Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Monsieur Léonce Miranda may bequeath,

  In absence of more fit recipient, fund

  And usufruct together to the Church

  Whereof he was a special devotee

  “ — Which disposition, being consonant

  With a long series of such acts and deeds

  Notorious in his life-time, needs must stand,

  Unprejudiced by eccentricity

  Nowise amounting to distemper: since,

  In every instance signalized as such,

  We recognize no overleaping bounds,

  No straying out of the permissible:

  Duty to the Religion of the Land, —

  Neither excessive nor inordinate.

  “The minor accusations are dismissed;

  They prove mere freak and fancy, boyish mood

  In age mature of simple kindly man.

  Exuberant in generosities

  To all the world: no fact confirms the fear

  He meditated mischief to himself

  That morning when he met the accident

  Which ended fatally. The case is closed.”

  How otherwise? So, when I grazed the skirts,

  And had the glimpse of who made, yesterday, —

  Woman and retinue of goats and sheep, —

  The sombre path one whiteness, vision-like,

  As out of gate, and in at gate again,

  They wavered, — she was lady there for life:

  And, after life — I hope, a white success

  Of some sort, wheresoever life resume

  School interrupted by vacation — death;

  Seeing that home she goes with prize in hand,

  Confirmed the Châtelaine of Clairvaux.

  True,

  Such prize fades soon to insignificance.

  Though she have eaten her Miranda up,

  And spun a cradle-cone through which she pricks

  Her passage, and proves Peacock-butterfly

  This Autumn — wait a little week of cold!

  Peacock and death’s-head-moth end much the same.

  And could she still continue spinning, — sure,

  Cradle would soon crave shroud for substitute,

  And o’er this life of hers distaste would drop

  Red-cotton-Night-cap-wise.

  How say you, friend?

  Have I redeemed my promise? Smile assent

  Through the dark Winter-gloom between us both!

  Already, months ago and miles away,

  I just as good as told you, in a flash,

  The while we paced the sands before my house.

  All this poor story — truth and nothing else.

  Accept that moment’s flashing, amplified,

  Impalpability reduced to speech,

  Conception proved by birth, — no other change!

  Can what Saint-Rambert flashed me in a thought,

  Good gloomy London make a poem of?

  Such ought to be whatever dares precede,

  Play ruddy herald-star to your white blaze

  About to bring us day. How fail imbibe

  Some foretaste of effulgence? Sun shall wax,

  And star shall wane: what matter, so star tell

  The drowsy world to start awake, rub eyes,

  And stand all ready for morn’s joy a-blush?

  January 23, 1873.

  ARISTOPHANES’ APOLOGY

  Wind , wave, and bark, bear Euthukles and me,

  Balaustion, from — not sorrow but despair,

  Not memory but the present and its pang!

  Athenai, live thou hearted in my heart:

  Never, while I live, may I see thee more,

  Never again may these repugnant orbs

  Ache themselves blind before the hideous pomp,

  The ghastly mirth which mocked thine overthrow

  — Death’s entry, Haides’ outrage!

  Doomed to die, —

  Fire should have flung a passion of embrace

  About thee till, resplendently inarmed,

  (Temple by temple folded to his breast,

  All thy white wonder fainting out in ash)

  Lightly some vaporous sigh of soul escaped,

  And so the Immortals bade Athenai back!

  Or earth might sunder and absorb thee, save,

  Buried below Olumpos and its gods,

  Akropolis to dominate her realm

  For Koré, and console the ghosts; or, sea,

  What if thy watery plural vastitude,

  Rolling unanimous advance, had rushed,

  Might upon might, a moment, — stood, one stare,

  Sea-face to city-face, thy glaucous wave

  Glassing that marbled last magnificence, —

  Till fate’s pale tremulous foam-flower tipped the grey,

  And when wave broke and overswarmed and, sucked

  To bounds back, multitudinously ceased,

  Let land again breathe unconfused with sea,

  Attiké was, Athenai was not now!

  Such end I could have borne, for I had shared.

  But this which, glanced at, aches within my orbs

  To blinding, — bear me thence, bark, wind and wave!

  Me, Euthukles, and, hearted in each heart,

  Athenai, undisgraced as Pallas’ self,

  Bear to my birthplace, Helios’ island-bride,

  Zeus’ darling: thither speed us, homeward-bound,

  Wafted already twelve hours’ sail away

  From horror, nearer by one sunset Rhodes!

  Why should despair be? Since, distinct above

  Man’s wickedness and folly, flies the wind

  And floats the cloud, free transport for our soul

  Out of its fleshly durance dim and low, —

  Since disembodied soul anticipates

  (Thought-borne as now, in rapturous unrestraint)

  Above all crowding, crystal silentness,

  Above all noise, a silver solitude: —

  Surely, where thought so bears soul, soul in time

  May permanently bide, “assert the wise,”

  There live in peace, there work in hope once more —

  O nothing doubt, Philemon! Greed and strife,

  Hatred and cark and care, what place have they

  In yon blue liberality of heaven?

  How the sea helps! How rose-smit earth will rise

  Breast-high thence, some bright morning, and be Rhodes!

