By all the lady’s kinsfolk come in haste
To share her triumph, — lo, a thunderclap!
“Who importunes now?” “Such is my mishap —
In the king’s name! No need that any stir
Except this lady!” bids the minister:
“With her I claim a word apart, no more:
For who gainsays — a guard is at the door.
Hold, duke! Submit you, lady, as I bow
To him whose mouthpiece speaks his pleasure now!
It well may happen I no whit arrest
Your marriage: be it so, — we hope the best!
By your leave, gentles! Lady, pray you, hence!
Duke, with my soul and body’s deference!”
VIII.
Doors shut, mouth opens and persuasion flows
Copiously forth. “What flesh shall dare oppose
The king’s command? The matter in debate
— How plain it is! Yourself shall arbitrate,
Determine. Since the duke affects to rate
His prize in you beyond all goods of earth,
Accounts as nought old gains of rank and birth,
Ancestral obligation, recent fame,
(We know his feats) — nay, ventures to disclaim
Our will and pleasure almost — by report —
Waives in your favour dukeliness, in short, —
We — (‘t is the king speaks) — who might forthwith stay
Such suicidal purpose, brush away
A bad example shame would else record, —
Lean to indulgence rather. At his word
We take the duke: allow him to complete
The cession of his dukedoms, leave our feet
Their footstool when his own head, safe in vault,
Sleeps sound. Nay, would the duke repair his fault
Handsomely, and our forfeited esteem
Recover, — what if wisely he redeem
The past, — in earnest of good faith, at once
Give us such jurisdiction for the nonce
As may suffice — prevent occasion slip —
And constitute our actual ownership?
Concede this — straightway be the marriage blessed
By warrant of this paper! Things at rest,
This paper duly signed, down drops the bar,
To-morrow you become — from what you are,
The druggist’s daughter — not the duke’s mere spouse,
But the king’s own adopted: heart and house
Open to you — the idol of a court
‘Which heaven might copy’ — sing our poet-sort.
In this emergency, on you depends
The issue: plead what bliss the king intends!
Should the duke frown, should arguments and prayers
Nay, tears if need be, prove in vain, — who cares?
We leave the duke to his obduracy,
Companionless, — you, madam, follow me
Without, where divers of the body-guard
Wait signal to enforce the king’s award
Of strict seclusion: over you at least
Vibratingly the sceptre threats increased
Precipitation! How avert its crash?”
IX.
“Re-enter, sir! A hand that’s calm, not rash,
Averts it!” quietly the lady said.
“Yourself shall witness.”
At the table’s head
Where, mid the hushed guests, still the duke sat glued
In blank bewilderment, his spouse pursued
Her speech to end — syllabled quietude.
X.
“Duke, I, your duchess of a day, could take
The hand you proffered me for love’s sole sake,
Conscious my love matched yours; as you, myself
Would waive, when need were, all but love — from pelf
To potency. What fortune brings about
Haply in some far future, finds me out,
Faces me on a sudden here and now.
The better! Read — if beating heart allow —
Read this, and bid me rend to rags the shame!
I and your conscience — hear and grant our claim!
Never dare alienate God’s gift you hold
Simply in trust for him! Choose muck for gold?
Could you so stumble in your choice, cajoled
By what I count my least of worthiness
— The youth, the beauty, — you renounce them — yes,
With all that’s most too: love as well you lose,
Slain by what slays in you the honour! Choose!
Dear — yet my husband — dare I love you yet?”
XI.
How the duke’s wrath o’erboiled, — words, words and yet
More words, — I spare you such fool’s fever-fret.
They were not of one sort at all, one size,
As souls go — he and she. ‘T is said, the eyes
Of all the lookers-on let tears fall fast.
The minister was mollified at last:
“Take a day, — two days even, ere through pride
You perish, — two days’ counsel — then decide!”
XII.
— ”If I shall save his honour and my soul?
Husband, — this one last time, — you tear the scroll?
Farewell, duke! Sir, I follow in your train!”
XIII.
So she went forth: they never met again
The duke and she. The world paid compliment
(Is it worth noting?) when, next day, she sent
Certain gifts back — ”jewelry fit to deck
Whom you call wife.” I know not round what neck
They took to sparkling, in good time — weeks thence.
XIV.
