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If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: Pomegranates from an English Garden - A selection from the poems of Robert Browning - -Author: Robert Browning - -Release Date: October 21, 2016 [EBook #53335] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMEGRANATES FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN *** - - - - -Produced by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - POMEGRANATES - FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN: - - A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS OF - ROBERT BROWNING. - - WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY - JOHN MONRO GIBSON. - - “Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which, if cut deep down the - middle, - Shows a heart within, blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.” - - _Lady Geraldine’s Courtship._ - - NEW YORK: - CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, - C. L. S. C. Department. - 1885. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - -The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council of -six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not -involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every -principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. - - Copyright 1885, by PHILLIPS & HUNT, 805 Broadway, New York. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - INTRODUCTORY. - - -The name of Robert Browning has been before the world now for fifty -years. For the greater part of the time his work has had so little -recognition, that one marvels at his courage in going so steadily on -with it. His “Pomegranates” have been produced year after year, decade -after decade, in unfailing abundance; and, while critics have kept -paring at the rind, and the general public has not even asked if there -was anything beneath it, he has laboured on with unremitting energy, -calmly awaiting the time when “the heart within, blood-tinctured, of a -veined humanity,” should be at length discovered. It can scarcely be -said, even yet, that that time has come; but it is coming fast. Already -he is something more than “the poet’s poet.” Few intelligent people now -are content to know one of the master minds of the age simply as the -author of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” as if that were the only thing he -had written worth reading! - -That the form in which the thought of Browning is cast is altogether -admirable, is what none but his most undiscriminating admirers will -assert. It is often, unquestionably, rough and forbidding. But there is -strength even in its ruggedness; and in its entire freedom from -conventionality there is a charm such as one enjoys in wild mountain -scenery, even though only in little patches it may have any suggestion -of the garden or the lawn. There are those who have charged the poet -with affectation of the uncouth and the bizarre; but careful reading -will, we think, render it apparent that it is rather his utter freedom -from affectation which determines and perpetuates the peculiarities and -oddities of his style; that, in fact, the aphorism of Buffon, “_le style -est l’homme même_,” is undoubtedly true as applied to him. It would, of -course, be absurd to claim for the pomegranate the bloom and beauty of -the peach; but, equally with the other, it is Nature’s gift, and to toss -aside a rough-rinded fruit because it needs to be “cut deep down the -middle” before its pulp and juices can be reached, is surely far from -wise. Even hard nuts are not to be despised, if the kernels are good; -and as to Browning’s “nuts,” we have this to say, that not only are they -well worth cracking, but there is in the process excellent exercise for -the teeth. - -This brings us to the alleged “obscurity” of Browning’s writings, which -still continues to be the main obstacle to their general appreciation. -It is freely admitted that often it is not quite easy, and sometimes -very difficult, to understand him; and it is hard for most people to see -why he could not make his meaning plainer, and matter for regret to -many, who heartily admire him, that he has not done so. That he has -taken some pains to this end is evident from what he says in the preface -to “Sordello,” written for an edition issued in 1863, twenty-three years -after its original publication: “My own faults of expression were -many.... I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my best then and -since, for I lately gave time and pains to turn my work into what the -many might—instead of what the few must—like.” In a later preface (1872) -he says, “Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, -unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh.” The true explanation -of it seems to be what we have already suggested, that he does not think -of his audience as he writes, his only care being to express the thought -in the way which comes most natural to him. As a dramatist, he can throw -himself with abandonment into the persons he represents; but he never -seems to think of putting himself in the position of a listener, or, if -he does, he assumes too readily that he has a mind of similar texture -and grasp to his own. On the other hand, it is fair to say that the -difficulty of understanding him arises in great part from the very -excellence of his work. The following considerations will illustrate -what we mean:— - -1. His work is full of _thought_, and the thought is never commonplace. -There is so much of it, and all is so fresh, and therefore unfamiliar, -that some mental effort is necessary to grasp it. The following -characteristic remark of Bishop Butler, in his preface to the famous -Fifteen Sermons, is worth consideration in this connection: “It must be -acknowledged that some of the following Discourses are very abstruse and -difficult; or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that -those alone are judges, whether or no and how far this is a fault, who -are judges, whether or no and how far it might have been avoided—those -only who will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to -see how far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might -have been put in a plainer manner; which yet I am very far from -asserting that they could not.” - -2. The expression is always the briefest. Not only are no words wasted, -but, where connecting ideas are easily supplied, they are often left -unexpressed, the intelligence and mental activity of the reader being -always taken for granted. - -3. The poems are, for the most part, dramatic in principle. The reader -is brought face to face with some soul, in its thoughts and emotions, -frequently in the very process of the thinking and the feeling. The poet -has stepped aside, and of course supplies no key. The author does not -appear, like the chorus in a Greek play, to point a moral or explain the -situation. The _dramatis personæ_ must explain themselves. And, just as -Shakespeare must be _studied_ in order to an appreciation other than -second-hand, so must Browning be studied in order to be appreciated at -all; for his writings are not yet old enough to secure much second-hand -enthusiasm. - -4. The wealth of allusion is another source of difficulty. The learning -of our poet is encyclopædic; and though there is no display of it, there -is large use of it; and it often happens that passages or phrases, which -seem crabbed or obscure, require only the knowledge of some unfamiliar -fact in science or in history, or it may be something not readily -thought of, and yet within easy range of a keen enough observation, to -light them up and reveal unsuspected strength or beauty. - -Before leaving the subject of the rough and often tough exterior of -Browning’s work, it may be interesting to refer to the characteristic -illustration of it he has lately given us in the prologue to -“Ferishtah’s Fancies,” his most recent work. He begins by asking the -reader whether he has ever “eaten ortolans in Italy,” and then goes on -to describe the preparation of them. The following lines will show the -use he makes of the illustration: - - “First comes plain bread, crisp, brown, a toasted square; - Then, a strong sage-leaf; - (So we find books with flowers dried here and there - Lest leaf engage leaf.) - First, food—then, piquancy—and last of all - Follows the thirdling; - Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth must bite - Ere reach the birdling. - Now, were there only crust to crunch, you’d wince: - Unpalatable! - Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent—so’s a quince; - Eat each who’s able! - But through all three bite boldly—lo, the gust! - Flavour—no fixture— - Flies permeating flesh and leaf and crust - In fine admixture. - So with your meal, my poem; masticate - Sense, sight and song there! - Digest these, and I praise your peptics’ state, - Nothing found wrong there.” - -This extract also furnishes an example of the strange rhymes in which -the poet sometimes indulges, with what appears too little refinement of -taste. - -The themes of Browning’s poetry are the very greatest that can engage -the thought of man. He ranges over a vast variety of topic; but, -wherever his thought may lead him, he never loses sight of that which is -to him the centre of all, the human soul, with its infinite wants and -capabilities. In the preface to “Sordello” he says: “The historical -decoration was purposely of no more importance than a background -requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a -soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so.” To -this principle he has kept true through all his work; and hence it is -that, whether the particular subject be love, or home, or country; -poetry, painting, or music; life, death, or immortality; it is dealt -with in its relation to “the development of a soul.” Hence it is that -his poetry is so thoroughly and profoundly spiritual, and so exceedingly -valuable as a counteractive to the materialism of the age, which ever -tends to merge the soul in the body, and swallow up the real in mere -phenomena. - -As might be expected of one who deals so profoundly with all that he -touches, the great reality of the universe to him is God. Agnosticism -has little mercy at his hands; if a man knows anything at all, he knows -God. And the God whom he knows is not a God apart, looking down from -some infinite or indefinite height upon the world, but one in whom all -live and move and have their being. Out of this springs, of course, the -hope of immortality, and also that bright and cheerful view of life so -completely opposed to the dark pessimism to which much of the -unbelieving speculation of the present day so painfully tends. The dark -things of human life and destiny are by no means ignored; rather are -they dwelt on with a painful and sometimes frightful realism; but even -amid deepest darkness the light above is never quite extinguished, and -some little “Pippa passes” singing: - - “The year’s at the spring - And day’s at the morn; - Morning’s at seven; - The hill-side’s dew-pearled; - The lark’s on the wing; - The snail’s on the thorn: - God’s in his heaven— - All’s right with the world.” - -There has been much discussion as to Browning’s personal attitude to -Christianity. The profoundly Christian tone of his writings is, of -course, universally acknowledged; but attempts are sometimes made to -evade the force of those numerous passages in which he speaks of the -Incarnation, and Death, and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, in a way -which seems to imply his hearty acceptance of the substance of what is -known as evangelical truth. Much has been made in this connection of the -way in which, in one of his prefaces, he characterises his work as -“poetry always dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many -imaginary persons, not mine;” and it has been asserted that it is as -unwarrantable to consider him to be speaking his own sentiments in a -poem like “Christmas Eve,” as in one like “Johannes Agricola,” or -“Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” The obvious answer is that this profound -sympathy with the Christ of God and His salvation is not found in some -solitary production, but appears and reappears, often when least -expected, all through his works. In that remarkable little poem, -entitled “House,” in which more strongly than anywhere else he claims -personal privacy, while he declines to be regarded as having furnished -his publishers with tickets to view his own soul’s dwelling, he admits -that “whoso desires to penetrate deeper” may do so “by the spirit -sense;” and accordingly some of his admirers, who dissent from him most -strongly on this point, are the most ready to acknowledge that his -Christian faith is no stage suit, but the very garment of his soul. As -illustration of this we may refer to the admirable essay by the late -James Thomson, published in Part II. of the Browning Society’s Papers, -in which, after expressing his amazement that a great mind like -Browning’s could be Christian, he asserts the, to him, remarkable but -quite undeniable fact in these words: “The devout and hopeful Christian -faith, explicitly or implicitly affirmed in such poems as _Saul_, -_Kharshish_, _Cleon_, _Caliban upon Setebos_, _A Death in the Desert_, -_Instans Tyrannus_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _Prospice_, the _Epilogue_, and -throughout that stupendous monumental work, _The Ring and the Book_, -must surely be as clear as noonday to even the most purblind vision.” - -That a great Christian poet, in an age when so many of the intellectual -magnates of the time are hostile or simply silent, should remain unknown -or little known to any large proportion of Christian readers, is -certainly very much to be regretted. Surely the admiration which is -freely and generously accorded to his work by many who are constrained -to it in spite of his faith in a Christ whom they reject, is a rebuke to -the indifference of those who, sharing his faith, do not give themselves -the trouble to inquire what he has to say about it. There are not so -many avowed and outspoken Christians in the highest walks of literature -that we can afford to pay only slight attention to the utterances of one -who has the ear of the deepest thinkers in every school of thought all -the world over. - - * * * * * - -The immediate object of this selection is to supply an introduction to -the study of Browning for the benefit of the readers of the Chautauqua -Literary and Scientific Circle; but it is hoped that many others, -inspired with similar aims, and who have not had such advantages that -they can dispense with all assistance in the study of a difficult -author, may find help from this little book. It is, of course, better to -read for one’s self than to follow the guidance of another; and yet it -may be necessary to open a path far enough to lead within sight of the -treasures in store. This is all that has been attempted here—only the -indication of a few veins near the surface of a rich mine, which the -reader is strongly recommended to explore for himself. - -The selection has been arranged on the principle of beginning with that -which is simple, and proceeding gradually to the more complex, with some -regard also to variety and progress in subjects, and at the same time to -appropriateness for the use of those younger readers for whom this -selection mainly is intended. - -The notes are meant to serve only as a guide to beginners; and as guides -are proverbially an annoyance when their services are imposed unsought, -these are disposed at the end of each poem, and without reference marks -to mar the pages, so that the selection may be read, if desired, without -any interference from the notes. - -Within the limits of a volume like this, only the shorter poems could -find a place. Most valuable extracts from the longer works might have -been given; but this is always a questionable method of dealing with the -best writers, with those especially whose thought is strictly -consecutive, while the effect of particular passages depends to a large -extent on their setting and their relation to the work as a whole. The -only[A] exception to this is the treatment of “Christmas Eve and Easter -Day,” with extracts from which this volume closes. That remarkable work -occupies a middle position between the shorter and the longer poems of -our author; and, though too long for insertion entire, is yet so -important, that it seemed very desirable to give some idea of it. In -furnishing a series of extracts from this work, an attempt has been made -to reduce the disadvantage above referred to by supplying along with -them a slight sketch or “argument,” so as to give some idea, to those -unacquainted with it, of the course of thought throughout. - -It is right to say that Mr. Browning has given his kind permission for -the publication in the United States of this Selection, and also of the -Notes, for which, however, as for the selection itself, he is in no wise -responsible. - ------ - -Footnote A: - - It has been found necessary also to give only the latter part of the - noble poem “Saul.” A slight sketch of the part omitted is given, and - the poem is continued without interruption to its close. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - INTRODUCTORY i - HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 11 - HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 12 - “HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX” 13 - ECHETLOS 16 - HELEN’S TOWER 18 - SHOP 19 - THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 25 - THE PATRIOT 29 - INSTANS TYRANNUS 31 - THE LOST LEADER 34 - LOVE AMONG THE RUINS 36 - MY STAR 40 - RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI 41 - NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE 43 - WANTING IS—WHAT? 44 - EVELYN HOPE 45 - PROSPICE 48 - GOOD, TO FORGIVE 49 - TOUCH HIM NE’ER SO LIGHTLY 51 - POPULARITY 52 - THE GUARDIAN ANGEL 56 - DEAF AND DUMB 59 - ABT VOGLER 60 - ONE WORD MORE 68 - SAUL 77 - AN EPISTLE 87 - CHRISTMAS-EVE 100 - EASTER-DAY 121 - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - A SELECTION FROM THE POEMS - OF ROBERT BROWNING. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD. - - - Oh, to be in England now that April’s there, - And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, - That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf - Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, - While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough - In England—now! - And after April, when May follows, - And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! - Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge - Leans to the field and scatters on the clover - Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge— - That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over - Lest you should think he never could recapture - The first fine careless rapture! - And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, - All will be gay when noontide wakes anew - The buttercups, the little children’s dower - —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA. - - - Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away; - Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; - Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; - In the dimmest North-East distance dawned Gibraltar grand and grey; - “Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?”—say, - Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, - While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. - -The former of these companion poems may have been written from Italy or -the south of Spain, as would appear from the last line of it. Mr. E. C. -Stedman, one of the severest of Browning’s appreciative critics, -commenting (in his “Victorian Poets”) on the lines beginning “That’s the -wise thrush,” says:—“Having in mind Shakespeare and Shelley, I -nevertheless think these three lines the finest ever written touching -the song of a bird.” - - * * * * * - -In the latter poem, the course is from the southern point of Portugal -through the Straits. “Here and here”—the reference is to the battles of -Cape St. Vincent (1796) and Trafalgar (1805), and perhaps to the defence -of Gibraltar (1782). - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - “HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD - NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX.” - - [16—.] - - - I. - - I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; - I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; - “Good speed!” cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; - “Speed!” echoed the wall to us galloping through; - Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, - And into the midnight we galloped abreast. - - II. - - Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace - Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; - I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, - Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, - Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, - Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. - - III. - - ’Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near - Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; - At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; - At Düffeld, ’twas morning as plain as could be; - And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half-chime, - So, Joris broke silence with, “Yet there is time!” - - IV. - - At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, - And against him the cattle stood black every one, - To stare thro’ the mist at us galloping past, - And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, - With resolute shoulders, each butting away - The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray: - - V. - - And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back - For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; - And one eye’s black intelligence,—ever that glance - O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! - And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon - His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. - - VI. - - By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, “Stay spur! - “Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault’s not in her, - “We’ll remember at Aix”—for one heard the quick wheeze - Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, - And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, - As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. - - VII. - - So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, - Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; - The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, - ’Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; - Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, - And “Gallop,” gasped Joris, “for Aix is in sight!” - - VIII. - - “How they’ll greet us!”