reduced to simple greed and guile,
Worn apathetic else as some smooth slab, erewhile
A clear-cut man-at-arms i’ the pavement, till foot’s tread
Effaced the sculpture, left the stone you saw instead, —
Was not that terrible beyond the mere uncouth?
Well, and perhaps the next revolting you was Youth,
Stark ignorance and crude conceit, half smirk, half stare
On that frank fool-face, gay beneath its head of hair
Which covers nothing.
XCVI.
These, you are to understand,
Were the mere hard and sharp distinctions. On each hand,
I soon became aware, flocked the infinitude
>
Of passions, loves and hates, man pampers till his mood
Becomes himself, the whole sole face we name him by,
Nor want denotement else, if age or youth supply
The rest of him: old, young, — classed creature: in the main
A love, a hate, a hope, a fear, each soul a-strain
Some one way through the flesh — the face, an evidence
O’ the soul at work inside; and, all the more intense,
So much the more grotesque.
XCVII.
“Why should each soul be tasked
Some one way, by one love or else one hate?” I asked.
When it occurred to me, from all these sights beneath
There rose not any sound: a crowd, yet dumb as death!
XCVIII.
Soon I knew why. (Propose a riddle, and ‘t is solved
Forthwith — in dream!) They spoke; but, — since on me devolved
To see, and understand by sight, — the vulgar speech
Might be dispensed with. “He who cannot see, must reach
As best he may the truth of men by help of words
They please to speak, must fare at will of who affords
The banquet,” — so I thought. “Who sees not, hears and so
Gets to believe; myself it is that, seeing, know,
And, knowing, can dispense with voice and vanity
Of speech. What hinders then, that, drawing closer, I
Put privilege to use, see and know better still
These simulacra , taste the profit of my skill,
Down in the midst?”
XCIX.
And plumb I pitched into the square —
A groundling like the rest. What think you happened there?
Precise the contrary of what one would expect!
For, — whereas so much more monstrosities deflect
From nature and the type, as you the more approach
Their precinct, — here, I found brutality encroach
Less on the human, lie the lightlier as I looked
The nearlier on these faces that seemed but now so crook’d
And clawed away from God’s prime purpose. They diverged
A little from the type, but somehow rather urged
To pity than disgust: the prominent, before,
Now dwindled into mere distinctness, nothing more.
Still, at first sight, stood forth undoubtedly the fact
Some deviation was: in no one case there lacked
The certain sign and mark, — say hint, say, trick of lip
Or twist of nose, — that proved a fault in workmanship,
Change in the prime design, some hesitancy here
And there, which checked the man and let the beast appear;
But that was all.
C.
All: yet enough to bid each tongue
Lie in abeyance still. They talked, themselves among,
Of themselves, to themselves; I saw the mouths at play,
The gesture that enforced, the eye that strove to say
The same thing as the voice, and seldom gained its point
— That this was so, I saw; but all seemed out of joint
I’ the vocal medium ‘twixt the world and me. I gained
Knowledge by notice, not by giving ear, — attained
To truth by what men seemed, not said: to me one glance
Was worth whole histories of noisy utterance,
— At least, to me in dream.
CI.
And presently I found
That, just as ugliness had withered, so unwound
Itself, and perished off, repugnance to what wrong
Might linger yet i’ the make of man. My will was strong
I’ the matter; I could pick and choose, project my weight:
(Remember how we saw the boatman trim his freight!)
Determine to observe, or manage to escape,
Or make divergency assume another shape
By shift of point of sight in me the observer: thus
Corrected, added to, subtracted from, — discuss
Each variant quality, and brute-beast touch was turned
Into mankind’s safeguard! Force, guile, were arms which earned
My praise, not blame at all: for we must learn to live,
Case-hardened at all points, not bare and sensitive,
But plated for defence, nay, furnished for attack,
With spikes at the due place, that neither front nor back
May suffer in that squeeze with nature, we find — life.
Are we not here to learn the good of peace through strife,
Of love through hate, and reach knowledge by ignorance?
