Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

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by Robert Browning


  What most she loathes and leaps from, — elf from gnome

  No gladlier, — finds that safest of retreats

  Bubbles about a treacherous hand wide ope

  To grasp her — (divers who pick pearls so grope) —

  So lay this Maid-Moon clasped around and caught

  By rough red Pan, the god of all that tract:

  He it was schemed the snare thus subtly wrought

  With simulated earth-breath, — wool-tufts packed

  Into a billowy wrappage. Sheep far-sought

  For spotless shearings yield such: take the fact

  As learned Virgil gives it, — how the breed

  Whitens itself forever: yes, indeed!

  If one forefather ram, though pure as chalk

  From tinge on fleece, should still display a tongue

  Black ‘neath the beast’s moist palate, prompt men baulk

  The propagating plague: he gets no young:

  They rather slay him, — sell his hide to caulk

  Ships with, first steeped in pitch, — nor hands are wrung

  In sorrow for his fate: protected thus,

  The purity we love is gained for us.

  So did Girl-Moon, by just her attribute

  Of unmatched modesty betrayed, lie trapped,

  Bruised to the breast of Pan, half god half brute,

  Raked by his bristly boar-sward while he lapped

  — Never say, kissed her! that were to pollute

  Love’s language — which moreover proves unapt

  To tell how she recoiled — as who finds thorns

  Where she sought flowers — when, feeling, she touched — horns!

  Then — does the legend say? — first moon-eclipse

  Happened, first swooning-fit which puzzled sore

  The early sages? Is that why she dips

  Into the dark, a minute and no more,

  Only so long as serves her while she rips

  The cloud’s womb through and, faultless as before,

  Pursues her way? No lesson for a maid

  Left she, a maid herself thus trapped, betrayed?

  Ha, Virgil? Tell the rest, you! “To the deep

  Of his domain the wildwood, Pan forthwith

  Called her, and so she followed” — in her sleep,

  Surely? — “by no means spurning him.” The myth

  Explain who may! Let all else go, I keep

  — As of a ruin just a monolith —

  Thus much, one verse of five words, each a boon:

  Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon.

  Touch him ne’er so lightly

  Epilogue to Dramatic Idyls, Second Series

  “Touch him ne’er so lightly, into song he broke:

  Soil so quick-receptive, — not one feather-seed,

  Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke

  Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed

  Sudden as spontaneous — prove a poet-soul!”

  Indeed?

  Rock’s the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare:

  Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage

  Vainly both expend, — few flowers awaken there:

  Quiet in its cleft broods — what the after-age

  Knows and names a pine, a nation’s heritage.

  JOCOSERIA

  First published in 1883, this collection of short poems was not well received by critics at the time and has continued to be considered one of the poet’s least effective works, although it does contain a now famous prologue, “Wanting is — what?”. The title of the collection originates from a 1598 collection of jokes and anecdotes, referring to its ‘jocose’ and serious contents. Surpisingly, in spite of the negative critical response, the collection was popular and its sequel Ferishtah’s Fancies had to be delayed to allow more time for sales of Jocoseria.

  CONTENTS

  Wanting is — what?

  Donald

  Solomon and Balkis

  Cristina and Monaldeschi

  Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli

  Adam, Lilith, and Eve

  Ixion

  Jochanan Hakkadosh

  Note

  Never the Time and the Place

  Pambo

  Wanting is — what?

  Wanting is — what?

  Summer redundant,

  Blueness abundant,

  — Where is the blot?

  Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same

  — Framework which waits for a picture to frame:

  What of the leafage, what of the flower?

  Roses embowering with nought they embower!

  Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,

  Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer!

  Breathe but one breath

  Rose-beauty above,

  And all that was death

  Grows life, grows love,

  Grows love!

  Donald

  “Will you hear my story also,

  — Huge Sport, brave adventure in plenty?”

  The boys were a band from Oxford,

  The oldest of whom was twenty.

  The bothy we held carouse in

  Was bright with fire and candle;

  Tale followed tale like a merry-go-round

  Whereof Sport turned the handle.

  In our eyes and noses — turf-smoke:

  In our ears a tune from the trivet, 10

  Whence “Boiling, boiling,” the kettle sang,

  ”And ready for fresh Glenlivet.”

  So, feat capped feat, with a vengeance:

  Truths, though, — the lads were loyal:

  “Grouse, five score brace to the bag!

  Deer, ten hours’ stalk of the Royal!”

  Of boasting, not one bit, boys!

  Only there seemed to settle

  Somehow above your curly heads,

  — Plain through the singing kettle, 20

  Palpable through the cloud,

  As each new-puffed Havanna

  Rewarded the teller’s well-told tale,

  This vaunt “To Sport — Hosanna!

  “Hunt, fish, shoot,

  Would a man fulfil life’s duty!

  Not to the bodily frame alone

  Does Sport give strength and beauty,

  “But character gains in — courage?