—and all in a moment his roan - Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; - And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight - Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, - With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, - And with circles of red for his eye-sockets’ rim. - - IX. - - Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, - Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, - Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, - Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; - Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, - Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. - - X. - - And all I remember is, friends flocking round - As I sat with his head ’twixt my knees on the ground; - And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, - As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, - Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) - Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. - -The indefiniteness of the date at the head of this poem will be best -explained by the following extract from a letter of Mr. Browning’s, -published in 1881 in the _Boston Literary World_:— - -“There is no sort of historical foundation about ‘Good News From Ghent.’ -I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after I -had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy of a gallop on -the back of a certain good horse ‘York,’ then in my stable at home.” - -This poem, therefore, widely known and appreciated as one of the most -stirring in the language, may be regarded as a living picture to -illustrate the pages—no page in particular—of Motley. - -As parallels in American literature, reference may be made to “Paul -Revere’s Ride,” by Longfellow, and “Sheridan’s Ride,” by T. B. Reade. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ECHETLOS. - - - Here is a story, shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead and gone, - Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on, - Did the deed and saved the world, since the day was Marathon! - - No man but did his manliest, kept rank and fought away - In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down—was the spear-arm play: - Like a wind-whipt branchy wood, all spear-arms a-swing that day! - - But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm plied no spear, - As a flashing came and went, and a form i’ the van, the rear, - Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here. - - Nor helmed nor shielded, he! but, a goat-skin all his wear, - Like a tiller of the soil, with a clown’s limbs broad and bare, - Went he ploughing on and on: he pushed with a ploughman’s share. - - Did the weak mid-line give way, as tunnies on whom the shark - Precipitates his bulk? Did the right-wing halt when, stark - On his heap of slain, lay stretched Kallimachos Polemarch? - - Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need, - The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed, - As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede. - - But the deed done, battle won,—nowhere to be descried - On the meadow, by the stream, at the marsh,—look far and wide - From the foot of the mountain, no, to the last blood-plashed sea-side,— - - Not anywhere on view blazed the large limbs thonged and brown, - Shearing and clearing still with the share before which—down - To the dust went Persia’s pomp, as he ploughed for Greece, that clown! - - How spake the Oracle? “Care for no name at all! - Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call - The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne’er grows small.” - - Not the great name! Sing—woe for the great name Míltiadés, - And its end at Paros isle! Woe for Themistokles— - Satrap in Sardis court! Name not the clown like these! - -The name, Echetlos, is derived from ἐχέτλη, a plough handle. It is not -strictly a proper name, but an appellative, meaning “the Holder of the -Ploughshare.” The story is found in Pausanias, author of the “Itinerary -of Greece” (1, 15, 32). Nothing further is necessary in order to -understand this little poem and appreciate its rugged strength than -familiarity with the battle of Marathon, and some knowledge of Miltiades -and Themistocles, the one known as the hero of Marathon, and the other -as the hero of Salamis. The lesson of the poem (“The great _deed_ ne’er -grows small, not the great _name_!”) is taught in a way not likely to be -forgotten. One is reminded of another, who wished to be nameless, heard -only as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness!” - -The ellipsis in thought between the eighth and ninth stanzas is so -easily supplied that it is noticed here only as a simple illustration of -what is sometimes the occasion of difficulty (see Introduction, p. iii). -It would only have lengthened the poem and weakened it to have inserted -a stanza telling in so many words that when the hero could not be found, -a message was sent to the Oracle to enquire who it could be. - -As a companion to “Echetlos” may be read the stirring poem of “Hervé -Riel.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - HELEN’S TOWER. - - Ἑλένη ἐπὶ πύργῳ - - - Who hears of Helen’s Tower, may dream perchance, - How the Greek Beauty from the Scæan Gate - Gazed on old friends unanimous in hate, - Death-doom’d because of her fair countenance. - - Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy advance, - Lady, to whom this Tower is consecrate: - Like hers, thy face once made all eyes elate, - Yet, unlike hers, was bless’d by every glance. - - The Tower of Hate is outworn, far and strange: - A transitory shame of long ago, - It dies into the sand from which it sprang: - But thine, Love’s rock-built Tower, shall fear no change: - God’s self laid stable Earth’s foundations so, - When all the morning-stars together sang. - -The tower is one built by Lord Dufferin, in memory of his mother Helen, -Countess of Gifford, on one of his estates in Ireland. “The Greek -Beauty” is, of course, Helen of Troy, and the reference in the -alternative heading is apparently to that fine passage in the third book -of the “Iliad,” where Helen meets the Trojan chiefs at the Scæan Gate -(see line 154, which speaks of “Helen at the Tower”). - -On the last two lines, founded of course on the well-known passage in -Job (xxxviii. 4-7), compare Dante: - - “E il sol montava in su con quelle stelle - Ch’eran con lui, quando l’Amor Divino - Mosse da prima quelle cose belle.” - - “Aloft the sun ascended with those stars - That with him rose, when Love Divine first moved - Those its fair works.” - —_Inferno_ I. 38-40. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - SHOP. - - - I. - - So, friend, your shop was all your house! - Its front, astonishing the street, - Invited view from man and mouse - To what diversity of treat - Behind its glass—the single sheet! - - II. - - What gimcracks, genuine Japanese: - Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog; - Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese; - Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog: - Queer names, too, such a catalogue! - - III. - - I thought “And he who owns the wealth - “Which blocks the window’s vastitude, - “—Ah, could I peep at him by stealth - “Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude - “On house itself, what scenes were viewed! - - IV. - - “If wide and showy thus the shop, - “What must the habitation prove? - “The true house with no name a-top— - “The mansion, distant one remove, - “Once get him off his traffic groove! - - V. - - “Pictures he likes, or books perhaps; - “And as for buying most and best, - “Commend me to these city chaps. - “Or else he’s social, takes his rest - “On Sundays, with a Lord for guest. - - VI. - - “Some suburb-palace, parked about - “And gated grandly, built last year: - “The four-mile walk to keep off gout; - “Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer: - “But then he takes the rail, that’s clear. - - VII. - - “Or, stop! I wager, taste selects - “Some out o’ the way, some all-unknown - “Retreat: the neighbourhood suspects - “Little that he who rambles lone - “Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!” - - VIII. - - Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence - Fit to receive and entertain,— - Nor Hampstead villa’s kind defence - From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,— - Nor country-box was soul’s domain! - - IX. - - Nowise! At back of all that spread - Of merchandize, woe’s me, I find - A hole i’ the wall where, heels by head, - The owner couched, his ware behind, - —In cupboard suited to his mind. - - X. - - For, why? He saw no use of life - But, while he drove a roaring trade, - To chuckle “Customers are rife!” - To chafe “So much hard cash outlaid - “Yet zero in my profits made! - - XI. - - “This novelty costs pains, but—takes? - “Cumbers my counter! Stock no more! - “This article, no such great shakes, - “Fizzes like wild fire? Underscore - “The cheap thing—thousands to the fore!” - - XII. - - ’Twas lodging best to live most nigh - (Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be) - Receipt of Custom; ear and eye - Wanted no outworld: “Hear and see - “The bustle in the shop!” quoth he. - - XIII. - - My fancy of a merchant-prince - Was different. Through his wares we groped - Our darkling way to—not to mince - The matter—no black den where moped - The master if we interloped! - - XIV. - - Shop was shop only: household-stuff? - What did he want with comforts there? - “Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough, - “So goods on sale show rich and rare! - “_Sell and scud home_,” be shop’s affair! - - XV. - - What might he deal in? Gems, suppose! - Since somehow business must be done - At cost of trouble,—see, he throws - You choice of jewels, everyone - Good, better, best, star, moon and sun! - - XVI. - - Which lies within your power of purse? - This ruby that would tip aright - Solomon’s sceptre? Oh, your nurse - Wants simply coral, the delight - Of teething baby,—stuff to bite! - - XVII. - - Howe’er your choice fell, straight you took - Your purchase, prompt your money rang - On counter,—scarce the man forsook - His study of the “Times,” just swang - Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,— - - XVIII. - - Then off made buyer with a prize, - Then seller to his “Times” returned, - And so did day wear, wear, till eyes - Brightened apace, for rest was earned: - He locked door long ere candle burned. - - XIX. - - And whither went he? Ask himself, - Not me! To change of scene, I think. - Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf, - Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink, - Nor all his music—money-chink. - - XX. - - Because a man has shop to mind - In time and place, since flesh must live, - Needs spirit lack all life behind, - All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive, - All loves except what trade can give? - - XXI. - - I want to know a butcher paints, - A baker rhymes for his pursuit, - Candlestick-maker much acquaints - His soul with song, or, haply mute, - Blows out his brains upon the flute! - - XXII. - - But—shop each day and all day long! - Friend, your good angel slept, your star - Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong! - From where these sorts of treasures are, - There should our hearts be—Christ, how far! - -There ought to be far more in a man than can be put into a front window. -This man had all sorts of “curios” in his shop window, but there was -nothing rich or rare in his soul; and so there was room for all of _him_ -in a den which would not have held the hundredth part of his wares. The -contemptible manner of the man’s life is strikingly brought out by the -various suppositions (stanzas 5, 6, 7) so different from the poor -reality (8-9). All he cared for was business, which made him “chuckle” -on the one hand or “chafe” on the other, according as times were good or -bad (10). Even in his business it was not the real excellence of his -wares he cared for, only their saleability (11). A merchant prince is a -very different person (13-19). The last three stanzas give the lesson in -a style partly humorous, but passing in the end to an impressive -solemnity. - -In connection with this should be read the companion piece, “House,” to -which reference is made in the Introduction. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE BOY AND THE ANGEL. - - - Morning, evening, noon and night, - “Praise God!” sang Theocrite. - - Then to his poor trade he turned, - Whereby the daily meal was earned. - - Hard he laboured, long and well; - O’er his work the boy’s curls fell. - - But ever, at each period, - He stopped and sang, “Praise God!” - - Then back again his curls he threw, - And cheerful turned to work anew. - - Said Blaise, the listening monk, “Well done; - “I doubt not thou art heard, my son: - - “As well as if thy voice to-day - “Were praising God, the Pope’s great way. - - “This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome - “Praises God from Peter’s dome.” - - Said Theocrite, “Would God that I - “Might praise Him, that great way, and die!” - - Night passed, day shone, - And Theocrite was gone. - - With God a day endures alway, - A thousand years are but a day. - - God said in heaven, “Nor day nor night - “Now brings the voice of my delight.” - - Then Gabriel, like a rainbow’s birth, - Spread his wings and sank to earth; - - Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, - Lived there, and played the craftsman well; - - And morning, evening, noon and night, - Praised God in place of Theocrite. - - And from a boy, to youth he grew: - The man put off the stripling’s hue: - - The man matured and fell away - Into the season of decay: - - And ever o’er the trade he bent, - And ever lived on earth content. - - (He did God’s will; to him, all one - If on the earth or in the sun.) - - God said, “A praise is in mine ear; - “There is no doubt in it, no fear: - - “So sing old worlds, and so - “New worlds that from my footstool go. - - “Clearer loves sound other ways: - “I miss my little human praise.” - - Then forth sprang Gabriel’s wings, off fell - The flesh disguise, remained the cell. - - ’Twas Easter Day: He flew to Rome, - And paused above Saint Peter’s dome. - - In the tiring-room close by - The great outer gallery, - - With his holy vestments dight, - Stood the new Pope, Theocrite: - - And all his past career - Came back upon him clear, - - Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, - Till on his life the sickness weighed; - - And in his cell, when death drew near, - An angel in a dream brought cheer: - - And, rising from the sickness drear, - He grew a priest, and now stood here. - - To the East with praise he turned, - And on his sight the angel burned. - - “I bore thee from thy craftsman’s cell, - “And set thee here; I did not well. - - “Vainly I left my angel-sphere, - “Vain was thy dream of many a year. - - “Thy voice’s praise seemed weak; it dropped— - “Creation’s chorus stopped! - - “Go back and praise again - “The early way, while I remain. - - “With that weak voice of our disdain, - “Take up creation’s pausing strain. - - “Back to the cell and poor employ: - “Resume the craftsman and the boy!” - - Theocrite grew old at home; - A new Pope dwelt in Peter’s dome. - - One vanished as the other died: - They sought God side by side. - -The lesson of this beautiful fancy is the complement of the “Shop” -lesson. Even drudgery may be divine; since the will of God is the work -to be done, no matter whether under St. Peter’s dome or in the cell of -the craftsman (the Boy)—“all one, if on the earth or in the sun” (the -Angel). - -The poem is so full of exquisite things, that only a few can be noted. -The value of the “little human praise” to God Himself (distich 12), all -the dearer because of the doubts and fears in it (20-22); and the -contrast between its seeming weakness and insignificance and its real -importance as a necessary part of the great chorus of creation (34); the -eager desire of Gabriel to anticipate the will of God, and his content -to live on earth and bend over a common trade, if only thus he can serve -Him best (13-19); and again the content of the “new pope Theocrite” to -go back to his “cell and poor employ” and fill out the measure of his -day of service, growing old at home, while Gabriel as contentedly takes -his place as pope (probably a harder trial than the more menial service) -and waits for the time when both “sought God side by side”—these are -some of the fine and far reaching thoughts which find simple and -beautiful expression here. - -Longfellow’s “King Robert of Sicily,” though not really parallel, has -points of similarity to “The Boy and the Angel.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE PATRIOT. - - AN OLD STORY. - - - I. - - It was roses, roses, all the way, - With myrtle mixed in my path like mad: - The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway, - The church-spires flamed, such flags they had, - A year ago on this very day. - - II. - - The air broke into a mist with bells, - The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. - Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels— - “But give me your sun from yonder skies!” - They had answered “And afterward, what else?” - - III. - - Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun - To give it my loving friends to keep! - Nought man could do, have I left undone: - And you see my harvest, what I reap - This very day, now a year is run. - - IV. - - There’s nobody on the house-tops now— - Just a palsied few at the windows set; - For the best of the sight is, all allow, - At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet, - By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow. - - V. - - I go in the rain, and, more than needs, - A rope cuts both my wrists behind, - And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, - For they fling, whoever has a mind, - Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds. - - VI. - - Thus I entered, and thus I go! - In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. - “Paid by the world, what dost thou owe - Me?”—God might question; now instead, - ’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so. - -The Patriot, on his way to the scaffold, surrounded by a hooting crowd, -remembers how, just a year ago, the same people had been mad in their -enthusiasm for him. Anything at all, however extravagant, would have -been too little for them to do for him (stanza 2; cf. Gal. iv. 15, 16); -but now——! The fourth stanza is very powerful. All have gone who can, to -be ready to see the execution; only the “palsied few,” who cannot, are -at the windows to see him pass. In the last stanza the thought of a more -sudden contrast still is presented. A man may drop dead in the midst of -a triumph, to find that in its brief plaudits he has his reward, while a -vast account stands against him at the higher tribunal. Far better die -amid the execrations of men and find the contrast reversed. - -It is “an old story,” and therefore general; but one naturally thinks of -such cases as Arnold of Brescia, or the tribune Rienzi. A higher Name -than these need not be introduced here, in proof of the people’s -fickleness! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - INSTANS TYRANNUS. - - - I. - - Of the million or two, more or less, - I rule and possess, - One man, for some cause undefined, - Was least to my mind. - - II. - - I struck him, he grovelled of course— - For, what was his force? - I pinned him to earth with my weight - And persistence of hate; - And he lay, would not moan, would not curse, - As his lot might be worse. - - III. - - “Were the object less mean, would he stand - “At the swing of my hand! - “For obscurity helps him, and blots - “The hole where he squats.” - So, I set my five wits on the stretch - To inveigle the wretch. - All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw - Still he couched there perdue; - I tempted his blood and his flesh, - Hid in roses my mesh, - Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth - Still he kept to his filth. - - IV. - - Had he kith now or kin, were access - To his heart, did I press - Just a son or a mother to seize! - No such booty as these. - Were it simply a friend to pursue - ’Mid my million or two, - Who could pay me, in person or pelf, - What he owes me himself! - No: I could not but smile through my chafe: - For the fellow lay safe - As his mates do, the midge and the nit, - —Through minuteness, to wit. - - V. - - Then a humour more great took its place - At the thought of his face: - The droop, the low cares of the mouth, - The trouble uncouth - ’Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain - To put out of its pain. - And, “no!” I admonished myself, - “Is one mocked by an elf, - “Is one baffled by toad or by rat? - “The gravamen’s in that! - “How the lion, who crouches to suit - “His back to my foot, - “Would admire that I stand in debate! - “But the small turns the great - “If it vexes you,—that is the thing! - “Toad or rat vex the king? - “Though I waste half my realm to unearth - “Toad or rat, ’tis well worth!” - - VI. - - So, I soberly laid my last plan - To extinguish the man. - Round his creep-hole, with never a break - Ran my fires for his sake; - Over-head, did my thunder combine - With my under-ground mine: - Till I looked from my labour content - To enjoy the event. - - VII. - - When sudden ... how think ye, the end? - Did I say “without friend?” - Say rather from marge to blue marge - The whole sky grew his targe - With the sun’s self for visible boss, - While an Arm ran across - Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast - Where the wretch was safe prest! - Do you see! Just my vengeance complete, - The man sprang to his feet, - Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed! - —So, _I_ was afraid! - -“Instans Tyrannus,” the _present_ tyrant, the tyrant for the time only, -whose apparently illimitable power to hurt shrivels into nothing in -presence of the King of kings, whose dominion is everlasting. - -The poor victim of this tyrant’s oppression is a true child of God, but -the nobility of his inner life is of course concealed from the proud -wretch who despises him, and who, it must be remembered, is the speaker -throughout. We must be careful, therefore, to estimate at their proper -worth the epithets he applies and the motives he attributes to the -object of his hate. _He_ can, of course, think of no other reason why -his victim “would not moan, would not curse,” than that, if he did, “his -lot might be worse.” And again, when temptation failed to shake his -steadfast patience, the tyrant is quite consistent with himself, as one -of those who call evil good, and good evil, in speaking of him as still -keeping “to his filth.” The last stanza is magnificent. Has the power of -prayer ever been set forth in nobler language? - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE LOST LEADER. - - - I. - - Just for a handful of silver he left us, - Just for a riband to stick in his coat— - Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, - Lost all the others, she lets us