Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  And give her me to play with!’ ‘T is for him

  To have no bounds to his belief in thee:

  For thee it also is to let her shine

  Lustrous and lonely, so best serving him!”

  Ask not one least word of praise!

  Words declare your eyes are bright?

  What then meant that summer day’s

  Silence spent in one long gaze?

  Was my silence wrong or right?

  Words of praise were all to seek!

  Face of you and form of you,

  Did they find the praise so weak

  When my lips just touched your cheek —

  Touch which let my soul come through?

  A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO, APPLE-EATING.

  “ Look , I strew beans” . . .

  (Ferishtah, we premise,

  Strove this way with a scholar’s cavilment

  Who put the peevish question: “Sir, be frank!

  A good thing or a bad thing — Life is which?

  Shine and shade, happiness and misery

  Battle it out there: which force beats, I ask?

  If I pick beans from out a bushelful —

  This one, this other, — then demand of thee

  What colour names each justly in the main, —

  ‘Black’ I expect, and ‘White’ ensues reply:

  No hesitation for what speck, spot, splash

  Of either colour’s opposite, intrudes

  To modify thy judgment. Well, for beans

  Substitute days, — show, ranged in order, Life —

  Then, tell me its true colour! Time is short,

  Life’s days compose a span, — as brief be speech!

  Black I pronounce for, like the Indian Sage, —

  Black — present, past and future, interspersed

  With blanks, no doubt, which simple folk style Good

  Because not Evil: no, indeed? Forsooth

  Black’s shade on White is White too! What’s the worst

  Of Evil but that, past, it overshades

  The else-exempted present? — memory,

  We call the plague! ‘Nay, but our memory fades

  And leaves the past unsullied!’ Does it so?

  Why, straight the purpose of such breathing-space,

  Such respite from past ill, grows plain enough!

  What follows on remembrance of the past?

  Fear of the future! Life, from birth to death,

  Means — either looking back on harm escaped,

  Or looking forward to that harm’s return

  With tenfold power of harming. Black, not White,

  Never the whole consummate quietude

  Life should be, troubled by no fear! — nor hope —

  I’ll say, since lamplight dies in noontide, hope

  Loses itself in certainty. Such lot

  Man’s might have been: I leave the consequence

  To bolder critics of the Primal Cause;

  Such am not I: but, man — as man I speak:

  Black is the bean-throw: evil is the Life!”)

  “Look, I strew beans” — resumed Ferishtah — ”beans

  Blackish and whitish; what they figure forth

  Shall be man’s sum of moments, bad and good,

  That make up Life, — each moment when he feels

  Pleasure or pain, his poorest fact of sense,

  Consciousness anyhow: there’s stand the first;

  Whence next advance shall be from points to line,

  Singulars to a series, parts to whole,

  And moments to the Life. How look they now,

  Viewed in the large, those little joys and griefs

  Ranged duly all a-row at last, like beans

  — These which I strew? This bean was white, this — black,

  Set by itself, — but see if, good and bad

  Each following either in companionship,

  Black have not grown less black and white less white,

  Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish — grey,

  And the whole line turns — well, or black to thee

  Or white belike to me — no matter which:

  The main result is — both are modified

  According to our eye’s scope, power of range

  Before and after. Black dost call this bean?

  What, with a whiteness in its wake, which — see —

  Suffuses half its neighbour? — and, in turn,

  Lowers its pearliness late absolute,

  Frowned upon by the jet which follows hard —

  Else wholly white my bean were. Choose a joy!

  Bettered it was by sorrow gone before,

  And sobered somewhat by the shadowy sense

  Of sorrow which came after or might come.

  Joy, sorrow, — by precedence, subsequence —

  Either on each, make fusion, mix in Life

  That’s both and neither wholly: grey or dun?

  Dun thou decidest? grey prevails, say I:

  Wherefore? Because my view is wide enough,

  Reaches from first to last nor winks at all:

  Motion achieves it: stop short — fast we stick, —

  Probably at the bean that’s blackest.

  “Since —

  Son, trust me, — this I know and only this —

  I am in motion, and all things beside

  That circle round my passage through their midst, —

  Motionless, these are, as regarding me:

  — Which means, myself I solely recognize.

  They too may recognize themselves, not me,

  For aught I know or care: but plain they serve

  This, if no other purpose — stuff to try

  And test my power upon of raying light

  And lending hue to all things as I go

  Moonlike through vapour. Mark the flying orb!

  Think’st thou the halo, painted still afresh

  At each new cloud-fleece pierced and passaged through,

  This was and is and will be evermore

  Coloured in permanence? The glory swims

  Girdling the glory-giver, swallowed straight

  By night’s abysmal gloom, unglorified

  Behind as erst before the advancer: gloom?