Of all which was the pleasant consequence,
So much and no more — that a fervid youth,
Big-hearted boy, — but ten years old, in truth, —
Laid this to heart and loved, as boyhood can,
The unduchessed lady: boy and lad grew man:
He loved as man perchance may: did meanwhile
Good soldier-service, managed to beguile
The years, no few, until he found a chance:
Then, as at trumpet-summons to advance,
Outbroke the love that stood at arms so long,
Brooked no withstanding longer. They were wed.
Whereon from camp and court alike he fled,
Renounced the sun-king, dropped off into night,
Evermore lost, a ruined satellite:
And, oh, the exquisite deliciousness
That lapped him in obscurity! You guess
Such joy is fugitive: she died full soon.
He did his best to die — as sun, so moon
Left him, turned dusk to darkness absolute.
Failing of death — why, saintship seemed to suit:
Yes, your sort, Don! He trembled on the verge
Of monkhood: trick of cowl and taste of scourge
He tried: then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,
But took again, for better or for worse,
The old way in the world, and, much the same
Man o’ the outside, fairly played life’s game.
XV.
“Now, Saint Scholastica, what time she fared
In Paynimrie, behold, a lion glared
Right in her path! Her waist she promptly strips
Of girdle, binds his teeth within his lips,
And, leashed all lamblike, to the Soldan’s court
Leads him.” Ay, many a legend of the sort
Do you praiseworthily authenticate:
Spare me the rest. This much of no debate
Admits: my lady flourished in grand days
When to be duchess was to dance the hays
Up, down, across the heaven amid its host:
While to be hailed the sun’s own self almost —
So close the kinship — was — was —
Be yours the feet I stoop to — kneel and kiss!
So human? Then the mouth too, if you will!
Thanks to no legend but a chronicle.
XVI.
One leans to like the duke, too: up we’ll patch
Some sort of saintship for him — not to match
Hers — but man’s best and woman’s worst amount
So nearly to the same thing, that we count
In man a miracle of faithfulness
If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress
On the main fact that love, when love indeed,
Is wholly solely love from first to last —
Truth — all the rest a lie. Too likely, fast
Enough that necklace went to grace the throat
— Let’s say, of such a dancer as makes doat
The senses when the soul is satisfied —
Trogalia , say the Greeks — a sweetmeat tried
Approvingly by sated tongue and teeth,
Once body’s proper meal consigned beneath
Such unconsidered munching.
XVII.
Fancy’s flight
Makes me a listener when, some sleepless night,
The duke reviewed his memories, and aghast
Found that the Present intercepts the Past
With such effect as when a cloud enwraps
The moon and, moon-suffused, plays moon perhaps
To who walks under, till comes, late or soon,
A stumble: up he looks, and lo, the moon
Calm, clear, convincingly herself once more!
How could he ‘scape the cloud that thrust between
Him and effulgence? Speak, fool — duke, I mean!
XVIII.
“Who bade you come, brisk-marching bold she-shape,
A terror with those black-balled worlds of eyes,
That black hair bristling solid-built from nape
To crown it coils about? O dread surmise!
Take, tread on, trample under past escape
Your capture, spoil and trophy! Do — devise
Insults for one who, fallen once, ne’er shall rise!
“Mock on, triumphant o’er the prostrate shame!
Laugh ‘Here lies he among the false to Love —
Love’s loyal liegeman once: the very same
Who, scorning his weak fellows, towered above
Inconstancy: yet why his faith defame?
Our eagle’s victor was at least no dove,
No dwarfish knight picked up our giant’s glove —
“‘When, putting prowess to the proof, faith urged
Her champion to the challenge: had it chanced
That merely virtue, wisdom, beauty — merged
All in one woman — merely these advanced
Their claim to conquest, — hardly had he purged
His mind of memories, dearnesses enhanced
Rather than harmed by death, nor, disentranced,
“‘Promptly had he abjured the old pretence
To prove his kind’s superior — first to last
Display erect on his heart’s eminence
An altar to the never-dying Past.
For such feat faith might boast fit play of fence
And easily disarm the iconoclast
Called virtue, wisdom, beauty: impudence
“‘Fought in their stead, and how could faith but fall?
There came a bold she-shape brisk-marching, bent
No inch of her imperious stature, tall
As some war-engine from whose top was sent
One shattering volley out of eye’s black ball,
And prone lay faith’s defender!’ Mockery spent?
