Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 234
If blooms thus large this Cæsar to myself
— Of senatorial rank and somebody —
How must he strike the vulgar nameless crowd,
In numerous swarm that’s nobody at all?
Why, — for an instance, — much as yon gold shape
Crowned, sceptred, on the temple opposite —
Fulgurant Jupiter — must daze the sense
Of — say, yon outcast begging from its step!
“What, Anti-Cæsar, monarch in the mud,
As he is pinnacled above thy pate?
Ay, beg away! thy lot contrasts full well
With his whose bounty yields thee this support —
Our Holy and Inviolable One,
Cæsar, whose bounty built the fane above!
Dost read my thought? Thy garb, alack, displays
Sore usage truly in each rent and stain —
Faugh! Wash though in Suburra! ‘Ware the dogs
Who may not so disdain a meal on thee!
What, stretchest forth a palm to catch my alms?
Aha, why yes: I must appear — who knows? —
I, in my toga, to thy rags and thee —
Quæstor — nay, Ædile, Censor — Pol! perhaps
The very City-Prætor’s noble self!
As to me Cæsar, so to thee am I?
Good: nor in vain shall prove thy quest, poor rogue!
Hither — hold palm out — take this quarter — as!”
And who did take it? As he raised his head,
(My gesture was a trifle — well — abrupt,)
Back fell the broad flap of the peasant’s-hat,
The homespun cloak that muffled half his check
Dropped somewhat, and I had a glimpse — just one!
One was enough. Whose — whose might be the face?
That unkempt careless hair — brown, yellowish —
Those sparkling eyes beneath their eyebrows’ ridge
(Each meets each, and the hawk-nose rules between)
— That was enough, no glimpse was needed more!
And terrifyingly into my mind
Came that quick-hushed report was whispered us,
“They do say, once a year in sordid garb
He plays the mendicant, sits all day long,
Asking and taking alms of who may pass,
And so averting, if submission help,
Fate’s envy, the dread chance and change of things
When Fortune — for a word, a look, a naught —
Turns spiteful and — the petted lioness —
Strikes with her sudden paw, and prone falls each
Who patted late her neck superiorly,
Or trifled with those claw-tips velvet-sheathed.”
“He’s God!” shouts Lucius Varius Rufus: “Man
And worms’-meat any moment!” mutters low
Some Power, admonishing the mortal-born.
Ay, do you mind? There’s meaning in the fact
That whoso conquers, triumphs, enters Rome,
Climbing the Capitolian, soaring thus
To glory’s summit, — Publius, do you mark —
Ever the same attendant who, behind,
Above the Conqueror’s head supports the crown
All-too-demonstrative for human wear,
— One hand’s employment — all the while reserves
Its fellow, backward flung, to point how, close
Appended from the car, beneath the foot
Of the up-borne exulting Conqueror,
Frown — half-descried — the instruments of shame,
The malefactor’s due. Crown, now — Cross, when?
Who stands secure? Are even Gods so safe?
Jupiter that just now is dominant —
Are not there ancient dismal tales how once
A predecessor reigned ere Saturn came,
And who can say if Jupiter be last?
Was it for nothing the gray Sibyl wrote
“Cæsar Augustus regnant, shall be born
In blind Judæa — one to master him,
Him and the universe? An old-wife’s tale?
Bath-drudge! Here, slave! No cheating! Our turn next.
No loitering, or be sure you taste the lash!
Two strigils, two oil-drippers, each a sponge!
Development
MY FATHER was a scholar and knew Greek.
When I was five years old, I asked him once
“What do you read about?”
”The siege of Troy.”
“What is a siege, and what is Troy?”
Whereat
He piled up chairs and tables for a town,
Set me a-top for Priam, called our cat
— Helen, enticed away from home (he said)
By wicked Paris, who couched somewhere close
Under the footstool, being cowardly,
But whom — since she was worth the pains, poor puss —
Towzer and Tray, — our dogs, the Atreidai, — sought
By taking Troy to get possession of
— Always when great Achilles ceased to sulk,
(My pony in the stable) — forth would prance
And put to flight Hector — our page-boy’s self.
This taught me who was who and what was what:
So far I rightly understood the case
At five years old; a huge delight it proved
And still proves — thanks to that insructor sage
My Father, who knew better than turn straight
Learning’s full flare on weak-eyed ignorance,
Or, worse yet, leave weak eyes to grow sand-blind,
Content with darkness and vacuity.