  Ay, Sir, and much beside it! 30

  You don’t sport, more’s the pity:

  You soon would find, if you tried it,

  “Good sportsman means good fellow,

  Sound-hearted he, to the centre;

  Your mealy-mouthed mild milksops

  — There’s where the rot can enter!

  “There’s where the dirt will breed.

  The shabbiness Sport would banish!

  Oh no, Sir, no! In your honoured case

  All such objections vanish. 40

  “‘T is known how hard you studied:

  A Double-First — what, the jigger!

  Give me but half your Latin and Greek,

  I’ll never again touch trigger!

  “Still, tastes are tastes, allow me!

  Allow, too, where there’s keenness

  For Sport, there’s little likelihood

  Of a man’s displaying meanness!”

  So, put on my mettle, I interposed.

  ”Will you hear my story?” quoth I. 50

  “Never mind how long since it happed,

  I sat, as we sit, in a bothy;

  “With as merry a band of mates, too,

  Undergrads all on a level:

  (One’s a Bishop, one’s gone to the Bench,

  And one’s gone — well, to the Devil.)

  “When, lo, a scratching and tapping!

  In hobbled a ghastly visitor.

  Listen to just what he told us himself

  — No need of our playing inquisitor!” 60

  — — —

  Do you happen to know in Ross-shire
r />   Mount . . . Ben . . . but the name scarce matters:

  Of the naked fact I am sure enough,

  Though I clothe it in rags and tatters.

  You may recognise Ben by description;

  Behind him — a moor’s immenseness;

  Up goes the middle mount of a range,

  Fringed with its firs in denseness.

  Rimming the edge, its fir-fringe, mind!

  For an edge there is, though narrow; 70

  From end to end of the range, a stripe

  Of path runs straight as an arrow.

  And the mountaineer who takes that path

  Saves himself miles of journey

  He has to plod if he crosses the moor

  Through heather, peat and burnie.

  But a mountaineer he needs must be,

  For, look you, right in the middle

  Projects bluff Ben — with an end in ich —

  Why planted there, is a riddle: 80

  Since all Ben’s brothers little and big

  Keep rank, set shoulder to shoulder,

  And only this burliest out must bulge

  Till it seems — to the beholder

  From down in the gully, — as if Ben’s breast,

  To a sudden spike diminished,

  Would signify to the boldest foot

  ”All further passage finished!”

  Yet the mountaineer who sidles on

  And on to the very bending, 90

  Discovers, if heart and brain be proof,

  No necessary ending.

  Foot up, foot down, to the turn abrupt

  Having trod, he, there arriving.

  Finds — what he took for a point was breadth,

  A mercy of Nature’s contriving.

  So, he rounds what, when ‘tis reached, proves straight,

  From one side gains the other:

  The wee path widens — resume the march,

  And he foils you, Ben my brother! 100

  But Donald — (that name, I hope, will do) —

  I wrong him if I call “foiling”

  The tramp of the callant, whistling the while

  As blithe as our kettle’s boiling.

  He had dared the danger from boyhood up,

  And now, — when perchance was waiting

  A lass at the brig below, — ‘twixt mount

  And moor would he stand debating?

  Moreover this Donald was twenty-five,

  A glory of bone and muscle: 110

  Did a fiend dispute the right of way,

  Donald would try a tussle.

  Lightsomely marched he out of the broad

  On to the narrow and narrow;

  A step more, rounding the angular rock,

  Reached the front straight as an arrow.

  He stepped it, safe on the ledge he stood,

  When — whom found he full-facing?

  What fellow in courage and wariness too,

  Had scouted ignoble pacing, 120

  And left low safety to timid mates,

  And made for the dread dear danger,

  And gained the height where — who could guess

  He would meet with a rival ranger?

  ‘Twas a gold-red stag that stood and stared,

  Gigantic and magnific,

  By the wonder — ay, and the peril — struck

  Intelligent and pacific:

  For a red deer is no fallow deer

  Grown cowardly through park-feeding; 130

  He batters you like a thunderbolt

  If you brave his haunts unheeding.

  I doubt he could hardly perform volte-face

  Had valour advised discretion:

  You may walk on a rope, but to turn on a rope

  No Blondin makes profession.

  Yet Donald must turn, would pride permit,

  Though pride ill brooks retiring:

  Each eyed each — mute man, motionless beast —

  Less fearing than admiring. 140

  These are the moments when quite new sense,

  To meet some need as novel,

  Springs up in the brain: it inspired resource:

  — “Nor advance nor retreat but — grovel!”

  And slowly, surely, never a whit

  Relaxing the steady tension

  Of eye-stare which binds man to beast, —

  By an inch and inch declension,

  Sank Donald sidewise down and down:

  Till flat, breast upwards, lying 150

  At his six-foot length, no corpse more still,

  — “If he cross me! The trick’s worth trying.”