devote; - They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, - So much was theirs who so little allowed: - How all our copper had gone for his service! - Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud! - We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, - Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, - Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, - Made him our pattern to live and to die! - Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, - Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves! - He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, - He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! - - II. - - We shall march prospering,—not thro’ his presence; - Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; - Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, - Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: - Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, - One task more declined, one more footpath untrod, - One more devil’s-triumph and sorrow for angels, - One more wrong to man, one more insult to God! - Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us! - There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, - Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight, - Never glad confident morning again! - Best fight on well, for we taught him—strike gallantly, - Menace our heart ere we master his own; - Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, - Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! - -“The Lost Leader” is supposed to be the poet Wordsworth, who, on -accepting the laureateship, abandoned the party of distinguished -literary men who had enthusiastically supported the principles of the -French Revolution. It is necessary, of course, to enter into the lofty -enthusiasm of that party, and for the moment to identify ourselves with -it, in order to appreciate the wonderful power and pathos of this -exquisite poem. (See Wordsworth’s “French Revolution as it appeared to -enthusiasts at its commencement.”) - -The contrasts are very powerful between the one (paltry) gift he gained, -and all the others (love, loyalty, life, &c.) they were privileged to -_devote_ (far richer than mere possession); and again, between the -niggardliness of his new patrons with their dole of silver, contrasted -with the enthusiastic devotion of his own followers, who having nothing -but “copper,” would yet put it all at his service—having nothing but -“rags,” were yet so liberal with what they had, that had they been -purple, he would have been proud indeed, seeing that “a riband to stick -in his coat” had proved so great an attraction. - -In the second stanza the fountains of the great deep of human feeling -are broken up. “Life’s night begins” suggests at once the strength of -the previous attachment, and the hopelessness of the broken tie being -ever knit again on earth. The best thing is to be counted enemies now, -and fight against each other as gallantly as they would have fought -together. At the same time there is absolute confidence in the ultimate -triumph of the party of freedom—he may “menace our hearts,” but we shall -“master his”—and in the ultimate recovery of the lost leader himself, -whom he hopes to find “pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - LOVE AMONG THE RUINS. - - - I. - - Where the quiet coloured end of evening smiles, - Miles and miles, - On the solitary pastures where our sheep - Half-asleep - Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop - As they crop— - Was the site once of a city great and gay, - (So they say) - Of our country’s very capital, its prince, - Ages since, - Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far - Peace or war. - - II. - - Now,—the country does not even boast a tree, - As you see, - To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills - From the hills - Intersect and give a name to, (else they run - Into one) - Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires - Up like fires - O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall - Bounding all, - Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed - Twelve abreast. - - III. - - And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass - Never was! - Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads - And embeds - Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, - Stock or stone— - Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe - Long ago; - Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame - Struck them tame; - And that glory and that shame alike, the gold - Bought and sold. - - IV. - - Now,—the single little turret that remains - On the plains, - By the caper overrooted, by the gourd - Overscored, - While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks - Through the chinks— - Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time - Sprang sublime, - And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced - As they raced, - And the monarch and his minions and his dames - Viewed the games. - - V. - - And I know—while thus the quiet-coloured eve - Smiles to leave - To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece - In such peace, - And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey - Melt away— - That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair - Waits me there - In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul - For the goal, - When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb - Till I come. - - VI. - - But he looked upon the city, every side, - Far and wide, - All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades - Colonnades, - All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then, - All the men! - When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand - Either hand - On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace - Of my face, - Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech - Each on each. - - VII. - - In one year they sent a million fighters forth - South and North, - And they built their gods a brazen pillar high - As the sky, - Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force— - Gold, of course. - Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! - Earth’s returns - For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! - Shut them in, - With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! - Love is best. - -The supreme value of love is a constantly recurring thought in the poems -of our author. We shall meet it in its higher ranges in selections to -come. Here we are still in the sphere of the mere earthly affection, -with only the suggestion, in contrast with the transitoriness of earthly -glory, of its indestructibility. - -No explanation seems needed, excepting perhaps to call attention to -this, that the “little turret” in stanza 4 is not a bartizan, but a -staircase turret, or it could not “mark the basement, whence a tower in -ancient time sprang sublime.” - -Observe, in each stanza, the striking contrast between the former and -the latter half, so balanced that the poem might be divided into -fourteen single or six double stanzas. - -There is not much of the descriptive in the poems of our author; he is -the poet, not of Nature, but of Human Nature; but when he does touch -landscape, as here, it is with the hand of a master. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - MY STAR. - - - All that I know - Of a certain star - Is, it can throw - (Like the angled spar) - Now a dart of red, - Now a dart of blue; - Till my friends have said - They would fain see, too, - My star that dartles the red and the blue! - Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: - They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. - What matter to me if their star is a world? - Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. - -The following sentence, from Walter Besant, in “All Sorts and Conditions -of Men,” well expresses the key-thought of this little gem of a poem: -“So great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second rate or -third rate productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, -by confession or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the -other.” - -Compare also the closing stanzas of “One Word More,” especially stanza -18. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI - - - I. - - I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives - First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves - The world; and, vainly favoured, it repays - The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze - By no change of its large calm front of snow. - And, underneath the Mount, a Flower I know, - He cannot have perceived, that changes ever - At his approach; and, in the lost endeavour - To live his life, has parted, one by one, - With all a flower’s true graces, for the grace - Of being but a foolish mimic sun, - With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. - Men nobly call by many a name the Mount - As over many a land of theirs its large - Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe - Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie, - Each to its proper praise and own account: - Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively. - - II. - - Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look - Across the waters to this twilight nook, - —The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook! - - III. - - Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed? - Go!—saying ever as thou dost proceed, - That I, French Rudel, choose for my device - A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice - Before its idol. See! These inexpert - And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt - The woven picture; ’tis a woman’s skill - Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill - Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed - On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees - On my flower’s breast as on a platform broad: - But, as the flower’s concern is not for these - But solely for the sun, so men applaud - In vain this Rudel, he not looking here - But to the East—the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear! - -This poem was first published in “Bells and Pomegranates” under the head -of “Queen Worship.” How exquisite the plea of the unnoticed Flower, with -no pretence to vie with the Mountain in its claim upon the Sun’s -attention, except this, that the great unchanging Mountain is “vainly -favoured,” while the Flower yields itself up in ceaseless and -self-forgetting devotion to an imitation, however feeble and foolish, of -the great Sun Life. - -The second stanza is very rich. There is no mention in it of Sun or -Mountain or Flower; but as the Flower looks up to the Sun from its nook -at the Mountain’s base, so Rudel yearns for “one gold look” from his -Sun, the “Angel of the East.” - -The meaning of the third stanza will be apparent when it is remembered -that “French Rudel” was a troubadour of the 12th century—the days of the -Crusades, and of the romance of chivalry. In those days the best way to -communicate with the East would be through some pilgrim passing thither: -and nothing would be more natural than such a reference to the “device” -which he had patiently, and in spite of difficulty, worked so as to wear -it as her “favour:” and once more, it is eminently natural to represent -the troubadour, not as sending a written message, but as finding a -sympathetic pilgrim to burden his memory with it—charging him to keep it -fresh by repetition till it had been duly delivered. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE. - - - Never the time and the place - And the loved one all together! - This path—how soft to pace! - This May—what magic weather! - Where is the loved one’s face? - In a dream that loved one’s face meets mine, - But the house is narrow, the place is bleak - Where, outside, rain and wind combine - With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak - With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, - With a malice that marks each word, each sign! - O enemy sly and serpentine - Uncoil thee from the waking man! - Do I hold the Past - Thus firm and fast - Yet doubt if the Future hold I can? - This path so soft to pace shall lead - Through the magic of May to herself indeed! - Or narrow if needs the house must be, - Outside are the storms and strangers: we— - Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she, - —I and she! - -This poem, published in “Jocoseria” in 1883, has no connection with -“Rudel,” published in “Bells and Pomegranates” in 1842; but it will -naturally follow it as “another of the same,” only with a happier -ending; for though we learn from history that poor Rudel did one day -reach Tripoli, it was only to die there,—let us hope still looking “to -the East—the East!” - -We get a glimpse here of the shifting moods of a lover’s soul. First, -there are the thoughts connected with the present experience—time and -place all that could be desired, but the loved one, absent, (lines 1-5); -next, thoughts arising from a dark dream or foreboding of the future -when he and his loved one shall meet, but under circumstances cruelly -unpropitious, the house narrow, the weather stormy, unsympathetic -strangers by with furtive ears and hostile eyes, and even malice in -their hearts (6-11); and last, the man within him rises to shake off the -horrid serpent-like dream, and look forward with a healthy hope that -time and place and all will be well; or, if the house must be narrow, -(compare the Latin, “res angusta domi”) it will be a Home, storms and -strangers without, peace and rest within! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - WANTING IS—WHAT? - - - Wanting is—what? - Summer redundant, - Blueness abundant, - —Where is the spot? - 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! - -This is still the love of earth; but dealt with so grandly, that it is -no wonder that some have understood it of the higher love, and to the -question of the first line would give the answer, “God.” Nor can it be -said that the thought is alien—rather is it close akin; for is not the -earthly love, when pure and true, an image of the heavenly? It would be -well, indeed, if love songs were oftener written in such a way as to -suggest thoughts of the love of Heaven. The Bible is especially fearless -in its use of the one to illustrate the other. With the higher thought -in view, we are reminded of the closing lines of “The Rhyme of the -Duchess May,” by Mrs. Browning— - - “And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our - incompleteness— - Round our restlessness, His rest.” - -Compare “By the Fireside,” especially stanza 39. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - EVELYN HOPE. - - - I. - - Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! - Sit and watch by her side an hour. - That is her book-shelf, this her bed; - She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, - Beginning to die too, in the glass; - Little has yet been changed, I think: - The shutters are shut, no light may pass - Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink. - - II. - - Sixteen years old when she died! - Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; - It was not her time to love; beside, - Her life had many a hope and aim, - Duties enough and little cares, - And now was quiet, now astir, - Till God’s hand beckoned unawares,— - And the sweet white brow is all of her. - - III. - - Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? - What, your soul was pure and true, - The good stars met in your horoscope, - Made you of spirit, fire and dew— - And, just because I was thrice as old, - And our paths in the world diverged so wide. - Each was nought to each, must I be told? - We were fellow mortals, nought beside? - - IV. - - No, indeed! for God above - Is great to grant, as mighty to make, - And creates the love to reward the love: - I claim you still, for my own love’s sake! - Delayed it may be for more lives yet, - Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: - Much is to learn, much to forget - Ere the time be come for taking you. - - V. - - But the time will come, at last it will, - When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) - In the lower earth, in the years long still, - That body and soul so pure and gay? - Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, - And your mouth of your own geranium’s red— - And what you would do with me, in fine, - In the new life come in the old one’s stead. - - VI. - - I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, - Given up myself so many times, - Gained me the gains of various men, - Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; - Yet one thing, one, in my soul’s full scope, - Either I missed or itself missed me: - And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! - What is the issue? let us see! - - VII. - - I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! - My heart seemed full as it could hold; - There was place and to spare for the frank young smile - And the red young mouth, and the hair’s young gold. - So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep: - See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! - There, that is our secret: go to sleep! - You will wake, and remember, and understand. - -This poem, so exquisite in finish, well-nigh perfect in form, is one of -the few works of our author, almost universally known and admired. It is -doubtful, however, if all its admirers look beneath the form and finish, -or understand much more of it than they do of other poems, the crabbed -style of which repels admiration as strongly as this attracts it. The -tender pathos of the “geranium leaf” in the first and last stanzas, -touches a chord in every heart; but _the_ thought of the piece is -something far deeper and stronger, namely this, that true love is -immortal, and that, therefore, however much it may fail of its object -here, or even (if possible) in lives that follow this, it cannot fail -for ever, it _must_ find its object and be satisfied. It is a poem, not -of the pathos of death, but of the promise of Life! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - PROSPICE. - - - Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, - The mist in my face, - When the snows begin, and the blasts denote - I am nearing the place, - The power of the night, the press of the storm, - The post of the foe; - Where he stands the Arch Fear in a visible form, - Yet the strong man must go: - For the journey is done and the summit attained, - And the barriers fall, - Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained, - The reward of it all. - I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more, - The best and the last! - I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, - And bade me creep past. - No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers - The heroes of old, - Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears - Of pain, darkness and cold. - For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, - The black minute’s at end, - And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave, - Shall dwindle, shall blend, - Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, - Then a light, then thy breast, - O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, - And with God be the rest! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - GOOD, TO FORGIVE. - - - I. - - Good, to forgive; - Best, to forget! - Living, we fret; - Dying, we live. - Fretless and free, - Soul, clap thy pinion! - Earth have dominion, - Body, o’er thee! - - II. - - Wander at will, - Day after day,— - Wander away, - Wandering still— - Soul that canst soar! - Body may slumber: - Body shall cumber - Soul-flight no more - - III. - - Waft of soul’s wing! - What lies above? - Sunshine and Love, - Sky-blue and Spring! - Body hides—where? - Ferns of all feather, - Mosses and heather, - Yours be the care! - -This is the proem to “La Saisiaz,” one of the most remarkable of the -poet’s works, in which the doctrine of immortality is argued with a -profundity of thought that has perhaps never been surpassed, even in -language freed from the fetters of verse. It also appears as No. III. of -“Pisgah Sights” in the second English series of selections. Both of -these connections suggest the key-note. - -Observe the progress in the thought. In the first stanza the soul is -“fretless and free”; in the second it moves onward and upward; in the -third it has reached the region of “Sunshine and Love, Sky-blue and -Spring!” Similarly as to the body—in the first stanza there is the -apparent victory of the grave, “dust to dust”; in the next comes the -thought that, after all, the body may only be slumbering; in the last, -there is the beautiful suggestion that it is only hiding where it is -tenderly cared for, till - - “——with the morn those angel faces smile - Which we have loved long since, and lost awhile.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TOUCH HIM NE’ER SO LIGHTLY. - - - “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. - -These lines appeared first as the Epilogue to the second series of -Dramatic Idyls, published in 1880. In October of the same year, the poet -wrote, in the Album of a young American lady, a sequel to them, which -appeared (in fac-simile) in the _Century Magazine_ of November, 1882. -They are given here, with the kind consent of the publishers of that -magazine:— - - Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters, - Poets dead and gone: and lo, the critics cried - “Out on such a boast!”—as if I dreamed that fetters - Binding Dante, bind up—me! as if true pride - Were not also humble! - So I smiled and sighed - As I ope’d your book in Venice this bright morning, - Sweet new friend of mine! and felt tho’ clay or sand— - Whatsoe’er my soil be,—break—for praise or scorning— - Out in grateful fancies—weeds, but weeds expand - Almost into flowers, held by such a kindly hand! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - POPULARITY. - - - I. - - Stand still, true poet that you are! - I know you; let me try and draw you. - Some night you’ll fail us: when afar - You rise, remember one man saw you, - Knew you, and named a star! - - II. - - My star, God’s glow-worm! Why extend - That loving hand of His which leads you, - Yet locks you safe from end to end - Of this dark world, unless He needs you, - Just saves your light to spend? - - III. - - His clenched hand shall unclose at last, - I know, and let out all the beauty: - My poet holds the future fast, - Accepts the coming ages’ duty, - Their present for this past. - - IV. - - That day, the earth’s feast-master’s brow - Shall clear, to God the chalice raising; - “Others give best at first, but Thou - “Forever set’st our table praising, - “Keep’st the good wine till now!” - - V. - - Meantime, I’ll draw you as you stand, - With few or none to watch and wonder: - I’ll say—a fisher, on the sand - By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, - A netful, brought to land. - - VI. - - Who has not heard how Tyrian shells - Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes - Whereof one drop worked miracles, - And coloured like Astarte’s eyes - Raw silk the merchant sells? - - VII. - - And each bystander of them all - Could criticize, and quote tradition - How depths of blue sublimed some pall - —To get which, pricked a king’s ambition; - Worth sceptre, crown and ball. - - VIII. - - Yet there’s the dye, in that rough mesh, - The sea has only just o’er-whispered! - Live whelks, each lip’s beard dripping fresh, - As if they still the water’s lisp heard - Through foam the rock-weeds thresh. - - IX. - - Enough to furnish Solomon - Such hangings for his cedar-house, - That, when gold-robed he took the throne - In that abyss of blue, the Spouse - Might swear his presence shone. - - X. - - Most like the centre-spike of gold - Which burns deep in the blue-bell’s womb - What time, with ardours manifold, - The bee goes singing to her groom, - Drunken and overbold. - - XI. - - Mere conchs! not fit for warp or woof! - Till cunning come to pound and squeeze - And clarify,—refine to proof - The liquor filtered by degrees, - While the world stands aloof. - - XII. - - And there’s the extract, flasked and fine, - And priced and saleable at last! - And Hobbs, Nobbs, Stokes and Nokes combine - To paint the future from the past, - Put blue into their line. - - XIII. - - Hobbs hints blue,—straight he turtle eats: - Nobbs prints blue,—claret crowns his cup: - Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,— - Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? - What porridge had John Keats? - -The true poet is he who discovers and discloses, for man’s recognition -and enjoyment, the hidden beauties which abound everywhere in the great -kingdom of God. These beauties may be unrecognised at first, so that the -poet is not known as a poet, except to such as the speaker here is -supposed to be (“I know you”). He recognises in him a star. How is it, -then, that his light is hidden? The hand of God, who looks down on him -from far above (“God’s glow-worm”) as I look up to him from far below -(“my star”), has closed around him to keep him and his light safe till -the time shall come for discovery (Stanza 3) and for recognition (4). -The drawing, or simile follows, of a Tyrian fisherman (5), who brings -from the great sea the common-looking little whelk, from which, by a -secret process, is obtained that wonderful dye which out-dazzles art, -and almost equals Nature’s most exquisite tints (6-10). While the -process is going on, the world stands aloof (11); but as soon as the -extract is “priced and saleable,” the commonest people (12) can -recognise it and make it pay (13); while the man who fished it up -remains poor and unknown to fame. - -The application is made with characteristic brevity, oddity, and -antithetic power: Nokes, Stokes, & Co., gorging turtle; John Keats -wanting porridge! - -In connection with “Popularity” should be studied “The Two Poets of -Croisic,” far too long to be inserted here. An interesting comparison, -also, may be made with a little poem of Tennyson’s called “The Flower,” -beginning— - - “Once in a golden hour - I cast to earth a seed, - Up there came a flower, - The people said, a weed.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL. - - A PICTURE AT FANO. - - - I. - - Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave - That child, when thou hast done with him, for me! - Let me sit all the day here, that when eve - Shall find performed thy special ministry, - And time come for departure, thou, suspending - Thy flight, may’st see another child for tending, - Another still, to quiet and retrieve. - - II. - - Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more, - From where thou standest now, to where I gaze. - —And suddenly my head is covered o’er - With those wings, white above the child who prays - Now on that tomb—and I shall feel thee guarding - Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding - Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door. - - III. - - I would not look up thither past thy head - Because the door opes, like that child, I know, - For I should have thy gracious face instead, - Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low - Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together, - And lift them up to pray, and gently tether - Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread? - - IV. - - If this was ever granted, I would rest - My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands - Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast, - Pressing the brain which too much thought expands, - Back to its proper size again, and smoothing - Distortion down till every nerve had soothing, - And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed. - - V. - - How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired! - I think how I should view the earth and skies - And sea, when once again my brow was bared - After thy healing, with such different eyes. - O world, as God has made it! All is beauty: - And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. - What further may be sought for or declared? - - VI. - - Guercino drew this angel I saw teach - (Alfred, dear friend!)—that little child to pray, - Holding the little hands up, each to each - Pressed gently,—with his own head turned away - Over the earth where so much lay before him - Of work to do, though heaven was opening o’er him, - And he was left at Fano by the beach. - - VII. - - We were at Fano, and three times we went - To sit and see him in his chapel there, - And drink his beauty to our soul’s content - —My angel with me too: and since I care - For dear Guercino’s fame (to which in power - And glory comes this picture for a dower, - Fraught with a pathos so magnificent), - - VIII. - - And since he did not work thus earnestly - At all times, and has else endured some wrong— - I took one thought his picture struck from me, - And spread it out, translating it to song. - My love is here. Where are you, dear old friend? - How rolls the Wairoa at your world’s far end? - This is Ancona, yonder is the sea. - -“The Guardian Angel” is given as a slight specimen of an important -class, dealing with painting and painters. In the lovely poem, “One Word -More,” Browning disclaims all ability to paint; but no one could have a -more exquisite appreciation of the art. - -Has the tender pathos of these verses ever been surpassed? The calm of -heaven is in this thought spread out—translated into song. Let it be -read in connection with Spenser’s exquisite lines, beginning “And is -there care in heaven?” - -“Alfred, dear friend,” is Mr. Alfred Domett, who was then Prime Minister -of New Zealand, at which far end of the world the Wairoa rolls to the -sea. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - DEAF AND DUMB. - - A GROUP BY WOOLNER. - - - Only the prism’s obstruction shows aright - The secret of a sunbeam, breaks its light - Into the jewelled bow from blankest white; - So may a glory from defect arise: - Only by Deafness may the vexed love wreak - Its insuppressive sense on brow and cheek, - Only by Dumbness adequately speak - As favoured mouth could never, through the eyes. - -This is a “gem of purest ray.” In order to understand it fully, it is -necessary to know that the “group by Woolner” is of two deaf and dumb -children—the one as if speaking, the other in the attitude of listening. -The speech denied passage through the lips, breaks out in rarer beauty -from the eyes; and for the hearing denied entrance by the ears, there -is, instead, a subtle responsiveness of brow and cheek to the spirit -utterance from the soul of the other; so that love, though “vexed,” is -not suppressed. - -The exquisite beauty of the illustration of “the prism’s obstruction,” -and the tender pathos of the thought, will be manifest to every reader. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ABT VOGLER. - - (AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL - INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION.) - - - I. - - Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, - Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, - Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed - Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, - Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, - Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— - Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, - And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved! - - II. - - Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, - This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! - Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, - Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! - And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, - Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, - Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, - Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. - - III. - - And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, - Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, - Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, - Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: - For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, - When a great illumination surprises a festal night— - Outlining round and round Rome’s dome from space to spire) - Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in - sight. - - IV. - - In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man’s - birth, - Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; - And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, - As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: - Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, - Not a point nor peak but found, but fixed its wandering star; - Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, - For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. - - V. - - Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, - Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, - Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, - Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; - Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, - But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: - What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; - And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too. - - VI. - - All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, - All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth, - All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, - Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth. - Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause, - Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; - It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws - Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled:— - - VII. - - But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, - Existent behind all laws: that made them, and, lo, they are! - And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, - That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. - Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought; - It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: - Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought, - And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! - - VIII. - - Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; - Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; - For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, - That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. - Never to be again! But many more of the kind - As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? - To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind - To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be. - - IX. - - Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? - Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! - What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? - Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands? - There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; - The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; - What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; - On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. - - X. - - All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; - Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power - Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, - When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. - The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, - The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, - Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; - Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by. - - XI. - - And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence - For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? - Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? - Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized? - Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, - Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: - But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; - The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis we musicians know. - - XII. - - Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: - I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. - Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, - Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes, - And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, - Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep - Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found, - The C major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep. - -Having given specimen poems dealing with the arts of poetry, painting, -and sculpture, we add one on the subject of music, which, though -difficult to understand fully, has beauties which are apparent even to -those who do not enter into its deepest thought. Vogler is not known as -a composer of the first rank, having left no works behind him which -entitle him to a place among the great masters; but, for this very -reason, he is better suited for the poet’s purpose, which is to deal -with music, not as represented by printed notes, but as existing for the -moment in all its perfection, and at once melting away into silence and -apparent nothingness. It is as extemporizer, not as author, he is -chosen, and as Abbé (_Ger._ Abt) he appropriately thinks of those deep -spiritual truths on which the loftier hopes of the latter part of the -poem are founded. - -The musician “has been extemporizing,”—pouring out his whole soul -through the keys of his organ, and from that state of ecstasy he -suddenly awakes and cries out, “Would that the structure brave, the -manifold music I build ... might tarry!” It has been no mere “volume,” -but a “palace” of sound. As Solomon (according to the well-known legend) -summoned all spirits from above and from below, and all creatures of the -earth, to build him a palace at once, so by a touch, “calling the keys -to their work,” he has summoned demons of the bass, angels of the -treble, earth creatures of the middle tones, who, by eager and -tumultuous and yet harmoniously united efforts, have caused “the -pinnacled glory” to “rush into sight” (stanzas 1-3). - -Into sight? There was far more in it than could be seen. As the soul of -the musician ascended from earth, heaven descended on him; its stars -crowned his work; its moons, its suns were close beside him—“there was -no more near nor far” (4). And the boundaries of time, as well as the -limits of space, were gone. The _absolute_, the _perfect_ was reached; -and to this palace of perfection had flocked “presences plain in the -place,” from the far Future and from the mystic Past. “There was no more -sea”—no more distance or separation—all one, together, perfect (5). -Reached how? Through music—the only one of the arts that leads into the -region of the absolute and perfect, its effects not springing from -causes the operation of which can be traced, and the law of their -production defined, but responding directly to the will, even as -creation responded to the _fiat_ of God. Out of such simple elements can -that be evoked, which should lead those who “consider” these things to -“bow the head” (6, 7). - -But was it only for a moment? Is it gone? Forever? (8). - -I turn to God, and know it cannot be. Then follows that glorious -passage, one of the finest in any language, every word of which should -be studied, beginning—“There shall never be one lost good!” on to the -end of stanza 11, which is the true climax of the poem. - -The last stanza may be compared to the closing one of “Saul.” It is the -return from the empyrean to the plain of common life. Let some musical -friend show how at the cadence of a very grand piece he would feel his -way down the chromatic scale, and then pause on that poignant discord, -known as “the minor ninth,” effecting, as it were, a separation (“alien -ground”) from the heights just descended, and giving thus the -opportunity of looking up once more before a resting-place is found in -“the common chord,”—“the C major of this life.” - -This is a poem which should be read over and over till the music of it -has fairly entered the soul. - -It has become common now to speak slightingly of those representations -of heaven which make large use of music to give them body in our -thought, as if the idea intended to be conveyed were that the joy of -heaven was to consist in an endless idle singing, a concert without a -finale; but this easy criticism is surely too disregardful of the -distinctive feature of music so strikingly set forth in this poem—viz., -that it is the only one of the arts which while strongly appealing to -sense, yet in its essence belongs to the realm of the unseen, so that it -is in fact the only symbol within the range of man’s experience which -can even suggest the absolute, the perfect, the pure heavenly. - -The following passage, from the “Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal,” -(p. 151) is so strikingly illustrative of “Abt Vogler,” that we cannot -forbear quoting it:— - -“In the train I had one of those curious musical visions which only very -rarely visit me. I hear strange and very beautiful chords, generally -full, slow and grand, succeeding each other in most interesting -sequences. I do not invent them, I could not; they pass before my mind, -and I only listen. Now and then my will seems aroused when I see ahead -how some fine resolution might follow, and I seem to _will_ that certain -chords should come, and then they do come; but then my will seems -suspended again, and they go on quite independently. It is so -interesting, the chords seem to _fold over each other_, and die away -down into music of infinite softness, and then they _un_fold and open -out, as if great curtains were being withdrawn one after another, -widening the view, till, with a gathering power and intensity and -fulness, it seems as if the very skies were being opened out before one, -and a sort of great blaze and glory of music, such as my outward ears -never heard, gradually swells out in perfectly sublime splendour. This -time there was an added feature; I seemed to hear depths and heights of -sound beyond the scale which human ears can receive, keen, far-up -octaves, like vividly twinkling _starlight_ of music, and mighty slow -vibrations of gigantic strings going down into grand thunders of depths, -octaves below anything otherwise appreciable as musical notes. Then, all -at once, it seemed as if my soul had got a new sense, and I could _see_ -this inner music as well as hear it; and then it was like gazing down -into marvellous _abysses of sound_, and up into dazzling regions of -what, to the eye, would have been light and colour, but to this new -sense was _sound_.” - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ONE WORD MORE. - - TO E. B. B. - - _London, September, 1855._ - - - I. - - There they are, my fifty men and women - Naming me the fifty poems finished! - Take them, love, the book and me together: - Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. - - II. - - Rafael made a century of sonnets, - Made and wrote them in a certain volume - Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil - Else he only used to draw Madonnas: - These, the world might view—but one, the volume. - Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. - Did she live and love it all her life-time? - Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, - Die and let it drop beside her pillow - Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory, - Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving— - Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s, - Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s? - - III. - - You and I would rather read that volume, - (Taken to his beating bosom by it) - Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, - Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas— - Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, - Her, that visits Florence in a vision, - Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre— - Seen by us and all the world in circle. - - IV. - - You and I will never read that volume. - Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple, - Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. - Guido Reni dying, all Bologna - Cried, and the world cried too “Ours, the treasure!” - Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. - - V. - - Dante once prepared to paint an angel: - Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.” - While he mused and traced it and retraced it, - (Peradventure with a pen corroded - Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, - When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked, - Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, - Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment, - Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, - Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— - Dante, who loved well because he hated, - Hated wickedness that hinders loving, - Dante standing, studying his angel,— - In there broke the folk of his Inferno. - Says he—“Certain people of importance” - (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) - “Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.” - Says the poet—“Then I stopped my painting.” - - VI. - - You and I would rather see that angel, - Painted by the tenderness of Dante, - Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno. - - VII. - - You and I will never see that picture. - While he mused on love and Beatrice, - While he softened o’er his outlined angel, - In they broke, those “people of importance:” - We and Bice bear the loss for ever. - - VIII. - - What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture? - This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not - Once, and only once, and for one only, - (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language - Fit and fair and simple and