  Faced by the onward-faring, see, succeeds

  From the abandoned heaven a next surprise,

  And where’s the gloom now? — silver-smitten straight,

  One glow and variegation! So with me,

  Who move and make, — myself, — the black, the white,

  The good, the bad, of life’s environment.

  Stand still! black stays black: start again! there’s white

  Asserts supremacy: the motion’s all

  That colours me my moment: seen as joy?

  I have escaped from sorrow, or that was

  Or might have been: as sorrow? — thence shall be

  Escape as certain: white preceded black,

  Black shall give way to white as duly, — so,

  Deepest in black means white most imminent.

  Stand still, — have no before, no after! — life

  Proves death, existence grows impossible

  To man like me. ‘What else is blessed sleep

  But death, then?’ Why, a rapture of release

  From toil, — that’s sleep’s approach: as certainly,

  The end of sleep means, toil is triumphed o’er:

  These round the blank inconsciousness between

  Brightness and brightness, either pushed to blaze

  Just through that blank’s interposition. Hence

  The use of things external: man — that’s I —

  Practise thereon my power of casting light,

  And calling substance, — when the light I cast

  Breaks into colour, — by its proper name

  — A truth and yet a falsity: black, white,

  Names each bean taken from what lay so close

  And threw such tint: pain might
mean pain indeed

  Seen in the passage past it, — pleasure prove

  No mere delusion while I paused to look, —

  Though what an idle fancy was that fear

  Which overhung and hindered pleasure’s hue!

  While how, again, pain’s shade enhanced the shine

  Of pleasure, else no pleasure! Such effects

  Came of such causes. Passage at an end, —

  Past, present, future pains and pleasures fused

  So that one glance may gather blacks and whites

  Into a life-time, — like my bean-streak there,

  Why, white they whirl into, not black — for me!”

  “Ay, but for me? The indubitable blacks,

  Immeasurable miseries, here, there

  And everywhere i’ the world — world outside thine

  Paled off so opportunely, — body’s plague,

  Torment of soul, — where’s found thy fellowship

  With wide humanity all round about

  Reeling beneath its burden? What’s despair?

  Behold that man, that woman, child — nay, brute!

  Will any speck of white unblacken life

  Splashed, splotched, dyed hell-deep now from end to end

  For him or her or it — who knows? Not I!”

  “Nor I, Son! ‘It’ shall stand for bird, beast, fish,

  Reptile, and insect even: take the last!

  There’s the palm-aphis, minute miracle

  As wondrous every whit as thou or I:

  Well, and his world’s the palm-frond, there he’s born,

  Lives, breeds and dies in that circumference,

  An inch of green for cradle, pasture-ground,

  Purlieu and grave: the palm’s use, ask of him!

  ‘To furnish these,’ replies his wit: ask thine —

  Who see the heaven above, the earth below,

  Creation everywhere, — these, each and all

  Claim certain recognition from the tree

  For special service rendered branch and bole,

  Top-tuft and tap-root: — for thyself, thus seen,

  Palms furnish dates to eat, and leaves to shade,

  — Maybe, thatch huts with, — have another use

  Than strikes the aphis. So with me, my Son!

  I know my own appointed patch i’ the world,

  What pleasures me or pains there: all outside —

  How he, she, it, and even thou, Son, live,

  Are pleased or pained, is past conjecture, once

  I pry beneath the semblance, — all that’s fit,

  To practise with, — reach where the fact may lie

  Fathom-deep lower. There’s the first and last

  Of my philosophy. Blacks blur thy white?

  Not mine! The aphis feeds, nor finds his leaf

  Untenable because a lance-thrust, nay,

  Lightning strikes sere a moss-patch close beside,

  Where certain other aphids live and love.

  Restriction to his single inch of white,

  That’s law for him, the aphis: but for me,

  The man, the larger-souled, beside my stretch

  Of blacks and whites, I see a world of woe

  All round about me: one such burst of black

  Intolerable o’er the life I count

  White in the main, and, yea — white’s faintest trace

  Were clean abolished once and evermore.

  Thus fare my fellows, swallowed up in gloom

  So far as I discern: how far is that?

  God’s care be God’s! ‘T is mine — to boast no joy

  Unsobered by such sorrows of my kind

  As sully with their shade my life that shines.”

  “Reflected possibilities of pain,

  Forsooth, just chasten pleasure! Pain itself, —

  Fact and not fancy, does not this affect

  The general colour?”

  “Here and there a touch

  Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things —

  That all about, external to myself,

  Was meant to be suspected, — not revealed

  Demonstrably a cheat, — but half seen through,

  Lest white should rule unchecked along the line:

  Therefore white may not triumph. All the same,

  Of absolute and irretrievable

  And all-subduing black, — black’s soul of black

  Beyond white’s power to disintensify, —

  Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck

  My life and ruin my philosophy

  To-morrow, doubtless: hence the constant shade

  Cast on life’s shine, — the tremor that intrudes

  When firmest seems my faith in white. Dost ask

  ‘Who is Ferishtah, hitherto exempt

  From black experience? Why, if God be just,

  Were sundry fellow-mortals singled out

  To undergo experience for his sake,

  Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them,

  In him might temper to the due degree

  Joy’s else-excessive largess?’ Why, indeed!