  Minutes were an eternity;

  But a new sense was created

  In the stag’s brain too; he resolves! Slow, sure,

  With eye-stare unabated,

  Feelingly he extends a foot

  Which tastes the way ere it touches

  Earth’s solid and just escapes man’s soft,

  Nor hold of the same unclutches 160

  Till its fellow foot, light as a feather whisk,

  Lands itself no less finely:

  So a mother removes a fly from the face

  Of her babe asleep supinely.

  And now ‘tis the haunch and hind foot’s turn

  — That’s hard: can the beast quite raise it?

  Yes, traversing half the prostrate length,

  His hoof-tip does not graze it.

  Just one more lift! But Donald, you see,

  Was sportsman first, man after: 170

  A fancy lightened his caution through,

  — He well-nigh broke into laughter.

  “It were nothing short of a miracle!

  Unrivalled, unexampled —

  All sporting feats with this feat matched

  Were down and dead and trampled!”

  The last of the legs as tenderly

  Follows the rest: or never

  Or now is the time! His knife in reach,

  And his right-hand loose — how clever! 180

  For this can stab up the stomach’s soft,

  While the left-hand grasps the pastern.

  A rise on the elbow, and — now’s the time

  Or never: this turn’s the last turn!

  I shall dare to place myself by God

  Who scanned — for He does — each feature

  Of the face thrown up in appeal to Him

  By the agonizing creature.

  Nay, I hear plain words: “Thy gift brings this!”

  Up he sprang, back he staggered, 190

  Over he fell, and with him our friend

  — At following game no laggard.

  Yet he was not dead when they picked next day

  From the gully’s depth the wreck of him;

  His fall had been stayed by the stag beneath

  Who cushioned and saved the neck of him.

  But the rest of his body — why, doctors said,

  Whatever could break was broken;

  Legs, arms, ribs, all of him looked like a toast

  In a tumbler of port-wine soaken. 200

  “That your life is left you, thank the stag!”

  Said they when — the slow cure ended —

  They opened the hospital-door, and thence

  — Strapped, spliced, main fractures mended,

  And minor damage left wisely alone, —

  Like an old shoe clouted and cobbled,

  Out — what went in a Goliath well-nigh, —

  Some half of a David hobbled.

  “You must ask an alms from house to house:

  Sell the stag’s head for a bracket, 210

  With its grand twelve tines — I’d buy it myself —

  And use the skin for a jacket!”

  He was wiser, made both head and hide

  His win-penny: hands and knees on,

  Would manage to crawl — poor crab — by the roads

  In the misty stalking-season.

  And if he discovered a bothy like this,


  Why, harvest was sure: folks listened.

  He told his tale to the lovers of Sport:

  Lips twitched, cheeks glowed, eyes glistened. 220

  And when he had come to the close, and spread

  His spoils for the gazers’ wonder,

  With “Gentlemen, here’s the skull of the stag

  I was over, thank God, not under!” —

  The company broke out in applause;

  ”By Jingo, a lucky cripple!

  Have a munch of grouse and a hunk of bread.

  And a tug, besides, at our tipple!”

  And “There’s my pay for your pluck!” cried This,

  ”And mine for your jolly story!” 230

  Cried That, while T’other — but he was drunk —

  Hicupped “A trump, a Tory!”

  I hope I gave twice as much as the rest;

  For, as Homer would say, “within grate

  Though teeth kept tongue,” my whole soul growled

  ”Rightly rewarded, — Ingrate!”

  Solomon and Balkis

  Solomon King of the Jews and the Queen of Sheba, Balkis,

  Talk on the ivory throne, and we well may conjecture their talk is

  Solely of things sublime: why else has she sought Mount Zion,

  Climbed the six golden steps, and sat betwixt lion and lion?

  She proves him with hard questions: before she has reached the middle

  He smiling supplies the end, straight solves them riddle by riddle;

  Until, dead-beaten at last, there is left no spirit in her,

  And thus would she close the game whereof she was first beginner:

  “O wisest thou of the wise, world’s marvel and well-nigh monster,

  One crabbed question more to construe or vulgo conster!

  Who are those, of all mankind, a monarch of perfect wisdom

  Should open to, when they knock at spheteron do — that’s his dome?”

  The King makes tart reply: “Whom else but the wise his equals

  Should he welcome with heart and voice? — since, king though he be, such weak walls

  Of circumstance — power and pomp — divide souls each from other

  That whoso proves kingly in craft I needs must acknowledge my brother.

  “Come poet, come painter, come sculptor, come builder — whate’er his condition,

  Is he prime in his art? We are peers! My insight has pierced the partition

  And hails — for the poem, the picture, the statue, the building — my fellow!

  Gold’s gold though dim in the dust: court-polish soon turns it yellow.

  “But tell me in turn, O thou to thy weakling sex superior,

  That for knowledge hast travelled so far yet seemest no whit the wearier, —

  Who are those, of all mankind, a queen like thyself, consummate

 

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