sufficient— - Using nature that’s an art to others, - Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature. - Ay, of all the artists living, loving, - None but would forego his proper dowry,— - Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,— - Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, - Put to proof art alien to the artist’s, - Once, and only once, and for one only. - So to be the man and leave the artist, - Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow. - - IX. - - Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement. - He who smites the rock and spreads the water, - Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, - Even he, the minute makes immortal, - Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute. - Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. - While he smites, how can he but remember, - So he smote before, in such a peril, - When they stood and mocked—“Shall smiting help us?” - When they drank and sneered—“A stroke is easy!” - When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, - Throwing him for thanks—“But drought was pleasant.” - Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; - Thus the doing savours of disrelish; - Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; - O’er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, - Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture. - For he bears an ancient wrong about him, - Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, - Hears, yet one time more, the ’customed prelude— - “How should’st thou, of all men, smite, and save us?” - Guesses what is like to prove the sequel— - “Egypt’s flesh-pots—nay, the drought was better.” - - X. - - Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! - Theirs, the Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance, - Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat. - Never dares the man put off the prophet. - - XI. - - Did he love one face from out the thousands, - (Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely, - Were she but the Æthiopian bond-slave,) - He would envy yon dumb patient camel, - Keeping a reserve of scanty water - Meant to save his own life in the desert; - Ready in the desert to deliver - (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) - Hoard and life together for his mistress. - - XII. - - I shall never, in the years remaining, - Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, - Make you music that should all-express me; - So it seems: I stand on my attainment. - This of verse alone, one life allows me; - Verse and nothing else have I to give you. - Other heights in other lives, God willing: - All the gifts from all the heights, your own, love! - - XIII. - - Yet a semblance of resource avails us— - Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it. - Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, - Lines I write the first time and the last time. - He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, - Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, - Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, - Makes a strange art of an art familiar, - Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets. - He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver, - Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. - He who writes, may write for once as I do. - - XIV. - - Love, you saw me gather men and women, - Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, - Enter each and all, and use their service, - Speak from every mouth,—the speech, a poem. - Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, - Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving: - I am mine and yours—the rest be all men’s, - Karshish, Cleon, Norbert and the fifty. - Let me speak this once in my true person, - Not as Lippo, Roland or Andrea, - Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence— - Pray you, look on these my men and women, - Take and keep my fifty poems finished; - Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! - Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. - - XV. - - Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon’s self! - Here in London, yonder late in Florence, - Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. - Curving on a sky imbrued with colour, - Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, - Came she, our new crescent of a hair’s-breadth. - Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, - Rounder ’twixt the cypresses and rounder, - Perfect till the nightingales applauded. - Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished. - Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs. - Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, - Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. - - XVI. - - What, there’s nothing in the moon note-worthy? - Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal, - Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy) - All her magic (’tis the old sweet mythos) - She would turn a new side to her mortal, - Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman— - Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, - Blind to Galileo on his turret, - Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats—him, even! - Think, the wonder of the moon-struck mortal— - When she turns round, comes again in heaven, - Opens out anew for worse or better! - Proves she like some portent of an iceberg - Swimming full upon the ship it founders, - Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? - Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire - Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? - Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu - Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, - Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. - Like the bodied heaven in his clearness - Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, - When they ate and drank and saw God also! - - XVII. - - What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know - Only this is sure—the sight were other, - Not the moon’s same side, born late in Florence, - Dying now impoverished here in London. - God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures - Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, - One to show a woman when he loves her! - - XVIII. - - This I say of me, but think of you, Love! - This to you—yourself my moon of poets! - Ah, but that’s the world’s side, there’s the wonder, - Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you! - There, in turn I stand with them and praise you— - Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. - But the best is when I glide from out them, - Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, - Come out on the other side, the novel - Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, - Where I hush and bless myself with silence. - - XIX. - - Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, - Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, - Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it, - Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom! - -“Men and Women,” a collection of fifty poems, first published in 1855, -is probably the best known of our author’s numerous volumes. Some of the -very finest of his work is in it. To this collection “One Word More” is -an appendix, in the form of a dedication of the fifty poems to his wife, -Elizabeth Barrett Browning. As we learn from stanza 13, this work -differs from all others in having been dashed off, the first time of -writing being also the last time; and yet (such is the inspiration of -love) it stands with the very highest of his works. It needs careful -reading, but presents no such difficulties as “Abt Vogler.” - -Rafael, painter for the world, becomes for once a poet for his dearest. -If only these wonderful sonnets could be found, how we should prize -them; but the volume is hopelessly lost (stanzas 2-4). - -Dante, poet for the world, prepares for once to paint an angel for _his_ -dearest. But, alas! he is hindered by the breaking in of some “people of -importance” of the city, the sort of people who served as character -models for “the folk of his Inferno” (5-7). - -There would evidently be less of art and more of nature in such an -outpouring of soul; and, therefore, the true artist would long to do it -“once, and only once, and for one only.” “The man’s joy” would be found -in the mere utterance of his soul to his dearest, without any thought of -art, which, to the true artist, lifts so high an ideal that his -shortcoming is always a “sorrow” (8). - -So is it with the prophet, the exercise of whose high calling can never -be dissociated from its burdens and cares (9). If he dared, which he may -not (10), how gladly for the one that he loved would he “put off the -prophet” and provide water, not by the forth putting of power, but -simply as the man, through the self-denial of love (11). - -Browning himself has only the one art, so cannot leave his poetry to -paint, or carve, or “make music” (12); but as the nearest equivalent -possible to him will write “once, and only once, and for one only,” a -purely extemporaneous production (13), which shall not, like his other -works, be dramatic in principle, but spoken in his own “true person” -(14). - -Then follows the wonderful moon illustration, so marvellously wrought -out, based upon the familiar astronomical fact that, through all her -phases and movements she always presents exactly the same face to the -earth (15), the other remaining entirely concealed (“unseen of herdsman, -huntsman, steersman,” &c.), and therefore available as a new revelation -(who knows of what grandeur?) for the loved and specially-favoured -mortal (16). - -The application of the illustration in stanzas 17 and 18 is exquisitely -beautiful, as is the gem-like quatrain with which the poem closes. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - SAUL. - - -[The three selections which fill up the rest of this little volume are -given as specimens of the distinctively Christian poems of our author. -The first gives us Christ in the Old Testament; the second, Christ in -the New; the third, Christianity in its essential truth and practical -application. As only a portion of “Saul” can be given, a few words will -be necessary to prepare the reader unacquainted with the whole for -taking up the thread at the 14th stanza, from which, in the selection, -the poem is continued uninterruptedly to the end.] - -Young David is telling over to himself (see “my voice to my heart,” in -stanza 14) the story of his mission to Saul, when, as an inspired -poet-musician, he charmed the evil spirit away from him. Stanza 16, -consisting of one line, is the hinge of the entire poem; for David has -just reached the point where, after several unsuccessful, or very -partially successful, attempts—first, by playing one and another and -another tune, which might awaken some chord in the apathetic spirit of -the king, and then by singing, accompanied by the harp, first, of the -joy of life, then of the splendid results of a royal life like Saul’s in -the great future of the world—he at last, the truth coming upon him, -strikes the high key where full relief is found. As he approaches this -crisis in the tale, he cannot go on without an earnest invocation for -help to tell what he had been so wonderfully led to sing:— - - XIV. - - And behold while I sang ... but O Thou who didst grant me, that day, - And, before it, not seldom hast granted thy help to essay, - Carry on and complete an adventure,—my shield and my sword - In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,— - Still help me, who then at the summit of human endeavour - And scaling the highest, man’s thought could, gazed hopeless as ever - On the new stretch of heaven above me—till, mighty to save, - Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance—God’s throne from man’s - grave! - Let me tell out my tale to its ending—my voice to my heart - Which scarce dares believe in what marvels last night I took part, - As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep! - And fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep, - For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves - Dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves - Slow the damage of yesterday’s sunshine. - - XV. - - I say then,—my song - While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever more strong, - Made a proffer of good to console him—he slowly resumed - His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed - His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes - Of his turban, and see—the huge sweat that his countenance bathes, - He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore, - And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before. - He is Saul, ye remember in glory,—ere error had bent - The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent - Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose, - To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. - So sank he along by the tent-prop, still, stayed by the pile - Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, - And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raise - His bent head, and the other hung slack—till I touched on the praise - I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there; - And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was ’ware - That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees - Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots which - please - To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know - If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow - Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care - Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: thro’ my hair - The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind - power— - All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. - Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine— - And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign? - I yearned—“Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss, - “I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this; - “I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence, - “As this moment,—had love but the warrant, love’s heart to dispense!” - - XVI. - - Then the truth came upon me. No harp more—no song more! outbroke— - - XVII. - - “I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke; - “I, a work of God’s hand for that purpose, received in my brain - “And pronounced on the rest of his handwork—returned him again - “His creation’s approval or censure: I spoke as I saw, - “Reported, as man may of God’s work—all’s love, yet all’s law. - “Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked - “To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dew-drop was asked. - “Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. - “Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care! - “Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? - “I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less, - “In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God - “In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. - “And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew - “(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) - “The submission of man’s nothing-perfect to God’s all-complete, - “As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet. - “Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known, - “I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. - “There’s a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hood-wink, - “I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I think) - “Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst - “E’en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst! - “But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o’ertake - “God’s own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love’s sake. - —“What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and - small, - “Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal? - “In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? - “Do I find love so full in my nature, God’s ultimate gift, - “That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift? - “Here, the creature surpass the Creator,—the end what began? - “Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, - “And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? - “Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power, - “To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower - “Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, - “Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? - “And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest), - “These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best? - “Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height - “This perfection,—succeed, with life’s dayspring, death’s minute of - night: - “Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, - “Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake - “From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set - “Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet - “To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure! - “The man taught enough by life’s dream, of the rest to make sure; - “By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, - “And the next world’s reward and repose, by the struggles in this. - - XVIII. - - “I believe it! ’Tis thou, God, that givest, ’tis I who receive: - “In the first is the last, in thy will is my powder to believe. - “All’s one gift: thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my prayer, - “As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air. - “From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth: - “_I_ will?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth - “To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare - “Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair? - “This;—’tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do! - “See the King—I would help him, but cannot, the wishes fall through. - “Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich, - “To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which, - “I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now! - “Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou—so wilt thou! - “So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown— - “And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down - “One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, - “Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! - “As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved - “Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being beloved! - “He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most - weak. - “’Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek - “In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be - “A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me, - “Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand - “Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!” - - XIX. - - I know not too well how I found my way home in the night. - There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right, - Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware: - I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, - As a runner beset by the populace famished for news— - Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her - crews; - And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot - Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, - For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed - All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest, - Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest. - Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth— - Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day’s tender birth; - In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills; - In the shuddering forests’ held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; - In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still, - Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill - That rose heavily as I approached them, made stupid with awe: - E’en the serpent that slid away silent—he felt the new law. - The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers; - The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers: - And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low, - With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—“E’en so, it is so!” - -_Stanza 14._—Observe the meeting of the human and divine in the -poet-prophet’s inspiration. As poet, his powers were in their fullest -exercise, and still there was an unfathomable heaven of the unknown -above him, till “one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance.” - -The close of this stanza sets before us the scene of the writing of this -reminiscence. - - * * * * * - -_Stanza 15._—The soothing influence of the singing begins to appear. Be -sure to keep in mind the picture, so wonderfully illustrated, of the -attitude of the two; and mark the words of David, “All my heart how it -loved him,” connecting them carefully with the next stanza (16), “_Then_ -the truth came upon me.” It is only to the earnestly-loving heart that -such a revelation of God could be given. “God is Love, and he that -loveth not knoweth not God.” Observe, also, in this short stanza the -effect of the intense earnestness of his soul, leading him to lay aside -his harp and cease his singing, and simply break out in impassioned -speech. - - * * * * * - -_Stanza 17._—Shall God be infinitely above his creature man, in all -faculties except one, and that “the greatest of all,” viz., Love? (Note, -in passing, the exquisite beauty of the lines: “With that stoop of the -soul which in bending upraises it too,” and “As by each new obeisance in -spirit, I climb to his feet.” The passage immediately following this -line is of course ironical at his own expense, which is indicated by the -parenthetical “I laugh as I think”; as if to say “how utterly foolish -the thought that such a wide province, such a grand gift, as Love, -should be mine quite apart from God, the great Ruler and Giver of all!”) - - * * * * * - -_Stanza 18._—Impossible! God is the giver: all that I have—Love, as well -as everything else—is from him; I can wish, but cannot will the thing I -would; but God can, therefore God will; his love cannot be frustrated as -mine is; it must even for such as “Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems -now,” find Salvation; being infinite it must have its will, and find a -way, however hard it be (see the striking line “it is by no breath,” -&c.); and _there it is_! See THE CHRIST stand! - -Remember carefully the position as explained in the 15th stanza as you -read the magnificent climax, beginning— - - “O Saul, it shall be - A Face like my face that receives thee;” - -observe also the effect of the spondee with which stanza 18 closes, -instead of the usual anapæst; it gives wonderful dignity and strength to -the thought. The same effect is produced several times in the early part -of the poem by the same means, but nowhere with such power as in this, -the grand climax. - - * * * * * - -What a contrast here to the petty mechanical notions of inspiration -which have so often degraded the loftiest subject of human thought; and -how marvellously is the presence and the power of the Unseen on such a -soul as David’s imaged forth in the lines of the closing stanza, in -words which seem almost to utter the unutterable. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - AN EPISTLE - - CONTAINING THE - STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, - THE ARAB PHYSICIAN. - - - Karshish, the picker-up of learning’s crumbs, - The not-incurious in God’s handiwork - (This man’s-flesh he hath admirably made, - Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, - To coop up and keep down on earth a space - That puff of vapour from his mouth, man’s soul) - —To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, - Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, - Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks - Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, - Whereby the wily vapour fain would slip - Back and rejoin its source before the term,— - And aptest in contrivance (under God) - To baffle it by deftly stopping such:— - The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home - Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) - Three samples of true snake-stone—rarer still, - One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, - (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) - And writeth now the twenty-second time. - - My journeyings were brought to Jericho: - Thus I resume. Who studious in our art - Shall count a little labour unrepaid? - I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone - On many a flinty furlong of this land. - Also, the country-side is all on fire - With rumours of a marching hitherward: - Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. - A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear: - Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: - I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. - Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, - And once a town declared me for a spy; - But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, - Since this poor covert where I pass the night, - This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence - A man with plague-sores at the third degree - Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here! - ’Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, - To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip - And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. - A viscid choler is observable - In tertians, I was nearly bold to say; - And falling-sickness hath a happier cure - Than our school wots of: there’s a spider here - Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, - Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-grey back; - Take five and drop them ... but who knows his mind, - The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to? - His service payeth me a sublimate - Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. - Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, - There set in order my experiences, - Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— - Or I might add, Judæa’s gum-tragacanth - Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, - Cracks ’twixt the pestle and the porphyry, - In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease - Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: - Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— - But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. - - Yet stay! my Syrian blinketh gratefully, - Protesteth his devotion is my price— - Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal? - I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, - What set me off a-writing first of all. - An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang! - For, be it this town’s barrenness—or else - The Man had something in the look of him— - His case has struck me far more than ’tis worth. - So, pardon if—(lest presently I lose, - In the great press of novelty at hand, - The care and pains this somehow stole from me) - I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, - Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth? - The very man is gone from me but now, - Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. - Thus then, and let thy better wit help all! - - ’Tis but a case of mania: subinduced - By epilepsy, at the turning-point - Of trance prolonged unduly some three days - When, by the exhibition of some drug - Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art - Unknown to me and which ’twere well to know, - The evil thing, out-breaking, all at once, - Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,— - But, flinging (so to speak) life’s gates too wide, - Making a clear house of it too suddenly, - The first conceit that entered might inscribe - Whatever it was minded on the wall - So plainly at that vantage, as it were, - (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent - Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls - The just-returned and new-established soul - Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart - That henceforth she will read or these or none. - And first—the man’s own firm conviction rests - That he was dead (in fact they buried him) - —That he was dead and then restored to life - By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: - —’Sayeth, the same bade “Rise,” and he did rise. - “Such cases are diurnal,” thou wilt cry. - Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume, - Instead of giving way to time and health, - Should eat itself into the life of life, - As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all! - For see, how he takes up the after-life. - The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew, - Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, - The body’s habit wholly laudable, - As much, indeed, beyond the common health - As he were made and put aside to show. - Think, could we penetrate by any drug - And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, - And bring it clear and fair, by three days’ sleep! - Whence has the man the balm that brightens all? - This grown man eyes the world now like a child. - Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, - Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, - To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, - Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,— - He listened not except I spoke to him, - But folded his two hands and let them talk, - Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool. - And that’s a sample how his years must go. - Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, - Should find a treasure,—can he use the same - With straitened habitude and tastes starved small, - And take at once to his impoverished brain - The sudden element that changes things, - That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand, - And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? - Is he not such an one as moves to mirth— - Warily parsimonious, when no need, - Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? - All prudent counsel as to what befits - The golden mean, is lost on such an one: - The man’s fantastic will is the man’s law. - So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, - Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— - Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, - Earth forced on a soul’s use while seeing heaven: - The man is witless of the size, the sum, - The value in proportion of all things, - Or whether it be little or be much. - Discourse to him of prodigious armaments - Assembled to besiege his city now, - And of the passing of a mule with gourds— - ’Tis one! Then take it on the other side, - Speak of some trifling fact,—he will gaze rapt - With stupor at its very littleness, - (Far as I see) as if in that indeed - He caught prodigious import, whole results; - And so will turn to us the bystanders - In ever the same stupor (note this point) - That we too see not with his opened eyes. - Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, - Preposterously, at cross purposes. - Should his child sicken unto death,—why, look - For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, - Or pretermission of the daily craft! - While a word, gesture, glance from that same child - At play or in the school or laid asleep, - Will startle him to an agony of fear, - Exasperation, just as like. Demand - The reason why—“’tis but a word,” object— - “A gesture”—he regards thee as our lord - Who lived there in the pyramid alone, - Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, - We both would unadvisedly recite - Some charm’s beginning, from that book of his, - Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst - All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. - Thou and the child have each a veil alike - Thrown o’er your heads, from under which ye both - Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match - Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! - He holds on firmly to some thread of life— - (It is the life to lead perforcedly) - Which runs across some vast distracting orb - Of glory on either side that meagre thread, - Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet— - The spiritual life around the earthly life: - The law of that is known to him as this, - His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. - So is the man perplext with impulses - Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, - Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, - And not along, this black thread through the blaze— - “It should be” baulked by “here it cannot be.” - And oft the man’s soul springs into his face - As if he saw again and heard again - His sage that bade him “Rise,” and he did rise. - Something, a word, a tick o’ the blood within - Admonishes: then back he sinks at once - To ashes, who was very fire before, - In sedulous recurrence to his trade - Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; - And studiously the humbler for that pride, - Professedly the faultier that he knows - God’s secret, while he holds the thread of life. - Indeed the especial marking of the man - Is prone submission to the heavenly will— - Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. - ’Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last - For that same death which must restore his being - To equilibrium, body loosening soul - Divorced even now by premature full growth: - He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live - So long as God please, and just how God please. - He even seeketh not to please God more - (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. - Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach - The doctrine of his sect whate’er it be, - Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do: - How can he give his neighbour the real ground, - His own conviction? Ardent as he is— - Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old - “Be it as God please” reassureth him. - I probed the sore as thy disciple should: - “How, beast,” said I, “this stolid carelessness - “Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march - “To stamp out like a little spark thy town, - “Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?” - He merely looked with his large eyes on me. - The man is apathetic, you deduce? - Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, - Able and weak, affects the very brutes - And birds—how say I? flowers of the field— - As a wise workman recognises tools - In a master’s workshop, loving what they make. - Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: - Only impatient, let him do his best, - At ignorance and carelessness and sin— - An indignation which is promptly curbed: - As when in certain travel I have feigned - To be an ignoramus in our art - According to some preconceived design - And happed to hear the land’s practitioners - Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, - Prattle fantastically on disease, - Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace! - - Thou wilt object—Why have I not ere this - Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene - Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, - Conferring with the frankness that befits? - Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech - Perished in a tumult many years ago, - Accused,—our learning’s fate,—of wizardry, - Rebellion, to the setting up a rule - And creed prodigious as described to me. - His death, which happened when the earthquake fell - (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss - To occult learning in our lord the sage - Who lived there in the pyramid alone) - Was wrought by the mad people—that’s their wont! - On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, - To his tried virtue, for miraculous help— - How could he stop the earthquake? That’s their way! - The other imputations must be lies: - But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, - In mere respect for any good man’s fame. - (And after all, our patient Lazarus - Is stark mad; should we count on what he says? - Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech - ’Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.) - This man so cured regards the curer, then, - As—God forgive me! who but God himself, - Creator and sustainer of the world, - That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile. - —’Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, - Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, - Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, - And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat, - And must have so avouched himself, in fact, - In hearing of this very Lazarus - Who saith—but why all this of what he saith? - Why write of trivial matters, things of price - Calling at every moment for remark? - I noticed on the margin of a pool - Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, - Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange! - - Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, - Which, now that I review it, needs must seem - Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth! - Nor I myself discern in what is writ - Good cause for the peculiar interest - And awe indeed this man has touched me with. - Perhaps the journey’s end, the weariness - Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus: - I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills - Like an old lion’s cheek teeth. Out there came - A moon made like a face with certain spots - Multiform, manifold and menacing: - Then a wind rose behind me. So we met - In this old sleepy town at unawares, - The man and I. I send thee what is writ. - Regard it as a chance, a matter risked - To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose, - Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. - Jerusalem’s repose shall make amends - For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine; - Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell! - - The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? - So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too— - So, through the thunder comes a human voice - Saying, “O heart I made, a heart beats here! - “Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! - “Thou hast no power nor may’st conceive of mine: - “But love I gave thee, with myself to love, - “And thou must love me who have died for thee!” - The madman saith He said so: it is strange. - -This most interesting and beautiful poem will afford a good illustration -of one of the cases of difficulty referred to in the Introduction. The -reader is placed in the position of one who has just found this Arabian -epistle, and must decipher and interpret it without any extraneous aid. - -First comes, according to Eastern custom, the name (line 1), then the -address (7), with the greeting (15), and mention of articles sent with -the letter—all in true Eastern style—with such adjuncts as give a -general idea of the school of physiology and medicine to which the -writer belongs. - -The twenty-first letter had ended at Jericho, and here, accordingly, the -twenty-second begins. The date appears as we read on, marked by the -expedition of Vespasian and his son Titus against Jerusalem. When -Bethany is mentioned, our interest is awakened, and we wonder what is -coming; but to the writer Bethany has no such associations, as is -indicated by the light and jocular way in which he marks its distance -from Jerusalem, and carelessly proceeds to record the observations it is -his main business to make wherever he goes. - -Further on, however, we discover that there is something of importance -weighing on his mind, which makes him hesitate and debate as to the -trustworthiness of the messenger he intends to employ; while, at the -same time, he is evidently ashamed to tell his master what is troubling -him. This accounts for his abruptly ending his letter (determining, for -the moment, to say nothing about it); then, unable to refrain, beginning -again, yet still trying to conceal the depth of his feeling, and to -apologize for what appears in spite of himself. - -A long account of the case follows. By this time the reader has begun to -have a pretty good idea who “the man” is that “had something in the look -of him,” and knows that it is a veritable case of one raised from the -dead. But Karshish cannot, of course, except under strong compulsion, be -expected to take this view; and, accordingly, he begins by looking at it -in a strictly professional light—“’Tis but a case of mania,” &c. He -naturally supposes that his master will set it down as an ordinary -instance of hallucination: “Such cases are diurnal, thou wilt cry.” Then -he mentions points which strike him as altogether peculiar, certain -features of the “after life” which are quite inconsistent with the idea -of mania. Instead of being the worse for his mania, this man is -immeasurably the better. Could Karshish and his master but penetrate the -secret, what physicians they would be! The scene when Lazarus is brought -in by the Elders of his tribe—who regard him as a madman, because he is -living a life so far above anything they can understand—is inimitable. - -In the illustration of the beggar suddenly become rich, Karshish lets -out at last that he suspects there must be some truth in the man’s -story. His patient, he observes, now measures things with no earthly -measure, seeing often the small in the great and the great in the small; -looking at everything “with larger, other eyes than ours”; accepting -with perfect equanimity the very greatest _sorrow_, yet filled with -alarm at the least gesture or look which gives token of _sin_, because -to him it was like trifling with a match over a mine of Greek fire! - -In the next illustration, of the thread of life across an orb of glory, -the writer seems to get still fuller insight into the reality of the -case—the little thread being, of course, the poor life in Bethany, and -the vast orb of glory, the great eternity of God, in which Lazarus was -consciously living. And here, again, we have the same lesson as in “The -Boy and the Angel.” Though conscious of the glory of the great orb, -Lazarus does not despise the little duties belonging to the thread of -his earthly life. He sedulously follows his trade whereby he earns his -daily bread; indeed, the special characteristic of the man is “prone -submission to the Heavenly will.” Mark the profound suggestiveness of -the lines— - - “He even seeketh not to please God more - (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.” - -He is so calm as to be provoking. At his inquisitor’s burst of -indignation, he shows no sign of anger or impatience—“He merely looked -with his large eyes on me.” And yet no apathy about him; a man full of -loving interest in all things. (Compare Coleridge’s well-known lines: -“He prayeth best who loveth best,” &c.) - -The paragraph which follows introduces us to a region familiar and -sacred to us, but foreign and inexplicable to our physician, who refers -to it from his own point of view, stigmatizing the claim of “the -Nazarene who wrought this cure” as not only false, but monstrous; and -yet—and yet—and yet—he cannot get over it; it haunts him. But still he -is ashamed to acknowledge it, and so turns abruptly from what he affects -to call “trivial matters” to “things of price,” like “blue-flowering -borage”! - -Then he gives another elaborate apology, and tries to account for the -hold the phenomenon has taken of him by a reference to his state of body -and surroundings when first he met this Lazarus; and, accordingly, -professing to care little whether the letter reaches or not, again he -closes. - -Yet still he cannot rest. The great thought haunts him. “The very God! -_think_, Abib.” Then follows that consummate passage with which this -magnificent poem closes. - -After this “Epistle” should by all means be read “A Death in the -Desert,” too long and too difficult to be inserted here. The surprise -awaiting the reader of the parchment “supposed of Pamphylax the -Antiochene” will add to the interest of a poem so full of beauty and -power. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHRISTMAS-EVE & EASTER-DAY. - - - CHRISTMAS-EVE. - -Between Christmas-Eve and Easter-Morn lies the earth history of the -Incarnate Son of God. Into the shadows of our world He came; and, after -a brief night amid its darkness, rose again into the light of heaven. -These titles then may well include the whole substance of Christianity. -Christmas suggests the thought of heaven come down to earth; Easter, of -earth raised up to heaven. “Christmas-Eve” leads naturally to the -contemplation of the Christian Faith; “Easter-Day,” to the contemplation -of the Christian Life. - -Each poem turns on an impressive natural phenomenon which suggests the -blending of heaven and earth—the one, of the night, a lunar rainbow; the -other, of the dawn, the aurora borealis. - -The speaker (who is the same throughout the former poem) begins his -Christmas-Eve experiences with the flock assembling in “Zion Chapel,” a -congregation of rude, unlettered people, worshipping with heart and soul -indeed, but with little mind and less taste. It is not from choice that -he is there. It is a stormy night of wind and rain, from which he has -taken shelter in the “lath and plaster entry” of the little meeting -house. - - I. - - * * * * * - - Five minutes full, I waited first! - In the doorway, to escape the rain - That drove in gusts down the common’s centre, - At the edge of which the chapel stands, - Before I plucked up heart to enter. - Heaven knows how many sorts of hands - Reached past me, groping for the latch - Of the inner door that hung on catch - More obstinate the more they fumbled, - Till, giving way at last with a scold - Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled - One sheep more to the rest in fold, - And left me irresolute, standing sentry - In the sheepfold’s lath-and-plaster entry, - Four feet long by two feet wide, - Partitioned off from the vast inside— - I blocked up half of it at least. - No remedy; the rain kept driving. - They eyed me much as some wild beast, - That congregation, still arriving, - Some of them by the main road, white - A long way past me into the night, - Skirting the common, then diverging; - Not a few suddenly emerging - From the common’s self through the paling-gaps, - —They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, - Where the road stops short with its safeguard border - Of lamps, as tired of such disorder;— - But the most turned in yet more abruptly - From a certain squalid knot of alleys, - Where the town’s bad blood once slept corruptly, - Which now the little chapel rallies - And leads into day again,—its priestliness - Lending itself to hide their beastliness - So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), - And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on - Those neophytes too much in lack of it, - That, where you cross the common as I did, - And meet the party thus presided, - “Mount Zion” with Love-lane at the back of it, - They front you as little disconcerted - As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, - And her wicked people made to mind him, - Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. - -In the same light and humorous, half irreverent style, he proceeds to a -somewhat detailed description of the people and their uncouth -worship—not altogether a caricature, but evidently wanting in that -sympathy with the good at the heart of it, the thought of which was -afterwards so strongly borne in upon his soul. So, he “very soon had -enough of it,” and gladly “flung out of the little chapel” “into the -fresh night air again.” - - IV. - - There was a lull in the rain, a lull - In the wind too; the moon was risen, - And would have shone out pure and full, - But for the ramparted cloud-prison, - Block on block built up in the West, - For what purpose the wind knows best, - Who changes his mind continually. - And the empty other half of the sky - Seemed in its silence as if it knew - What, any moment, might look through - A chance gap in that fortress massy:— - Through its fissures you got hints - Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, - Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy - Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, - Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow, - All a-simmer with intense strain - To let her through,—then blank again, - At the hope of her appearance failing. - Just by the chapel, a break in the railing - Shows a narrow path directly across; - ’Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss— - Besides, you go gently all the way uphill - I stooped under and soon felt better; - My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, - As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. - My mind was full of the scene I had left, - That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, - —How this outside was pure and different! - The sermon, now—what a mingled weft - Of good and ill! Were either less, - Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly; - But alas for the excellent earnestness, - And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, - But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, - However to pastor and flock’s contentment! - Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, - With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, - Till how could you know them, grown double their size - In the natural fog of the good man’s mind, - Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps, - Haloed about with the common’s damps? - Truth remains true, the fault’s in the prover; - The zeal was good, and the aspiration; - And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, - Pharaoh received no demonstration, - By his Baker’s dream of Baskets Three, - Of the doctrine of the Trinity,— - Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, - Apparently his hearers relished it - With so unfeigned a gust—who knows if - They did not prefer our friend to Joseph? - - * * * * * - - V. - - But wherefore be harsh on a single case? - After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, - Does the selfsame weary thing take place? - The same endeavour to make you believe, - And with much the same effect, no more: - Each method abundantly convincing, - As I say, to those convinced before, - But scarce to be swallowed without wincing - By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, - I have my own church equally: - And in this church my faith sprang first! - (I said, as I reached the rising ground, - And the wind began again, with a burst - Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound - From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, - I entered his church-door, nature leading me) - —In youth I looked to these very skies, - And probing their immensities, - I found God there, his visible power; - Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense - Of the power, an equal evidence - That his love, there too, was the nobler dower. - -Then follows a long and rather abstruse passage, leading up to the -following lofty and inspiring conclusion:— - - So, gazing up, in my youth, at love - As seen through power, ever above - All modes which make it manifest, - My soul brought all to a single test— - That he, the Eternal First and Last, - Who, in his power, had so surpassed - All man conceives of what is might,— - Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, - —Would prove as infinitely good; - Would never, (my soul understood,) - With power to work all love desires, - Bestow e’en less than man requires; - That he who endlessly was teaching, - Above my spirit’s utmost reaching, - What love can do in the leaf or stone, - (So that to master this alone, - This done in the stone or leaf for me, - I must go on learning endlessly) - Would never need that I, in turn, - Should point him out defect unheeded, - And show that God had yet to learn - What the meanest human creature needed, - —Not life, to wit, for a few short years, - Tracking his way through doubts and fears, - While the stupid earth on which I stay - Suffers no change, but passive adds - Its myriad years to myriads, - Though I, he gave it to, decay, - Seeing death come and choose about me, - And my dearest ones depart without me. - No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, - Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, - The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, - Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it. - And I shall behold thee, face to face, - O God, and in thy light retrace - How in all I loved here, still wast thou! - Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, - I shall find as able to satiate - The love, thy gift, as my spirit’s wonder - Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, - With this sky of thine, that I now walk under, - And glory in thee for, as I gaze - Thus, thus! Oh, let men keep their ways - Of seeking thee in a narrow shrine— - Be this my way! And this is mine! - -The lunar rainbow, so wonderfully described in the next stanza, is the -occasion and point of departure of the poetic vision or ecstasy which -occupies the remainder of the poem— - - VI. - - For lo, what think you? suddenly - The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky - Received at once the full fruition - Of the moon’s consummate apparition. - The black cloud-barricade was riven, - Ruined beneath her feet, and driven - Deep in the West; while, bare and breathless, - North and South and East lay ready - For a glorious thing that, dauntless, deathless, - Sprang across them and stood steady. - ’Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, - From heaven to heaven extending, perfect - As the mother-moon’s self, full in face. - It rose, distinctly at the base - With its seven proper colours chorded, - Which still, in the rising, were compressed, - Until at last they coalesced, - And supreme the spectral creature lorded - In a triumph of whitest white,— - Above which intervened the night. - But above night too, like only the next, - The second of a wondrous sequence, - Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, - Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, - Another rainbow rose, a mightier, - Fainter, flushier and flightier,— - Rapture dying along its verge. - Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, - Whose, from the straining topmost dark, - On to the keystone of that arc? - -He did see One emerging from the glory— - - VIII. - - All at once I looked up with terror. - He was there, - He himself with his human air, - On the narrow pathway, just before. - I saw the back of him, no more— - He had left the chapel, then, as I. - I forgot all about the sky. - No face: only the sight - Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, - With a hem that I could recognise. - I felt terror, no surprise; - My mind filled with the cataract, - At one bound of the mighty fact. - “I remember, he did say - “Doubtless, that, to this world’s end, - “Where two or three should meet and pray, - “He would be in the midst, their friend; - “Certainly he was there with them!” - And my pulses leaped for joy - Of the golden thought without alloy, - That I saw his very vesture’s hem. - Then rushed the blood black, cold and clear, - With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; - And I hastened, cried out while I pressed - To the salvation of the vest, - “But not so, Lord! It cannot be - “That thou, indeed, art leaving me— - “Me, that have despised thy friends!” - -The confession of his sin in despising _His_ friends in the little -chapel is speedily followed by a gracious token of forgiveness:— - - IX. - - * * * * * - - The whole face turned upon me full. - And I spread myself beneath it, - As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it - In the cleansing sun, his wool,— - Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness - Some defiled, discoloured web— - So lay I, saturate with brightness. - -His sin thus purged (how exquisitely wrought out the lovely simile of -the sun-cleansed wool!), he is “caught up in the whirl and drift of the -vesture’s amplitude,” and thus clinging to the garment’s hem, is carried -across land and sea—to a scene so complete a contrast to the one he has -just left that he is confused, and some time elapses before he discovers -that he is in front of St. Peter’s at Rome:— - - X. - - And so we crossed the world and stopped. - For where am I, in city or plain, - Since I am ’ware of the world again? - And what is this that rises propped - With pillars of prodigious girth? - Is it really on the earth, - This miraculous Dome of God? - Has the angel’s measuring-rod - Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, - ’Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, - Meted it out,—and what he meted, - Have the sons of men completed? - —Binding, ever as he bade, - Columns in the colonnade - With arms wide open to embrace - The entry of the human race - To the breast of ... what is it, yon building, - Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, - With marble for brick, and stones of price - For garniture of the edifice? - Now I see; it is no dream; - It stands there and it does not seem: - For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, - And thus I have read of it in books - Often in England, leagues away, - And wondered how these fountains play, - Growing up eternally - Each to a musical water-tree, - Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, - Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, - To the granite layers underneath. - -There follows a description of the worship in the great cathedral—not -now, as before, unsympathetic and merely critical, but giving evidence -of the liveliest appreciation of the feelings of the intelligent and -devout ritualist, as in the following passage:— - - Earth breaks up, time drops away, - In flows heaven, with its new day - Of endless life, when he who trod, - Very man and very God, - This earth in weakness, shame and pain, - Dying the death whose signs remain - Up yonder on the accursed tree,— - Shall come again, no more to be - Of captivity the thrall, - But the one God, All in all, - King of kings, Lord of lords, - As his servant John received the words, - “I died, and live for evermore!” - -Still he cannot enter into it. He is left outside the door. Distracted -with conflicting emotions, his reason repelled by the superstition, his -spirit attracted by the lofty devotion which he discovers at the heart -of the too gorgeous ritual—he cannot make up his mind whether he should -join them for the one reason, or shun them for the other— - - XI. - - * * * * * - - Though Rome’s gross yoke - Drops off, no more to be endured, - Her teaching is not so obscured - By errors and perversities, - That no truth shines athwart the lies: - And he, whose eye detects a spark - Even where, to man’s, the whole seems dark, - May well see flame where each beholder - Acknowledges the embers smoulder. - But I, a mere man, fear to quit - The clue God gave me as most fit - To guide my footsteps through life’s maze, - Because himself discerns all ways - Open to reach him: I, a man - Able to mark where faith began - To swerve aside, till from its summit - Judgment drops her damning plummet, - Pronouncing such a fatal space - Departed from the founder’s base: - He will not bid me enter too, - But rather sit, as now I do, - Awaiting his return outside. - —’Twas thus my reason straight replied - And joyously I turned, and pressed - The garment’s skirt upon my breast, - Until, afresh its light suffusing me, - My heart cried “What has been abusing me - That I should wait here lonely and coldly, - Instead of rising, entering boldly, - Baring truth’s face, and letting drift - Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? - Do these men praise him? I will raise - My voice up to their point of praise! - I see the error; but above - The scope of error, see the love.— - Oh, love of those first Christian days! - —Fanned so soon into a blaze, - From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, - That the antique sovereign Intellect - Which then sat ruling in the world, - Like a change in dreams, was hurled - From the throne he reigned upon: - You looked up and he was gone. - -The remainder of the stanza is taken up with a most eloquent, but -somewhat difficult passage, illustrating the triumph of the new Love -over the old Culture. In the following stanza he makes up his mind that -he “will feast his love, then depart elsewhere, that his intellect may -find its share”; so the next transition, by the same mode of rapture, is -to a German University. What he sees there provokes again his latent -humour:— - - XIV. - - Alone! I am left alone once more— - (Save for the garment’s extreme fold - Abandoned still to bless my hold) - Alone, beside the entrance-door - Of a sort of temple,—perhaps a college, - —Like nothing I ever saw before - At home in England, to my knowledge. - The tall old quaint irregular town! - It may be ... though which, I can’t affirm ... any - Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany; - And this flight of stairs where I sit down, - Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort, - Or Göttingen, I have to thank for ’t? - It may be Göttingen,—most likely. - Through the open door I catch obliquely - Glimpses of a lecture-hall; - And not a bad assembly neither, - Ranged decent and symmetrical - On benches, waiting what’s to see there; - Which, holding still by the vesture’s hem, - I also resolve to see with them, - Cautious this time how I suffer to slip - The chance of joining in fellowship - With any that call themselves his friends; - As these folks do, I have a notion. - But hist—a buzzing and emotion! - All settle themselves, the while ascends - By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, - Step by step, deliberate - Because of his cranium’s over-freight, - Three parts sublime to one grotesque, - If I have proved an accurate guesser, - The hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned Professor. - I felt at once as if there ran - A shoot of love from my heart to the man— - That sallow virgin-minded studious - Martyr to mild enthusiasm, - As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious - That woke my sympathetic spasm, - (Beside some spitting that made me sorry) - And stood, surveying his auditory - With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,— - Those blue eyes had survived so much! - While, under the foot they could not smutch, - Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. - Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, - Till the auditory’s clearing of throats - Was done with, died into a silence; - And, when each glance was upward sent, - Each bearded mouth composed intent, - And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence - He pushed back higher his spectacles, - Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, - And giving his head of hair—a hake - Of undressed tow, for colour and quantity— - One rapid and impatient shake, - (As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie - When about to impart, on mature digestion, - Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) - —The Professor’s grave voice, sweet though hoarse, - Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse. - -The stanza which follows gives an account of the discourse, which is a -learned discussion of “this Myth of Christ,” “which, when reason had -strained and abated it of foreign matter, left, for residuum, a man!—a -right true man,” but nothing more. He has no difficulty in determining -his duty here (“this time He would not bid me enter.”) The religious -atmosphere in which Papist and Dissenter live may be far from pure, in -the one case for one reason, and in the other for the opposite; but -either of the two is immeasurably better than the vacuum left when the -Critic has done his work of destruction. Then follows a long argument to -show the unreasonableness of denying the divinity of Christ, only a part -of which can be given here. - - XVI. - - * * * * * - - This time he would not bid me enter - The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. - Truth’s atmosphere may grow mephitic - When Papist struggles with Dissenter, - Impregnating its pristine clarity, - —One, by his daily fare’s vulgarity, - Its gust of broken meat and garlic; - —One, by his soul’s too-much presuming - To turn the frankincense’s fuming - And vapours of the candle starlike - Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. - Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, - May poison it for healthy breathing— - But the Critic leaves no air to poison; - Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity - Atom by atom, and leaves you—vacuity. - Thus much of Christ, does he reject? - And what retain? His intellect? - What is it I must reverence duly? - Poor intellect for worship, truly, - Which tells me simply what was told - (If mere morality, bereft - Of the God in Christ, be all that’s left) - Elsewhere by voices manifold; - With this advantage, that the stater - Made nowise the important stumble - Of adding, he, the sage and humble, - Was also one with the Creator. - You urge Christ’s followers’ simplicity: - But how does shifting blame, evade it? - Have wisdom’s words no more felicity? - The stumbling-block, his speech—who laid it? - How comes it that for one found able - To sift the truth of it from fable, - Millions believe it to the letter? - Christ’s goodness, then—does that fare better? - Strange goodness, which upon the score - Of being goodness, the mere due - Of man to fellow-man, much more - To God,—should take another view - Of its possessor’s privilege, - And bid him rule his race! You pledge - Your fealty to such rule? What, all— - From heavenly John and Attic Paul, - And that brave weather-battered Peter - Whose stout faith only stood completer - For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, - As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,— - All, down to you, the man of men, - Professing here at Göttingen, - Compose Christ’s flock! They, you and I, - Are sheep of a good man! - -Reasonings that grow out of the main discussion are continued throughout -stanzas 17-20, till once more he is caught up and carried back to his -original starting point. The remainder of the poem can now be given -without interruption, and will be readily understood. (The exquisite -development of the simile of the cup and the water will be specially -noted, as also the charitable wish so strikingly expressed on behalf of -the poor Professor, that before the end comes he may know Christ as “the -God of salvation.”) - - XXI. - - And I caught - At the flying robe, and unrepelled - Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught - With warmth and wonder and delight, - God’s mercy being infinite. - For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, - When, at a passionate bound, I sprung - Out of the wandering world of rain, - Into the little chapel again. - - XXII. - - How else was I found there, bolt upright. - On my bench, as if I had never left it? - —Never flung out on the common at night - Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, - Seen the raree-show of Peter’s successor, - Or the laboratory of the Professor! - For the Vision, that was true, I wist, - True as that heaven and earth exist. - There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, - With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place; - Yet my nearest neighbour’s cheek showed gall. - She had slid away a contemptuous space: - And the old fat woman, late so placable, - Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, - Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. - In short, a spectator might have fancied - That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber, - Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, - Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, - And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. - But again, could such disgrace have happened? - Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it; - And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end? - Unless I heard it, could I have judged it? - Could I report as I do at the close, - First, the preacher speaks through his nose: - Second, his gesture is too emphatic: - Thirdly, to waive what’s pedagogic, - The subject-matter itself lacks logic: - Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. - Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal, - Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call - Of making square to a finite eye - The circle of infinity, - And find so all-but-just-succeeding! - Great news! the sermon proves no reading - Where bee-like in the flowers I may bury me, - Like Taylor’s the immortal Jeremy! - And now that I know the very worst of him, - What was it I thought to obtain at first of him? - Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks? - Shall I take on me to change his tasks, - And dare, despatched to a river-head - For a simple draught of the element, - Neglect the thing for which he sent, - And return with another thing instead?