  Heaven, earth and sea, my warrant — in their name,

  Believe — o’er falsehood, truth is surely sphered,

  O’er ugliness beams beauty, o’er this world

  Extends that realm where, “as the wise assert,”

  Philemon, thou shalt see Euripides

  Clearer than mortal sense perceived the man!

  A sunset nearer Rhodes, by twelve hours’ sweep

  Of surge secured from horror? Rather say,

  Quieted out of weakness into strength.

  I dare invite, survey the scene my sense

  Staggered to apprehend: for, disenvolved

  From the mere outside anguish and contempt,

  Slowly a justice centred in a doom

  Reveals itself. Ay, pride succumbed to pride,

  Oppression met the oppressor and was matched.

  Athenai’s vaunt braved Sparté’s violence

  Till, in the shock, prone fell Peiraios, low

  Rampart and bulwark lay, as, — timing stroke

  Of hammer, axe, and beam hoist, poised and swung, —

  The very flute-girls blew their laughing best,

  In dance about the conqueror while he bade

  Music and merriment help enginery

  Batter down, break to pieces all the trust

  Of citizens once, slaves now. See what walls

  Play substitute for the long double range

  Themistoklean, heralding a guest

  From harbour on to citadel! Each side

  Their senseless walls demoli
shed stone by stone,

  See, — outer wall as stonelike, — heads and hearts, —

  Athenai’s terror-stricken populace!

  Prattlers, tongue-tied in crouching abjectness, —

  Braggarts, who wring hands wont to flourish swords —

  Sophist and rhetorician, demagogue,

  (Argument dumb, authority a jest)

  Dikast and heliast, pleader, litigant,

  Quack-priest, sham-prophecy-retailer, scout

  O’ the customs, sycophant, whate’er the style,

  Altar-scrap-snatcher, pimp and parasite, —

  Rivalities at truce now each with each,

  Stupefied mud-banks, — such an use they serve!

  While the one order which performs exact

  To promise, functions faithful last as first,

  What is it but the city’s lyric troop,

  Chantress and psaltress, flute-girl, dancing-girl?

  Athenai’s harlotry takes laughing care

  Their patron miss no pipings, late she loved,

  But deathward tread at least the kordax-step.

  Die then, who pulled such glory on your heads!

  There let it grind to powder! Perikles!

  The living are the dead now: death be life!

  Why should the sunset yonder waste its wealth?

  Prove thee Olympian! If my heart supply

  Inviolate the structure, — true to type,

  Build me some spirit-place no flesh shall find,

  As Pheidias may inspire thee: slab on slab,

  Renew Athenai, quarry out the cloud,

  Convert to gold yon west extravagance!

  ‘Neath Propulaia, from Akropolis

  By vapoury grade and grade, gold all the way,

  Step to thy snow-Pnux, mount thy Bema-cloud,

  Thunder and lighten thence a Hellas through

  That shall be better and more beautiful

  And too august for Sparté’s foot to spurn!

  Chasmed in the crag, again our Theatre

  Predominates, one purple: Staghunt-month,

  Brings it not Dionusia? Hail, the Three!

  Aischulos, Sophokles, Euripides

  Compete, gain prize or lose prize, godlike still.

  Nay, lest they lack the old god-exercise —

  Their noble want the unworthy, — as of old,

  (How otherwise should patience crown their might?)

  What if each find his ape promoted man,

  His censor raised for antic service still?

  Some new Hermippos to pelt Perikles,

  Kratinos to swear Pheidias robbed a shrine,

  Eruxis — I suspect, Euripides,

  No brow will ache because with mop and mow

  He gibes my poet! There’s a dog-faced dwarf

  That gets to godship somehow, yet retains

  His apehood in the Egyptian hierarchy,

  More decent, indecorous just enough:

  Why should not dog-ape, graced in due degree,

  Grow Momos as thou Zeus? Or didst thou sigh

  Rightly with thy Makaria? “After life,

  Better no sentiency than turbulence;

  Death cures the low contention.” Be it so!

  Yet progress means contention, to my mind.

  Euthukles, who, except for love that speaks,

  Art silent by my side while words of mine

  Provoke that foe from which escape is vain

  Henceforward, wake Athenai’s fate and fall, —

  Memories asleep as, at the altar-foot

  Those Furies in the Oresteian song, —

  Do I amiss who, wanting strength, use craft,

  Advance upon the foe I cannot fly,

  Nor feign a snake is dormant though it gnaw?

  That fate and fall, once bedded in our brain,

  Roots itself past upwrenching; but coaxed forth,

  Encouraged out to practise fork and fang, —

  Perhaps, when satiate with prompt sustenance,

  It may pine, likelier die than if left swell

  In peace by our pretension to ignore,

  Or pricked to threefold fury, should our stamp

  Bruise and not brain the pest.

  A middle course!

  What hinders that we treat this tragic theme

  As the Three taught when either woke some woe,

  — How Klutaimnestra hated, what the pride

  Of Iokasté, why Med?ia clove

  Nature asunder. Small rebuked by large,

  We felt our puny hates refine to air,

  Our poor prides sink, prevent the humbling hand,

  Our petty passions purify their tide.

