The otherwise all-unapproachable
Allowed impingement? Does the sphere pretend
To span the cube’s breadth, cover end to end
The plane with its embrace? No, surely! Still,
Contact is contact, sphere’s touch no whit less
Than cube’s superimposure. Such success
Befell Smart only out of throngs between
Milton and Keats that donned the singing-dress —
Smart, solely of such songmen, pierced the screen
‘Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, —
Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal
Live from the censer — shapely or uncouth,
Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth
Undeadened by a lie, — (you have my mind) —
For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind
And blank before, when Hayley and the rest . . .
But let the dead successors worst and best
Bury their dead: with life be my concern —
Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn
Is just — (suppose me haply ignorant
Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt)
Just this — why only once the fire-flame was:
No matter if the marvel came to pass
The way folk judged — if power too long suppressed
Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed,
Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said)
A turmoil of the particles disturbed
Brain’s workaday performance in your head,
Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed:
And so verse issued in a cataract
Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed
Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact
That here a poet was who always could —
Never before did — never after would —
Achieve the feat: how were such fact explained?
VII.
Was it that when, by rarest chance, there fell
Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained
Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell
Us others of her majesty and might
In large, her lovelinesses infinite
In little, — straight you used the power wherewith
Sense, penetrating as through rind to pith
Each object, thoroughly revealed might view
And comprehend the old things thus made new,
So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could trust
Thing which struck word out, and once more adjust
Real vision to right language, till heaven’s vault
Pompous with sunset, storm-stirred sea’s assault
On the swilled rock-ridge, earth’s embosomed brood
Of tree and flower and weed, with all the life
That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife,
Above, below, — each had its note and name
For Man to know by, — Man who, now — the same
As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees
Be named him ere he note by what degrees
Of strength and beauty to its end Design
Ever thus operates — (your thought and mine,
No matter for the many dissident) —
So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent
In words for once with you?
VIII.
Then — back was furled
The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the world
Darkened into the old oft-catalogued
Repository of things that sky, wave, land,
Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-clogged
Now, just as long ago, by tellings and
Re-tellings to satiety, which strike
Muffled upon the ear’s drum. Very like
None was so startled as yourself when friends
Came, hailed your fast-returning wits: “Health mends
Importantly, for — to be plain with you —
This scribble on the wall was done — in lieu
Of pen and paper — with — ha, ha! — your key
Denting it on the wainscot! Do you see
How wise our caution was? Thus much we stopped
Of babble that had else grown print: and lopped
From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough —
Smart’s who translated Horace! Write us now” . . .
Why, what Smart did write — never afterward
One line to show that he, who paced the sward,
Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell.
IX.
Was it because you judged (I know full well
You never had the fancy) — judged — as some —
That who makes poetry must reproduce
Thus ever and thus only, as they come,
Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse
Throughout creation, so that eye and ear,
Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize,
At touch of just a trait, the strength appear, —
Suggested by a line’s lapse see arise
All evident the beauty, — fresh surprise
Startling at fresh achievement? “So, indeed,
Wallows the whale’s bulk in the waste of brine,
Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine
Wild Virgin’s Bower when stars faint off to seed!”
(My prose — your poetry I dare not give,
Purpling too much my mere grey argument.)
— Was it because you judged — when fugitive
Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent
Such power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye,
At truth’s appearance, — that you humbly bent
The head and, bidding vivid work good-bye,
Doffed lyric dress and trod the world once more
A drab-clothed decent proseman as before?
Strengths, beauties, by one word’s flash thus laid bare
— That was effectual service: made aware
Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the text,
Awaits your teaching. Nature? What comes next?
Why all the strength and beauty? — to be shown
Thus in one word’s flash, thenceforth let alone
By Man who needs must deal with aught that’s known
Never so lately and so little? Friend,
First give us knowledge, then appoint its use!
Strength, beauty are the means: ignore their end?
As well you stopped at proving how profuse
Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right
Ready to help the builder, — careless quite
If he should take, or leave the same to strew
Earth idly, — as by word’s flash bring in view
Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the same
Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed?
Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed
First; followed duly by enjoyment’s fruit,
Instruction — haply leaving joy behind:
And you, the instructor, would you slack pursuit
Of the main prize, as poet help mankind
Just to enjoy, there leave them? Play the fool,
Abjuring a superior privilege?
Please simply when your function is to rule-
By thought incite to deed? From edge to edge
Of earth’s round, strength and beauty everywhere
Pullulate — and must you particularize
All, each and every apparition? Spare
Yourself and us the trouble! Ears and eyes
Want so much strength and beauty, and no less
Nor more, to learn life’s lesson by. Oh, yes —
The other method’s favoured in our day!
The end ere the beginning: as you may,
Master the heavens before you study earth,
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Make you familiar with the meteor’s birth
Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose!
I say, o’erstep no least one of the rows
That lead man from the bottom where he plants
Foot first of all, to life’s last ladder-top:
Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts
Of those who say — ”We scale the skies, then drop
To earth — to find, how all things there are loth
To answer heavenly law: we understand
The meteor’s course, and lo, the rose’s growth —
How other than should be by law’s command!”
Would not you tell such — ”Friends, beware lest fume
Offuscate sense: learn earth first ere presume
To teach heaven legislation. Law must be
Active in earth or nowhere: earth you see, —
Or there or not at all, Will, Power and Love
Admit discovery, — as below, above
Seek next law’s confirmation! But reverse
The order, where’s the wonder things grow worse
Than, by the law your fancy formulates,
They should be? Cease from anger at the fates
Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and learn,
Not first learn and then live, is our concern.
WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON.
I.
Ah , George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe, — no,
Yours was the wrong way! — always understand,
Supposing that permissibly you planned
How statesmanship — your trade — in outward show
Might figure as inspired by simple zeal
For serving country, king, and commonweal,
(Though service tire to death the body, tease
The soul from out an o’ertasked patriot-drudge)
And yet should prove zeal’s outward show agrees
In all respects — right reason being judge —
With inward care that, while the statesman spends
Body and soul thus freely for the sake
Of public good, his private welfare take
No harm by such devotedness. Intends
Scripture aught else — let captious folk inquire —
Which teaches “Labourers deserve their hire,
And who neglects his household bears the bell
Away of sinning from an infidel”?
Wiselier would fools that carp bestow a thought
How birds build nests; at outside, roughly wrought,
Twig knots with twig, loam plasters up each chink,
Leaving the inmate rudely lodged — you think?
Peep but inside! That specious rude-and-rough
Covers a domicile where downy fluff
Embeds the ease-deserving architect,
Who toiled and moiled not merely to effect
‘T wixt sprig and spray a stop-gap in the teeth
Of wind and weather, guard what swung beneath
From upset only, but contrived himself
A snug interior, warm and soft and sleek.
Of what material? Oh, for that, you seek
How nature prompts each volatile! Thus — pelf
Smoothens the human mudlark’s lodging, power
Demands some hardier wrappage to embrace
Robuster heart-beats: rock, not tree nor tower,
Contents the building eagle: rook shoves close
To brother rook on branch, while crow morose
Apart keeps balance perched on topmost bough.
No sort of bird but suits his taste somehow
Nay, Darwin tells of such as love the bower —
His bower-birds opportunely yield us yet
The lacking instance when at loss to get
A feathered parallel to what we find
The secret motor of some mighty mind
That worked such wonders — all for vanity!
Worked them to haply figure in the eye
Of intimates as first of — doers’ kind?
Actors’, that work in earnest sportively,
Paid by a sourish smile. How says the Sage?
Birds born to strut prepare a platform-stage
With sparkling stones and speckled shells, all sorts
Of slimy rubbish, odds and ends and orts,
Whereon to pose and posture and engage
The priceless female simper.
II.
I have gone
Thus into detail, George Bubb Dodington,
Lest, when I take you presently to task
For the wrong way of working, you should ask
“What fool conjectures that profession means
Performance? that who goes behind the scenes
Finds, — acting over, — still the soot-stuff screens
Othello’s visage, still the self-same cloak’s
Bugle-bright-blackness half reveals half chokes
Hamlet’s emotion, as ten minutes since?”
No, each resumes his garb, stands — Moor or prince-
Decently draped: just so with statesmanship
All outside show, in short, is sham — why wince?