Malice discharged in full? In that event,
“My queenly impudence, I cover close,
I wrap me round with love of your black hair,
Black eyes, black every wicked inch of those
Limbs’ war-tower tallness: so much truth lives there
‘Neath the dead heap of lies. And yet — who knows?
What if such things are? No less, such things were.
Then was the man your match whom now you dare
“Treat as existent still. A second truth!
They held — this heap of lies you rightly scorn —
A man who had approved himself in youth
More than a match for — you? for sea-foam-born
Venus herself: you conquer him forsooth?
’T is me his ghost: he died since left and lorn,
As needs must Samson when his hair is shorn.
“Some day, and soon, be sure himself will rise,
Called into life by her who long ago
Left his soul whiling time in flesh-disguise.
Ghosts tired of waiting can play tricks, you know!
Tread, trample me — such sport we ghosts devise,
Waiting the morn-star’s re-appearance — though
You think we vanish scared by the cock’s crow.”
WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART.
I.
It seems as if . . . or did the actual chance
Startle me and perplex? Let truth be said!
How might this happen? Dreaming, blindfold led
By visionary hand, did soul’s advance
Precede my body’s, gain inheritance
Of fact by fancy — so that when I read
At length with waking eyes your Song, instead
Of mere bewilderment, with me first glance
Was but full recognition that in trance
Or merely thought’s adventure some old day
Of dim and done-with boyishness, or — well,
Why might it not have been, the miracle
Broke on me as I took my sober way
Through veritable regions of our earth
And made discovery, many a wondrous one?
II.
Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth:
I was exploring some huge house, had gone
Through room and room complacently, no dearth
Anywhere of the signs of decent taste,
Adequate culture: wealth had run to waste
Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint:
All showed the Golden Mean without a hint
Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule.
The master of the mansion was no fool
Assuredly, no genius just as sure!
Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure
Of now too much and now too little cost,
And satisfied me sight was never lost
Of moderate design’s accomplishment
In calm completeness. On and on I went,
With no more hope than fear of what came next,
Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift
A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift
Indeed of scene! So — thus it is thou deck’st,
High heaven, our low earth’s brick-and-mortar work?
III.
It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk
Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last,
Were small surprise: but from broad day I passed
Into a presence that turned shine to shade.
There fronted me the Rafael Mother-Maid,
Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine
By Nature’s bounty helped, by Art’s divine
More varied — beauty with magnificence —
Than this: from floor to roof one evidence
Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche
Where glory was not prisoned to enrich
Man’s gaze with gold and gems, no space but glowed
With colour, gleamed with carving — hes which owed
Their outburst to a brush the painter fed
With rainbow-substance — rare shapes never wed
To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-born once,
Became the sculptor’s dowry, Art’s response
>
To earth’s despair. And all seemed old yet new:
Youth, — in the marble’s curve, the canvas’ hue,
Apparent, — wanted not the crowning thrill
Of age the consecrator. Hands long still
Had worked here — could it be, what lent them skill
Retained a power to supervise, protect,
Enforce new lessons with the old, connect
Our life with theirs? No merely modern touch
Told me that here the artist, doing much,
Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, lives —
So needs must learn.
IV.
Well, these provocatives
Having fulfilled their office, forth I went
Big with anticipation — well-nigh fear —
Of what next room and next for startled eyes
Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise.
Next room and next and next — what followed here?
Why, nothing! not one object to arrest
My passage — everywhere too manifest
The previous decent null and void of best
And worst, mere ordinary right and fit,
Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor hit
Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed.
V.
Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed
Your case, my Christopher? The man was sound
And sane at starting: all at once the ground
Gave way beneath his step, a certain smoke
Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down broke
A fireball wrapping flesh and spirit both
In conflagration. Then — as heaven were loth
To linger — let earth understand too well
How heaven at need can operate — off fell
The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man
Resumed sobriety, — as he began,
So did he end nor alter pace, not he!
VI.
Now, what I fain would know is — could it be
That he — whoe’er he was that furnished forth
The Chapel, making thus, from South to North,
Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo
Join Watts, was found but once combining so
The elder and the younger, taking stand
On Art’s supreme, — or that yourself who sang
A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang,
And stations you for once on either hand
With Milton and with Keats, empowered to claim
Affinity on just one point — (or blame
Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you full) —
How came it you resume the void and null,
Subside to insignificance, — live, die
— Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew nigh
One moment — that, to Art’s best hierarchy,
This, to the superhuman poet-pair?
What if, in one point only, then and there
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 221