  So, Euthukles, permit the tragedy

  To re-enact itself, this voyage through,

  Till sunsets end and sunrise brighten Rhodes!

  Majestic on the stage of memory,

  Peplosed and kothorned, let Athenai fall

  Once more, nay, oft again till life conclude,

  Lent for the lesson: Choros, I and thou!

  What else in life seems piteous any more

  After such pity, or proves terrible

  Beside such terror?

  Still — since Phrunichos

  Offended, by too premature a touch

  Of that Milesian smart-place freshly frayed —

  (Ah, my poor people, whose prompt remedy

  Was — fine the poet, not reform thyself!)

  Beware precipitate approach! Rehearse

  Rather the prologue, well a year away,

  Than the main misery, a sunset old.

  What else but fitting prologue to the piece

  Style an adventure, stranger than my first

  By so much as the issue it enwombed

  Lurked big beyond Balaustion’s littleness?

  Second supreme adventure! O that Spring,

  That eve I told the earlier to my friends!

  Where are the four now, with each red-ripe mouth

  Crumpled so close, no quickest breath it fetched

  Could disengage the lip-flower furled to bud

  For fear Admetos, — shivering head and foot,

  As with sick soul and blind averted face

  He trusted hand forth to obey his friend, —

  Should find no wife in her cold hand’s response,

  Nor see the disenshrouded statue start

  Alkestis, live the life and love the love!

  I wonder, does the streamlet ripple still,

  Outsmoothing galingale and watermint

  Its mat-floor? while at brim, ‘twixt sedge and sedge,

  What bubblings past Baccheion, broadened much,

  Pricked by the reed and fretted by the fly,

  Oared by the boatman-spider’s pair of arms!

  Lenaia was a gladsome month ago —

  Euripides had taught “Andromedé:”

  Next month, would teach “Kresphontes” — which same month

  Someone from Phokis, who companioned me

  Since all that happened on those temple-steps,

  Would marry me and turn Athenian too.

  Now! if next year the masters let the slaves

  Do Bacchic service and restore mankind

  That trilogy whereof, ‘t is noised, one play

  Presents the Bacchai, — no Euripides

  Will teach the choros, nor shall we be tinged

  By any such grand sunset of his soul,

  Exiles from dead Athenai, — not the live

  That’s in the cloud there with the new-born star!

  Speak to the infinite intelligence,

  Sing to the everlasting sympathy!

  Winds belly sail, and drench of dancing brine

  Buffet our boat-side, so the prore bound free!

  Condense our voyage into one great day

  Made up of sunset-closes: eve by eve,

  Resume that memorable night-discourse

  When, — like some meteor-brilliance, fire and filth,

&
nbsp; Or say, his own Amphitheos, deity

  And dung, who, bound on the gods’ embassage,

  Got men’s acknowledgment in kick and cuff —

  We made acquaintance with a visitor

  Ominous, apparitional, who went

  Strange as he came, but shall not pass away.

  Let us attempt that memorable talk,

  Clothe the adventure’s every incident

  With due expression: may not looks be told,

  Gesture made speak, and speech so amplified

  That words find blood-warmth which, cold-writ, they lose?

  Recall the night we heard the news from Thrace,

  One year ago, Athenai still herself.

  We two were sitting silent in the house,

  Yet cheerless hardly. Euthukles, forgive!

  I somehow speak to unseen auditors.

  Not you , but — Euthukles had entered, grave,

  Grand, may I say, as who brings laurel-branch

  And message from the tripod: such it proved.

  He first removed the garland from his brow,

  Then took my hand and looked into my face.

  “Speak good words!” much misgiving faltered I.

  “Good words, the best, Balaustion! He is crowned,

  Gone with his Attic ivy home to feast,

  Since Aischulos required companionship.

  Pour a libation for Euripides!”

  When we had sat the heavier silence out —

  “Dead and triumphant still!” began reply

  To my eye’s question. “As he willed he worked:

  And, as he worked, he wanted not, be sure,

  Triumph his whole life through, submitting work

  To work’s right judges, never to the wrong —

  To competency, not ineptitude.

  When he had run life’s proper race and worked

  Quite to the stade’s end, there remained to try

  The stade’s turn, should strength dare the double course.

  Half the diaulos reached, the hundred plays

  Accomplished, force in its rebound sufficed

  To lift along the athlete and ensure

  A second wreath, proposed by fools for first,

  The statist’s olive as the poet’s bay.

  Wiselier, he suffered not a twofold aim

  Retard his pace, confuse his sight, at once

  Poet and statist; though the multitude

  Girded him ever ‘All thine aim thine art?

  The idle poet only? No regard

  For civic duty, public service, here?

  We drop our ballot-bean for Sophokles!

  Not only could he write “Antigoné,”

  But — since (we argued) whoso penned that piece

  Might just as well conduct a squadron, — straight

  Good-naturedly he took on him command,

  Got laughed at, and went back to making plays,

  Having allowed us our experiment