Concede me — while our parley lasts! You trip
Afterwards — lay but this to heart! (there lurks
Somewhere in all of us a lump which irks
Somewhat the sprightliest-scheming brain that’s bent
On brave adventure, would but heart consent!)
— Here trip you, that — your aim allowed as right —
Your means thereto were wrong. Come, we, this night,
Profess one purpose, hold one principle,
Are at odds only as to — not the will
But way of winning solace for ourselves
— No matter if the ore for which zeal delves
Be gold or coprolite, while zeal’s pretence
Is — we do good to men at — whose expense
But ours? who tire the body, tease the soul,
Simply that, running, we may reach fame’s goal
And wreathe at last our brows with bay — the State’s
Disinterested slaves, nay — please the Fates —
Saviours and nothing less: such lot has been!
Statesmanship triumphs pedestalled, serene, —
O happy consummation! — brought about
By managing with skill the rabble-rout
For which we labour (never mind the name —
People or populace, for praise or blame)
Making them understand — their heaven, their hell,
Their every hope and fear is ours as well.
Man’s cause — what other can we have at heart?
Whence follows that the necessary part
High o’er Man’s head we play, — and freelier breathe
Just that the multitude which gasps beneath
May reach the level where unstifled stand
Ourselves at vantage to put forth a hand,
Assist the prostrate public. ‘T is by right
Merely of such pretence, we reach the height
Where storms abound, to brave — nay, court their stress,
Though all too well aware — of pomp the less,
Of peace the more! But who are we, to spurn
For peace’ sake, duty’s pointing? Up, then — earn
Albeit no prize we may but martyrdom!
Now, such fit height to launch salvation from,
How get and gain? Since help must needs be craved
By would-be saviours of the else-unsaved,
How coax them to co-operate, lend a lift,
Kneel down and let us mount?
III.
You say “Make shift
By sham — the harsh word: preach and teach, persuade
Somehow the Public — not despising aid
Of salutary artifice — we seek
Solely their good: our strength would raise the weak,
Our cultiva
ted knowledge supplement
Their rudeness, rawness: why to us were lent
Ability except to come in use?
Who loves his kind must by all means induce
That kind to let his love play freely, press
In Man’s behalf to full performance!”
IV.
Yes —
Yes, George, we know! — whereat they hear, believe,
And bend the knee, and on the neck receive
Who fawned and cringed to purpose? Not so, George!
Try simple falsehood on shrewd folk who forge
Lies of superior fashion day by day
And hour by hour? With craftsmen versed as they
What chance of competition when the tools
Only a novice wields? Are knaves such fools?
Disinterested patriots, spare your tongue
The tones thrice-silvery, cheek save smiles it flung
Pearl-like profuse to swine — a herd, whereof
No unit needs be taught, his neighbour’s trough
Scarce holds for who but grunts and whines the husks
Due to a wrinkled snout that shows sharp tusks.
No animal — much less our lordly Man —
Obeys its like: with strength all rule began,
The stoutest awes the pasture. Soon succeeds
Discrimination, — nicer power Man needs
To rule him than is bred of bone and thew:
Intelligence must move strength’s self. This too
Lasts but its time: the multitude at length
Looks inside for intelligence and strength
And finds them here and there to pick and choose:
“All at your service, mine, see!” Ay, but who’s
My George, at this late day, to make his boast
“In strength, intelligence, I rule the roast,
Beat, all and some, the ungraced who crowd your ranks?”
“Oh, but I love, would lead you, gain your thanks
By unexampled yearning for Man’s sake —
Passion that solely waits your help to take
Effect in action!” George, which one of us
But holds with his own heart communion thus:
“I am, if not of men the first and best,
Still — to receive enjoyment — properest:
Which since by force I cannot, nor by wit
Most likely — craft must serve in place of it.
Flatter, cajole! If so I bring within
My net the gains which wit and force should win,
What hinders?” ‘T is a trick we know of old:
Try, George, some other of tricks manifold!
The multitude means mass and mixture — right
Are mixtures simple, pray, or composite?
Dive into Man, your medley: see the waste!
Sloth-stifled genius, energy disgraced
By ignorance, high aims with sorry skill,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 222