Why, those are helps thereto, which late we eyed askance,
And nicknamed unaware! Just so, a sword we call
Superfluous, and cry out against, at festival:
Wear it in time of war, its clink and clatter grate
O’ the ear to purpose then!
CII.
I found, one must abate
One’s scorn of the soul’s casing, distinct from the soul’s self —
Which is the centre-drop: whereas the pride in pelf,
The lust to seem the thing it cannot be, the greed
For praise, and all the rest seen outside, — these indeed
Are the hard polished cold crystal environment
Of those strange orbs unearthed i’ the Druid temple, meant
For divination (so the learned please to think)
Wherein you may admire one dew-drop roll and wink,
All unaffected by — quite alien to — what sealed
And saved it long ago: though how it got congealed
I shall not give a guess, nor how, by power occult,
The solid surface-shield was outcome and result
Of simple dew at work to save itself amid
The unwatery force around; protected thus, dew slid
Safe through all opposites, impatient to absorb
Its spot of life, and last for ever in the orb
We, now, from hand to hand pass with impunity.
CIII.
And the delight wherewith I watch this crowd must be
Akin to that which crowns the chemist when he winds
Thread up and up, till clue be fairly clutched, — unbinds
The composite, ties fast the simple to its mate,
And, tracing each effect back to its cause, elate,
Constructs in fancy, from the fewest primitives,
The complex and complete, all diverse life, that lives
Not only in beast, bird, fish, reptile, insect, but
The very plants and earths and ores. Just so I glut
My hunger both to be and know the thing I am,
By contrast with the thing I am not; so, through sham
And outside, I arrive at inmost real, probe
And prove how the nude form obtained the chequered robe.
CIV.
— Experience, I am glad to master soon or late,
Here, there and everywhere i’ the world, without debate!
Only, in Venice why? What reason for Mark’s Square
Rather than Timbuctoo?
CV.
And I became aware,
Scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued
In silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude,
A formidable change of the amphitheatre
Which held the Carnival; although the human stir
Continued just the same amid that shift of scene.
CVI.
For as on edifice of cloud i’ the grey and green
Of evening, — built about some glory of the west,
To barricade the sun’s departure, — manifest,
He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapour, crag and crest
Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and deed
They cluster round and keep their very own, nor
heed
The world at watch; while we, breathlessly at the base
O’ the castellated bulk, note momently the mace
Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with every blow,
Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico
I’ the structure: heights and depths, beneath the leaden stress,
Crumble and melt and mix together, coälesce
Re-form, but sadder still, subdued yet more and more
By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need pore
No longer on the dull impoverished decadence
Of all that pomp of pile in towering evidence
So lately: —
CVII.
Even thus nor otherwise, meseemed
That if I fixed my gaze awhile on what I dreamed
Was Venice’ Square, Mark’s Church, the scheme was straight unschemed,
A subtle something had its way within the heart
Of each and every house I watched, with counterpart
Of tremor through the front and outward face, until
Mutation was at end; impassive and stock-still
Stood now the ancient house, grown — new, is scarce the phrase,
Since older, in a sense, — altered to . . . what i’ the ways,
Ourselves are wont to see, coërced by city, town
Or village, anywhere i’ the world, pace up or down
Europe! In all the maze, no single tenement
I saw, but I could claim acquaintance with.
CVIII.
There went
Conviction to my soul, that what I took of late
For Venice was the world; its Carnival — the state
Of mankind, masquerade in life-long permanence
For all time, and no one particular feast-day. Whence
‘T was easy to infer what meant my late disgust
At the brute-pageant, each grotesque of greed and lust
And idle hate, and love as impotent for good —
When from my pride of place I passed the interlude
In critical review; and what, the wonder that ensued
When, from such pinnacled pre-eminence, I found
Somehow the proper goal for wisdom was the ground
And not the sky, — so, slid sagaciously betimes
Down heaven’s baluster-rope, to reach the mob of mimes
And mummers; whereby came discovery there was just
Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,
Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift
The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift
Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames
Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names
According to what stage i’ the process turned his rough,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 160