It happened, two or three years afterward
That — I and playmates playing at Troy’ Siege —
My Father came upon our make-believe.
“How would you like to read yourself the tale
Properly told, of which I gave you first
Merely such notion as a boy could bear?
Pope, now, would give you the precise account
Of what, some day, by dint of scholarship
You’ll hear — who knows? — from Homer’ very mouth.
Learn Greek by all means, read the “Blind Old Man,
Sweetest of Singers’ — tuphlos which means ‘blind,’
Hedistos which means ‘sweetest.’ Time enough!
Try, anyhow, to master him some day;
Until when, take what serves for substitute,
Read Pope, by all means!”
So I ran through Pope,
Enjoyed the tale — what history so true?
Also attacked my Primer, duly drudged,
Grew fitter thus for what was promised next —
The very thing itself, the actual words,
When I could turn — say, Buttmann to account.
Time passed, I ripened somewhat: one fine day,
“Quite ready for the Iliad, nothing less?
There’s Heine, where the big books block the shelf:
Don’t skip a word, thumb well the Lexicon!”
I thumbed well and skipped nowise till I learned
Who was who, what was what, from Homer’s tongue,
And there an end of learning. Had you asked
The all-accomplished scholar, twelve years old,
“Who was it wrote the Iliad?” — what a laugh
“Why, Homer, all the world knows: of his life
Doubtless some facts exist: it’s everywhere:
We have not settled, though, his place of birth:
He begged, for certain, and was blind beside:
Seven cities claimed him — Scio, with best right,
Thinks Byron. What he wrote? Those Hymns we have.
Then there’s the ‘Battle of the Frogs and Mice,’
That’s all — unless they dig ‘Margites’ up
(I’d like that) nothing more remains to know.”
Thus did youth spend a
comfortable time;
Until — ”What’s this the Germans say in fact
That Wolf found out first? It’s unpleasant work
Their chop and change, unsettling one’s belief:
All the same, where we live, we learn, that’s sure.”
So, I bent brow o’er Prolegomena.
And after Wolf, a dozen of his like
Proved there was never any Troy at all,
Neither Besiegers nor Besieged, nay, worse, —
No actual Homer, no authentic text,
No warrant for the fiction I, as fact,
Had treasured in my heart and soul so long —
Ay, mark you! and as fact held still, still hold,
Spite of new knowledge, in my heart of hearts
And soul of souls, fact’s essence freed and fixed
From accidental fancy’s guardian sheath.
Assuredly thenceforward — thank my stars! —
However it got there, deprive who could —
Wring from the shrine my precious tenantry,
Helen, Ulysses, Hector and his Spouse,
Achilles and his Friend? — though Wolf — ah, Wolf!
Why must he needs come doubting, spoil a dream?
But then, “No dream’s worth waking” — Browning says:
And here’s the reason why I tell thus much.
I, now mature man, you anticipate,
May blame my Father justifiably
For letting me dream out my nonage thus,
And only by such slow and sure degrees
Permitting me to sift the grain from chaff,
Get truth and falsehood known and named as such.
Why did he ever let me dream at all,
Not bid me taste the story in its strength?
Suppose my childhood was scarce qualified
To rightly understand mythology,
Silence at least was in his power to keep:
I might have — somehow — correspondingly —
Well, who knows by what method, gained my gains,
Been taught, by forthrights not meanderings,
My aim should be to loathe, like Peleus’ son,
A lie as Hell’s Gate, love my wedded wife,
Like Hector, and so on with all the rest.
Could not I have excogitated this
Without believing such man really were?
That is — he might have put into my hand
The “Ethics”? In translation, if you please,
Exact, no pretty lying that improves,
To suit the modern taste: no more, no less —
The “Ethics:” ‘tis a treatise I find hard
To read aright now that my hair is gray,
And I can manage the original.
At five years old — how ill had fared its leaves!
Now, growing double o’er the Stagirite,
At least I soil no page with bread and milk,
Nor crumple, dogs-ear and deface — boys’ way.
Rephan
Suggested by a very early recollection of a prose story by the noble woman and imaginative writer, Jane Taylor, of Norwich, (more correctly, of Ongar]. R. B.
HOW I lived, ere my human life began
In this world of yours, — like you, made man, —
When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?
Come then around me, close about,
World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubt
Or deepest despondency keeps you out?