  Back are we brought thus to the starting-point —

  Man’s impotency, God’s omnipotence,

  These stop my answer. Aphis that I am,

  How leave my inch-allotment, pass at will

  Into my fellow’s liberty of range,

  Enter into his sense of black and white,

  As either, seen by me from outside, seems

  Predominatingly the colour? Life,

  Lived by my fellow, shall I pass into

  And myself live there? No — no more than pass

  From Persia, where in sun since birth I bask

  Daily, to some ungracious land afar,

  Told of by travellers, where the might of snow

  Smothers up day, and fluids lose themselves

  Frozen to marble. How I bear the sun,

  Beat though he may unduly, that I know:

  How blood once curdled ever creeps again,

  Baffles conjecture: yet since people live

  Somehow, resist a clime would conquer me,

  Somehow provided for their sake must dawn

  Compensative resource. ‘No sun, no grapes, —

  Then, no subsistence!’ — were it wisely said?

  Or this well-reasoned — ’Do I dare feel warmth

  And please my palate here with Persia’s vine,

  Though, over-mounts, — to trust the traveller, —

  Snow, feather thick, is falling while I feast?

  What if the cruel winter force his way

  Here also?’ Son, the wise reply were this:

  When cold from over-mounts spikes through and through

  Blood, bone and marrow of Ferishtah, — then,

  Time to look out for shelter — time, at least,

  To wring the hands and cry ‘No shelter serves!’

  Shelter, of some sort, no experienced chill

  Warrants that I despair to find.”

  “No less,

  Doctors have differed here; thou say’st thy say;

  Another man’s experience masters thine,

  Flat controverted by the sourly-Sage,

  The Indian witness who, with faculty

  Fine as Ferishtah’s, found no white at all

  Chequer the world’s predominating black,

  No good oust evil from supremacy,

  So that Life’s best was that it led to death.

  How of his testimony?”

  “Son, suppose

  My camel told me: ‘Threescore days and ten

  I traversed hill and dale, yet never found

  Food to stop hunger, drink to stay my drouth;

  Yet, here I stand alive, which take in proof

  That to survive was found impossible!’

  ‘Nay, rather take thou, non-surviving beast’

  (Reply were prompt), ‘on flank this thwack of staff

  Nowise affecting fles
h that’s dead and dry!

  Thou wincest? Take correction twice, amend

  Next time thy nomenclature! Call white — white!’

  The sourly-Sage, for whom life’s best was death,

  Lived out his seventy years, looked hale, laughed loud,

  Liked — above all — his dinner, — lied, in short.”

  “Lied is a rough phrase: say he fell from truth

  In climbing towards it! — sure less faulty so

  Than had he sat him down and stayed content

  With thy safe orthodoxy, ‘White, all white,

  White everywhere for certain I should see

  Did I but understand how white is black,

  As clearer sense than mine would.’ Clearer sense, —

  Whose may that be? Mere human eyes I boast,

  And such distinguish colours in the main,

  However any tongue, that’s human too,

  Please to report the matter. Dost thou blame

  A soul that strives but to see plain, speak true,

  Truth at all hazards? Oh, this false for real,

  This emptiness which feigns solidity, —

  Ever some grey that’s white, and dun that’s black, —

  When shall we rest upon the thing itself

  Not on its semblance? — Soul — too weak, forsooth,

  To cope with fact — wants fiction everywhere!

  Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!”

  “Take one and try conclusions — this, suppose!

  God is all-good, all-wise, all-powerful: truth?

  Take it and rest there. What is man? Not God:

  None of these absolutes therefore, — yet himself,

  A creature with a creature’s qualities.

  Make them agree, these two conceptions! Each

  Abolishes the other. Is man weak,

  Foolish and bad? He must be Ahriman,

  Co-equal with an Ormuzd, Bad with Good,

  Or else a thing made at the Prime Sole Will,

  Doing a maker’s pleasure — with results

  Which — call, the wide world over, ‘what must be’ —

  But, from man’s point of view, and only point

  Possible to his powers, call — evidence

  Of goodness, wisdom, strength? we mock ourselves

  In all that’s best of us, — man’s blind but sure

  Craving for these in very deed not word,

  Reality and not illusion. Well, —

  Since these nowhere exist — nor there where cause

  Must have effect, nor here where craving means

  Craving unfollowed by fit consequence

  And full supply, aye sought for, never found —

  These — what are they but man’s own rule of right?

  A scheme of goodness recognized by man,

  Although by man unrealizable, —

  Not God’s with whom to will were to perform: