Because there’s profit also in the sport.
I gamed with men of equal age and craft:
I steal here with a boy as green as grass
Whom I have tightened hold on slow and sure
This long while, just to bring about to-day
When the boy beats me hollow, buries me
In ruin who was sure to beggar him.
O time indeed I should look up and laugh
‘Surely she closes on me!’ Here you stand!”
And stand she does: while volubility,
With him, keeps on the increase, for his tongue
After long locking-up is loosed for once.
“Certain the taunt is happy!” he resumes:
“So, I it was allured you — only I
— I, and none other — to this spectacle —
Your triumph, my despair — you woman-fiend
That front me! Well, I have my wish, then! See
The low wide brow oppressed by sweeps of hair
Darker and darker as they coil and swathe
The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black
Not asleep now! not pin-points dwarfed beneath
Either great bridging eyebrow — poor blank beads —
Babies, I’ve pleased to pity in my time:
How they protrude and glow immense with hate!
The long triumphant nose attains — retains
Just the perfection; and there’s scarlet-skein
My ancient enemy, her lip and lip,
Sense-free, sense-frighting lips clenched cold and bold
Because of chin, that based resolve beneath!
Then the columnar neck completes the whole
Greek-sculpture-baffling body! Do I see?
Can I observe? You wait next word to come?
Well, wait and want! since no one blight I bid
Consume one least perfection. Each and all,
As they are rightly shocking now to me,
So may they still continue! Value them?
Ay, as the vendor knows the money-worth
Of his Greek statue, fools aspire to buy,
And he to see the back of! Let us laugh!
You have absolved me from my sin at least!
You stand stout, strong, in the rude health of hate,
No touch of the tame timid nullity
My cowardice, forsooth, has practised on!
Ay, while you seemed to hint some fine fifth act
Of tragedy should freeze blood, end the farce,
I never doubted all was joke. I kept, 100
May be, an eye alert on paragraphs,
Newspaper-notice, — let no inquest slip,
Accident, disappearance: sound and safe
Were you, my victim, not of mind to die!
So, my worst fancy that could spoil the smooth
Of pillow, and arrest descent of sleep
Was ‘Into what dim hole can she have dived,
She and her wrongs, her woe that’s wearing flesh
And blood away?’ Whereas, see, sorrow swells!
Or, fattened, fulsome, have you fed on me,
Sucked out my substance? How much gloss, I pray,
O’erbloomed those hair-swathes when there crept from you
To me that craze, else unaccountable,
Which urged me to contest our county-seat
With whom but my own brother’s nominee?
Did that mouth’s pulp glow ruby from carmine
While I misused my moment, pushed, — one word, —
One hair’s breadth more of gesture, — idiot-like
Past passion, floundered on to the grotesque,
And lost the heiress in a grin? At least,
You made no such mistake! You tickled fish,
Landed your prize the true artistic way!
How did the smug young curate rise to tune
Of ‘Friend, a fatal fact divides us! Love
Suits me no longer! I have suffered shame,
Betrayal: past is past; the future — yours —
Shall never be contaminate by mine!
I might have spared me this confession, not
— O, never by some hideousest of lies,
Easy, impenetrable! No! but say,
By just the quiet answer — ”I am cold.”
Falsehood avaunt, each shadow of thee, hence!
Had happier fortune willed ... but dreams are vain!
Now, leave me — yes, for pity’s sake!’ Aha,
Who fails to see the curate as his face
Reddened and whitened, wanted handkerchief
At wrinkling brow and twinkling eye, until
Out burst the proper ‘Angel, whom the fiend
Has thought to smirch, — thy whiteness, at one wipe
Of holy cambric, shall disgrace the swan!
Mine be the task’ ... and so forth! Fool? not he!
Cunning in flavours, rather! What but sour
Suspected makes the sweetness doubly sweet?
And what stings love from faint to flamboyant
But the fear-sprinkle? Even horror helps —
‘Love’s flame in me by such recited wrong
Drenched, quenched, indeed? It burns the fiercelier thence!’
Why, I have known men never love their wives
Till somebody — myself, suppose — had ‘drenched
And quenched love,’ so the blockheads whined: as if
The fluid fire that lifts the torpid limb
Were a wrong done to palsy. But I thrilled
No palsied person: half my age, or less
The curate was, I’ll wager: o’er young blood
Your beauty triumphed! Eh, but — was it he?
Then, it was he, I heard of! None beside!
How frank you were about the audacious boy
Who fell upon you like a thunderbolt —
Passion and protestation! He it was
Reserved in petto! Ay, and ‘rich’ beside
‘Rich’ — how supremely did disdain curl nose!
All that I heard was — ’wedded to a priest;’
Informants sunk youth, riches and the rest.
And so my lawless love disparted loves,
That loves might come together with a rush!
Surely this last achievement sucked me dry:
Indeed, that way my wits went! Mistress-queen,
Be merciful and let your subject slink
Into dark safety! He’s a beggar, see —
Do not turn back his ship, Australia-bound,
And bid her land him right amid some crowd
Of creditors, assembled by your curse!
Don’t cause the very rope to crack (you can!)
Whereon he spends his last (friend’s) sixpence, just
The moment when he hoped to hang himself!
Be satisfied you beat him!”
She replies —
“Beat him! I do. To all that you confess
Of abject failure, I extend belief.
Your very face confirms it: God is just!
Let my face — fix your eyes! — in turn confirm
What I shall say. All-abject’s but half truth;
Add to all-abject knave as perfect fool!
So is it you probed human nature, so
Prognosticated of me? Lay these words
To heart then, or where God meant heart should lurk!
That moment when you first revealed yourself,
My simple impulse prompted — end forthwith
The ruin of a life uprooted thus
To surely perish! How should such a tree
Henceforward baulk the wind of its worst sport,
Fail to go falling deeper, falling down
From sin to sin until some depth were reached
Doomed to the weakest by the wickedest
Of weak and wicked human kind? But when,
That self-display made absolute, — behold
A new revealmen
t! — round you pleased to veer,
Propose me what should prompt annul the past,
Make me ‘amends by marriage’ — in your phrase,
Incorporate me henceforth, body and soul,
With soul and body which mere brushing past 200
Brought leprosy upon me — ’marry’ these!
Why, then despair broke, re-assurance dawned,
Clear-sighted was I that who hurled contempt
As I — thank God! — at the contemptible,
Was scarce an utter weakling. Rent away
By treason from my rightful pride of place,
I was not destined to the shame below.
A cleft had caught me: I might perish there,
But thence to be dislodged and whirled at last
Where the black torrent sweeps the sewage — no!
‘Bare breast be on hard rock,’ laughed out my soul
In gratitude, ‘howe’er rock’s grip may grind!
The plain, rough, wretched holdfast shall suffice
This wreck of me!’ The wind, — I broke in bloom
At passage of, — which stripped me bole and branch,
Twisted me up and tossed me here, — turns back
And, playful ever, would replant the spoil?
Be satisfied, not one least leaf that’s mine
Shall henceforth help wind’s sport to exercise!
Rather I give such remnant to the rock
Which never dreamed a straw would settle there.
Rock may not thank me, may not feel my breast,
Even: enough that I feel, hard and cold,
Its safety my salvation. Safe and saved,
I lived, live. When the tempter shall persuade
His prey to slip down, slide off, trust the wind, —
Now that I know if God or Satan be
Prince of the Power of the Air, — then, then, indeed,
Let my life end and degradation too!”
“Good!” he smiles, “true Lord Byron! ‘Tree and rock:’
‘Rock’ — there’s advancement! He’s at first a youth,
Rich, worthless therefore; next he grows a priest:
Youth, riches prove a notable resource,
When to leave me for their possessor gluts
Malice abundantly; and now, last change,
The young rich parson represents a rock
— Bloodstone, no doubt. He’s Evangelical?
Your Ritualists prefer the Church for spouse!”
She speaks.
”I have a story to relate.
There was a parish-priest, my father knew,
Elderly, poor: I used to pity him
Before I learned what woes are pity-worth.
Elderly was grown old now, scanty means
Were straitening fast to poverty, beside
The ailments which await in such a case.
Limited every way, a perfect man
Within the bounds built up and up since birth
Breast-high about him till the outside world
Was blank save overhead one blue bit of sky —
Faith: he had faith in dogma, small or great,
As in the fact that if he clave his skull
He’d find a brain there: such a fact who proves
No falsehood by experiment at price
Of soul and body? The one rule of life
Delivered him in childhood was ‘Obey!
Labour!’ He had obeyed and laboured — tame,
True to the mill-track blinked on from above.
Some scholarship he may have gained in youth:
Gone — dropt or flung behind. Some blossom-flake,
Spring’s boon, descends on every vernal head,
I used to think; but January joins
December, as his year had known no May
Trouble its snow-deposit, — cold and old!
I heard it was his will to take a wife,
A helpmate. Duty bade him tend and teach —
How? with experience null, nor sympathy
Abundant, — while himself worked dogma dead,
Who would play ministrant to sickness, age,
Womankind, childhood? These demand a wife.
Supply the want, then! theirs the wife; for him —
No coarsest sample of the proper sex
But would have served his purpose equally
With God’s own angel, — let but knowledge match
Her coarseness: zeal does only half the work.
I saw this — knew the purblind honest drudge
Was wearing out his simple blameless life,
And wanted help beneath a burthen — borne
To treasure-house or dust-heap, what cared I?
Partner he needed: I proposed myself,
Nor much surprised him — duty was so clear!
Gratitude? What for? Gain of Paradise —
Escape, perhaps, from the dire penalty
Of who hides talent in a napkin! No,
His scruple was — should I be strong enough
— In body? since of weakness in the mind,
Weariness in the heart — no fear of these!
He took me as these Arctic voyagers
Take an aspirant to their toil and pain:
Can he endure them? — that’s the point, and not
— Will he? Who would not, rather! Whereupon,
I pleaded far more earnestly for leave
To give myself away, than you to gain
What you called priceless till you gained the heart
And soul and body! which, as beggars serve
Extorted alms, you straightway spat upon.
Not so my husband, — for I gained my suit,
And had my value put at once to proof.
Ask him! These four years I have died away
In village-life. The village? Ugliness
At best and filthiness at worst, inside. 300
Outside, sterility — earth sown with salt
Or what keeps even grass from growing fresh.
The life? I teach the poor and learn, myself,
That commonplace to such stupidity
Is all-recondite. Being brutalized
Their true need is brute-language, cheery grunts
And kindly cluckings, no articulate
Nonsense that’s elsewhere knowledge. Tend the sick,
Sickened myself at pig-perversity,
Cat-craft, dog-snarling, — may be, snapping ...”
”Brief:
You eat that root of bitterness called Man
— Raw: I prefer it cooked, with social sauce!
So, he was not the rich youth after all!
Well, I mistook. But somewhere needs must be
The compensation. If not young nor rich ...”
“You interrupt!”
”Because you’ve daubed enough
Bistre for background. Play the artist now,
Produce your figure well-relieved in front!
The contrast — do not I anticipate?
Though neither rich nor young — what then? ‘Tis all
Forgotten, all this ignobility,
In the dear home, the darling word, the smile,
The something sweeter ...”
”Yes, you interrupt.
I have my purpose and proceed. Who lives
With beasts assumes beast-nature, look and voice,
And, much more, thought, — for beasts think. Selfishness
In us met selfishness in them, deserved
Such answer as it gained. My husband, bent
On saving his own soul by saving theirs, —
They, bent on being saved if saving soul
Included body’s getting bread and cheese
Somehow in life and somehow after death, —
Both parties were alike in the same boat,
One danger, therefore one equality.
Safety induces culture: culture seeks
To institute, extend and m
ultiply
The difference between safe man and man,
Able to live alone now; progress means
What but abandonment of fellowship?
We were in common danger, still stuck close.
No new books, — were the old ones mastered yet?
No pictures and no music: these divert
— What from? the staving danger off! You paint
The waterspout above, you set to words
The roaring of the tempest round you? Thanks!
Amusement? Talk at end of the tired day
Of the more tiresome morrow! I transcribed
The page on page of sermon-scrawlings — stopped
My intellectual eye to sense and sound —
Vainly: the sound and sense would penetrate
To brain and plague there in despite of me
Maddened to know more moral good were done
Had we two simply sallied forth and preached
I’ the ‘Green’ they call their grimy, — I with twang
Of long-disused guitar, — with cut and slash
Of much misvalued horsewhip he, — to bid
The peaceable come dance, the peace-breaker
Pay in his person! Whereas — Heaven and Hell,
Excite with that, restrain with this! — so dealt
His drugs my husband; as he dosed himself,
He drenched his cattle: and, for all my part
Was just to dub the mortar, never fear
But drugs, hand pestled at, have poisoned nose!
Heaven he let pass, left wisely undescribed:
As applicable therefore to the sleep
I want, that knows no waking — as to what’s
Conceived of as the proper prize to tempt
Souls less world-weary: there, no fault to find!
But Hell he made explicit. After death,
Life: man created new, ingeniously
Perfect for a vindictive purpose now
That man, first fashioned in beneficence,
Was proved a failure; intellect at length
Replacing old obtuseness, memory
Made mindful of delinquent’s bygone deeds
Now that remorse was vain, which life-long lay
Dormant when lesson might be laid to heart;
New gift of observation up and down
And round man’s self, new power to apprehend
Each necessary consequence of act
In man for well or ill — things obsolete —
Just granted to supplant the idiocy
Man’s only guide while act was yet to choose,
And ill or well momentously its fruit;
A faculty of immense suffering
Conferred on mind and body, — mind, erewhile
Unvisited by one compunctious dream
During sin’s drunken slumber, startled up,
Stung through and through by sin’s significance
Now that the holy was abolished — just
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 190