Nowise! Before a word I speak,
Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,
Brow-furrowed old age, youth’s hollow cheek —
Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
Pinched poverty, satiate wealth, your whole
Array of despairs! Have I read the roll?
All here? Attend, perpend! O Star
Of my God Rephan, what wonders are
In thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far!
Far from me, native to thy realm,
Who shared its perfections which o’erwhelm
Mind to conceive. Let drift the helm,
Let drive the sail, dare unconfined
Embark for the vastitude, O Mind,
Of an absolute bliss! Leave earth behind!
Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess:
There, all’s at most — not more, not less:
Nowhere deficiency nor excess.
No want — whatever should be, is now:
No growth — that’s change, and change comes — how
To royalty born with crown on brow?
Nothing begins — so needs to end:
Where fell it short at first? Extend
Duly the same, no change can mend!
I use your language: mine — no word
Of its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,
To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,
None felt distaste when better and worse
Were uncontrastable: bless or curse
What — in that uniform universe?
Can your world’s phrase, your sense of things
Forth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,
No winters throughout its space. Time brings
No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
At our stand-still through eternity?
All happy: needs must we so have been,
Since who could be otherwise? All serene:
What dark was to banish, what light to screen?
Earth’s rose is a bud that’s checked or grows
As beams may encourage or blasts oppose:
Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose —
Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spread
Above and below and around — rose-red:
No fellowship, each for itself instead.
One better than I — would prove I lacked
Somewhat: one worse were a jarring fact
Disturbing my faultlessly exact.
How did it come to pass there lurked
Somehow a seed of change that worked
Obscure in my heart till perfection irked? —
Till out of its peace at length grew strife —
Hopes, fears, loves, hates, — obscurely rife, —
My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?
Was it Thou, above all lights that are,
Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar
The prison-gate of Rephan my Star?
In me did such potency wake a pulse
Could trouble tranquillity that lulls
Not lashes inertion till throes convulse
Soul’s quietude into discontent?
As when the completed rose bursts, rent
By ardors till forth from its orb are sent
New petals that mar — unmake the disk —
Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk,
Changed apathy’s calm to strife, bright, brisk,
Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spread
Till, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,
The flower that slept woke a star instead?
No Mimic of Star Rephan! How long
I stagnated there where weak and strong,
The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
Are merged alike in a neutral Best,
Can I tell? No more than at whose behest
The passion arose in my passive breast,
And I yearned for no sameness but difference
In thing and thing, that should shock my sense
With a want of worth in them all, and thence
Startle me up, by an Infinite
Discovered above and below me — height
And depth alike to attract my flight,
Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
Oh, gain were indeed to see above
Supremacy ever — to move, remove,
Not reach — aspire yet never attain
As each stage I left nor touched again.
To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,
Wring knowledge from ignorance, — just for this —
To add one drop to a love-abyss!
Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,
You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
Is an end to your life’s work out of ken?
Have you no assurance that, earth at end,
Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend
In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?
Why should I speak? You divine the test.
When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
A voice said, “So wouldst thou strive, not rest?
“Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
Not rest content with a wealth that’s dearth?
Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!”
Reverie
I KNOW there shall dawn a day
— Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes full in play?
Is it here, with grass about,
Under befriending trees,
When shy buds venture out,
And the air by mild degrees
Puts winter’s death past doubt?
Is it up amid whirl and roar
Of the elemental flame
Which star-flecks heaven’s dark floor,
That, new yet still the same,
Full in play comes Power once more?
Somewhere, below, above,
Shall a day dawn — this I know —
When Power, which vainly strove
My weakness to o’erthrow,
Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,
I truly am, at last!
For a veil is rent between
Me and the truth which passed
Fitful, half-guessed, half-seen,
Grasped at — not gained, held fast.
I for my race and me
Shall apprehend life’s law:
In the legend of man shall see
Writ large what small I saw
In my life’s; tale both agree.
As the record from youth to age
Of my own, the single soul —
So the world’s wide book: one page
Deciphered explains the whole
Of our common heritage.
How but from near to far
Should knowledge proceed, increase?
Try the clod ere test the star!
Bring our inside strife to peace
Ere we wage, on the outside, war!
So, my annals thus begin:
With body, to life awoke
Soul, the immortal twin
Of body which bore soul’s yoke
Since mortal and not akin.
By means of the flesh, grown fit.