— - Saying, “Because the water found - “Welling up from underground, - “Is mingled with the taints of earth, - “While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, - “And couldst, at wink or word, convulse - “The world with the leap of a river-pulse,— - “Therefore, I turned from the oozings muddy, - “And bring thee a chalice I found, instead: - “See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy! - “One would suppose that the marble bled. - “What matters the water? A hope I have nursed - “The waterless cup will quench my thirst.” - —Better have knelt at the poorest stream - That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! - For the less or the more is all God’s gift, - Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. - And here, is there water or not, to drink? - I then, in ignorance and weakness, - Taking God’s help, have attained to think - My heart does best to receive in meekness - That mode of worship, as most to his mind, - Where, earthly aids being cast behind, - His All in All appears serene - With the thinnest human veil between, - Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, - The many motions of his spirit, - Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. - For the preacher’s merit or demerit, - It were to be wished the flaws were fewer - In the earthern vessel, holding treasure, - Which lies as safe in a golden ewer; - But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? - Heaven soon sets right all other matters!— - Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, - This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, - This soul at struggle with insanity, - Who thence take comfort, can I doubt? - Which an empire gained, were a loss without. - May it be mine! And let us hope - That no worse blessing befall the Pope, - Turn’d sick at last of to-day’s buffoonery, - Of posturings and petticoatings, - Beside his Bourbon bully’s gloatings - In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! - Nor may the Professor forego its peace - At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk - Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase - Prophesied of by that horrible husk— - When thicker and thicker the darkness fills - The world through his misty spectacles, - And he gropes for something more substantial - Than a fable, myth or personification,— - May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, - And stand confessed as the God of salvation! - Meantime, in the still recurring fear - Lest myself, at unawares, be found, - While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, - With none of my own made—I choose here! - The giving out of the hymn reclaims me; - I have done: and if any blames me, - Thinking that merely to touch in brevity - The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,— - Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, - On the bounds of the holy and the awful,— - I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, - And refer myself to THEE, instead of him, - Who head and heart alike discernest, - Looking below light speech we utter, - When frothy spume and frequent sputter - Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest! - May truth shine out, stand ever before us! - I put up pencil and join chorus - To Hepzibah tune, without further apology, - The last five verses of the third section - Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield’s Collection, - To conclude with the doxology. - - - EASTER-DAY. - -As Christmas-Eve has suggested the subject of the Christian Faith, -Easter-Day gives occasion to a discussion concerning the Christian -Life—the life of those who are “risen with Christ.” The poem is in -substance a conversation or discussion between two persons, one of whom -(a thorough Christian) finds it very hard, while the other (who takes a -much lower and more common-place view of spiritual things) thinks it -quite easy, to be a Christian. It is not, however, in the form of a -conversation. As usual in Browning’s work, one speaks, stating his own -views and quoting the other’s, which are therefore distinguished from -his own (except when he quotes, as he sometimes does, from himself) by -quotation marks. The argument is too abstruse to be followed out in all -its ramifications; but enough of it can be given to render quite -intelligible the extracts from it which we find it possible to give. The -opening sentence will give the theme:— - - I. - - How very hard it is to be - A Christian! Hard for you and me, - —Not the mere task of making real - That duty up to its ideal, - Effecting thus, complete and whole, - A purpose of the human soul— - For that is always hard to do; - But hard, I mean, for me and you - To realize it, more or less, - With even the moderate success - Which commonly repays our strife - To carry out the aims of life. - -After some preliminary discussion about faith in its relation to life, -the easy-going friend takes this position:— - - VI. - - * * * * * - - “Renounce the world! - “Were that a mighty hardship? Plan - “A pleasant life, and straight some man - “Beside you, with, if he thought fit, - “Abundant means to compass it, - “Shall turn deliberate aside - “To try and live as, if you tried - “You clearly might, yet most despise. - “One friend of mine wears out his eyes, - “Slighting the stupid joys of sense, - “In patient hope that, ten years hence, - “‘Somewhat completer,’ he may say, - “‘My list of _coleoptera_!’ - “While just the other who most laughs - “At him, above all epitaphs - “Aspires to have his tomb describe - “Himself as sole among the tribe - “Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed - “A Grignon with the Regent’s crest. - “So that, subduing, as you want, - “Whatever stands predominant - “Among my earthly appetites - “For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, - “I shall be doing that alone, - “To gain a palm-branch and a throne, - “Which fifty people undertake - “To do, and gladly, for the sake - “Of giving a Semitic guess, - “Or playing pawns at blindfold chess.” - -The stanza which follows gives the speaker’s answer, ending with this -striking passage:— - - “Renounce the world!”—Ah, were it done - By merely cutting one by one - Your limbs off, with your wise head last, - How easy were it!—how soon past, - If once in the believing mood! - -To which the other replies by reproaching him for ingratitude to God, -who really asks us to give up nothing that is good, but only to observe -such moderation in our pleasures that life is all the more enjoyable, -while sorrow almost disappears, transfigured in the light of love. This -answer has such a ring of the true metal in it, that the speaker begins -his rejoinder with the question, “Do you say this, or I?” and then -proceeds (in a passage of wonderful power) to expose the superficiality -of the view he is endeavouring to support. - - VIII. - - Do you say this, or I?—Oh, you! - Then, what, my friend?—(thus I pursue - Our parley)—you indeed opine - That the Eternal and Divine - Did, eighteen centuries ago, - In very truth.... Enough! you know - The all-stupendous tale,—that Birth, - That Life, that Death! And all, the earth - Shuddered at,—all, the heavens grew black - Rather than see; all, nature’s rack - And throe at dissolution’s brink - Attested,—all took place, you think, - Only to give our joys a zest, - And prove our sorrows for the best? - We differ, then! Were I, still pale - And heartstruck at the dreadful tale, - Waiting to hear God’s voice declare - What horror followed for my share, - As implicated in the deed, - Apart from other sins,—concede - That if he blacked out in a blot - My brief life’s pleasantness, ’twere not - So very disproportionate! - Or there might be another fate— - I certainly could understand - (If fancies were the thing in hand) - How God might save, at that day’s price, - The impure in their impurities, - Give formal licence and complete - To choose the fair and pick the sweet. - But there be certain words, broad, plain, - Uttered again and yet again, - Hard to mistake or overgloss— - Announcing this world’s gain for loss, - And bidding us reject the same: - The whole world lieth (they proclaim) - In wickedness,—come out of it! - Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit, - But I who thrill through every nerve - At thought of what deaf ears deserve,— - How do you counsel in the case? - -The counsel was, to choose by all means the safe side, by giving up -everything as literally as did the martyrs in the early days of -persecution; at which a shudder of doubt comes over him, and he answers -(note the very remarkable illustration of the moles and the -grasshoppers):— - - X. - - * * * * * - - If after all we should mistake, - And so renounce life for the sake - Of death and nothing else? You hear - Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer - Back to ourselves with good effect— - “There were my beetles to collect! - “My box—a trifle, I confess, - “But here I hold it, ne’ertheless!” - Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart - And answer) we, the better part - Have chosen, though ’twere only hope,— - Nor envy moles like you that grope - Amid your veritable muck, - More than the grasshoppers would truck, - For yours, their passionate life away, - That spends itself in leaps all day - To reach the sun, you want the eyes - To see, as they the wings to rise - And match the noble hearts of them! - Thus the contemner we contemn,— - And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward - Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, - —Not struck enough to overturn - Our faith, but shake it—make us learn - What I began with, and, I wis, - End, having proved,—how hard it is - To be a Christian! - -His friend now reproaches him with the thanklessness of the task he is -undertaking, in trying to so little purpose to disturb the peace of a -man who has no such high-flown views of duty; whereupon he relates to -him a wonderful experience he had on Easter-morn three years before:— - - XIV. - - I commence - By trying to inform you, whence - It comes that every Easter-night - As now, I sit up, watch, till light, - Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, - Give, through my window-pane, grey proofs - That Easter-day is breaking slow. - On such a night three years ago, - It chanced that I had cause to cross - The common, where the chapel was, - Our friend spoke of, the other day— - You’ve not forgotten, I dare say. - I fell to musing of the time - So close, the blessed matin-prime - All hearts leap up at, in some guise— - One could not well do otherwise. - Insensibly my thoughts were bent - Toward the main point; I overwent - Much the same ground of reasoning - As you and I just now. One thing - Remained, however—one that tasked - My soul to answer; and I asked, - Fairly and frankly, what might be - That History, that Faith, to me - —Me there—not me in some domain - Built up and peopled by my brain, - Weighing its merits as one weighs - Mere theories for blame or praise, - —The kingcraft of the Lucumons, - Or Fourier’s scheme, its pros and cons,— - But my faith there, or none at all. - “How were my case, now, did I fall - “Dead here, this minute—should I lie - “Faithful or faithless?” - -To this solemn question a friendly answer seems to come from Common -Sense, assuring him that all would be right; for, though his ship might -not sail very grandly into the eternal haven, it was enough if, in -whatever state of wreck, it arrived at all; which leads him to utter the -deepest wish and expectation of his heart:— - - Would the ship reach home! - I wish indeed “God’s kingdom come—” - The day when I shall see appear - His bidding, as my duty, clear - From doubt! And it shall dawn, that day, - Some future season; Easter may - Prove, not impossibly, the time— - Yes, that were striking—fates would chime - So aptly! Easter-morn, to bring - The Judgment!—deeper in the spring - Than now, however, when there’s snow - Capping the hills; for earth must show - All signs of meaning to pursue - Her tasks as she was wont to do - —The skylark, taken by surprise - As we ourselves, shall recognise - Sudden the end. For suddenly - It comes; the dreadfulness must be - In that; all warrants the belief— - “At night it cometh like a thief,” - I fancy why the trumpet blows; - —Plainly, to wake one. From repose - We shall start up, at last awake - From life, that insane dream we take - For waking now. - - * * * * * - -The next stanza gives the famous description of the fiery aurora, when -even “the south firmament with north-fire did its wings refledge!” -(Compare description of lunar rainbow in “Christmas-Eve.”) He feels sure -that his wish is realized, and the Judgment Day has come! - - XV. - - * * * * * - - I found - Suddenly all the midnight round - One fire. The dome of heaven had stood - As made up of a multitude - Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack - Of ripples infinite and black, - From sky to sky. Sudden there went, - Like horror and astonishment, - A fierce vindictive scribble of red - Quick flame across, as if one said - (The angry scribe of Judgment) “There— - “Burn it!” And straight I was aware - That the whole ribwork round, minute - Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, - Was tinted, each with its own spot - Of burning at the core, till clot - Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire - Over all heaven, which ’gan suspire - As fanned to measure equable,— - Just so great conflagrations kill - Night overhead, and rise and sink, - Reflected. Now the fire would shrink - And wither off the blasted face - Of heaven, and I distinct might trace - The sharp black ridgy outlines left - Unburned like network—then, each cleft - The fire had been sucked back into, - Regorged, and out it surging flew - Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, - Till, tolerating to be tamed - No longer, certain rays world-wide - Shot downwardly. On every side - Caught past escape, the earth was lit; - As if a dragon’s nostril split, - And all his famished ire o’erflowed; - Then as he winced at his lord’s goad, - Back he inhaled: whereat I found - The clouds into vast pillars bound, - Based on the corners of the earth, - Propping the skies at top: a dearth - Of fire i’ the violet intervals, - Leaving exposed the utmost walls - Of time, about to tumble in - And end the world. - - XVI. - - I felt begin - The Judgment-Day: to retrocede - Was too late now. “In very deed,” - (I uttered to myself) “that Day!” - The intuition burned away - All darkness from my spirit too: - There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew, - Choosing the world. The choice was made; - And naked and disguiseless stayed, - And unevadable, the fact. - My brain held ne’ertheless compact - Its senses, nor my heart declined - Its office; rather, both combined - To help me in this juncture. I - Lost not a second,—agony - Gave boldness: since my life had end - And my choice with it—best defend, - Applaud both! I resolved to say, - “So was I framed by thee, such way - “I put to use thy senses here! - “It was so beautiful, so near, - “Thy world,—what could I then but choose - “My part there? Nor did I refuse - “To look above the transient boon - “Of time; but it was hard so soon - “As in a short life, to give up - “Such beauty: I could put the cup - “Undrained of half its fulness, by; - “But, to renounce it utterly, - “—That was too hard! Nor did the cry - “Which bade renounce it, touch my brain - “Authentically deep and plain - “Enough to make my lips let go. - “But thou, who knowest all, dost know - “Whether I was not, life’s brief while, - “Endeavouring to reconcile - “Those lips (too tardily, alas!) - “To letting the dear remnant pass, - “One day,—some drops of earthly good - “Untasted! Is it for this mood, - “That thou, whose earth delights so well, - “Hast made its complement a hell?” - - XVII. - - A final belch of fire like blood, - Overbroke all heaven in one flood - Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky - Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, - Then ashes. But I heard no noise - (Whatever was) because a voice - Beside me spoke thus, “Life is done, - “Time ends, Eternity’s begun, - “And thou art judged for evermore.” - -As in “Christmas-Eve,” the question rises of a Presence in the awful -scene. - - XIX. - - * * * * * - - What if, ’twixt skies - And prostrate earth, he should surprise - The imaged vapour, head to foot, - Surveying, motionless and mute, - Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt - It vanish up again?—So hapt - My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke - Pillared o’er Sodom, when day broke,— - I saw him. One magnific pall - Mantled in massive fold and fall - His head, and coiled in snaky swathes - About his feet: night’s black, that bathes - All else, broke, grizzled with despair, - Against the soul of blackness there. - A gesture told the mood within— - That wrapped right hand which based the chin - That intense meditation fixed - On his procedure,—pity mixed - With the fulfilment of decree. - Motionless, thus, he spoke to me, - Who fell before his feet, a mass, - No man now. - -Then follows the Sentence, excluding him from the heaven of spirit, and -leaving him to the world of sense, hopeless for ever of anything -higher—a sentence which seemed to him at first to be rather a reward -than a punishment, as he thought of “earth’s resources—vast exhaustless -beauty, endless change of wonder!” Even a fern-leaf a museum in itself! - -The answer of the Voice to this shallow thought leads us into the very -loftiest regions of the imagination, suggesting views of the future of -the redeemed which make the soul thrill with eager expectancy— - - XXIV. - - Then the Voice, “Welcome so to rate - “The arras-folds that variegate - “The earth, God’s antechamber, well! - “The wise, who waited there, could tell - “By these, what royalties in store - “Lay one step past the entrance-door. - “For whom, was reckoned, not too much, - “This life’s munificence? For such - “As thou,—a race, whereof scarce one - “Was able, in a million, - “To feel that any marvel lay - “In objects round his feet all day; - “Scarce one in many millions more, - “Willing, if able, to explore - “The secreter, minuter charm! - “—Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm - “Of power to cope with God’s intent,— - “Or scared if the south firmament - “With north-fire did its wings refledge! - “All partial beauty was a pledge - “Of beauty in its plenitude: - “But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, - “Retain it! plenitude be theirs - “Who looked above!” - -At this answer “sharp despairs shot through” him, at the thought of what -he had missed; but on reflection he finds comfort in the prospect of the -possibilities of Art. Again the inexorable voice is heard, pronouncing -loss unspeakable. Even if he could be a Michelangelo (Buonarroti), it -would be only the initial earthly stage of his development that was -possible for him. (The whole passage is magnificent; but perhaps the -exquisitely wrought-out illustration of the lizard in its narrow -rock-chamber will be most enjoyed.) - - XXVI. - - * * * * * - - “If such his soul’s capacities, - “Even while he trod the earth,—think, now, - “What pomp in Buonarroti’s brow, - “With its new palace-brain where dwells - “Superb the soul, unvexed by cells - “That crumbled with the transient clay! - “What visions will his right hand’s sway - “Still turn to form, as still they burst - “Upon him? How will he quench thirst, - “Titanically infantine, - “Laid at the breast of the Divine? - “Does it confound thee,—this first page - “Emblazoning man’s heritage?— - “Can this alone absorb thy sight, - “As pages were not infinite,— - “Like the omnipotence which tasks - “Itself, to furnish all that asks - “The soul it means to satiate? - “What was the world, the starry state - “Of the broad skies,—what, all displays - “Of power and beauty intermixed, - “Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,— - “What else than needful furniture - “For life’s first stage? God’s work, be sure, - “No more spreads wasted, than falls scant! - “He filled, did not exceed, man’s want - “Of beauty in this life. But through - “Life pierce,—and what has earth to do, - “Its utmost beauty’s appanage, - “With the requirement of next stage? - “Did God pronounce earth ‘very good’? - “Needs must it be, while understood - “For man’s preparatory state; - “Nothing to heighten nor abate: - “Transfer the same completeness here, - “To serve a new state’s use,—and drear - “Deficiency gapes every side! - “The good, tried once, were bad, retried. - “See the enwrapping rocky niche, - “Sufficient for the sleep, in which - “The lizard breathes for ages safe: - “Split the mould—and as this would chafe - “The creature’s new world-widened sense, - “One minute after day dispense - “The thousand sounds and sights that broke - “In on him at the chisel’s stroke,— - “So, in God’s eye, the earth’s first stuff - “Was, neither more nor less, enough - “To house man’s soul, man’s need fulfil. - “Man reckoned it immeasurable? - “So thinks the lizard of his vault! - “Could God be taken in default, - “Short of contrivances, by you,— - “Or reached, ere ready to pursue - “His progress through eternity? - “That chambered rock, the lizard’s world, - “Your easy mallet’s blow has hurled - “To nothingness for ever; so, - “Has God abolished at a blow - “This world, wherein his saints were pent,— - “Who, though found grateful and content, - “With the provision there, as thou, - “Yet knew he would not disallow - “Their spirit’s hunger, felt as well,— - “Unsated,—not unsatable, - “As paradise gives proof. Deride - “Their choice now, thou who sit’st outside!” - -The poem proceeds in the same lofty strain, till—humbled to the dust at -the thought of the unutterable folly of his choice, especially in view -of the love of God expressed on Calvary, a love which he had slighted in -the happy days gone by—he presents the touching plea of the 31st stanza, -the result of which appears in what follows, spoken of by Professor -Kirkman of Cambridge, as “the splendid consummation of Easter-Day so -closely resembling the well-known crisis in Faust.” - - XXXI. - - And I cowered deprecatingly— - “Thou Love of God! Or let me die, - “Or grant what shall seem heaven almost! - “Let me not know that all is lost, - “Though lost it be—leave me not tied - “To this despair, this corpse-like bride! - “Let that old life seem mine—no more— - “With limitation as before, - “With darkness, hunger, toil, distress: - “Be all the earth a wilderness! - “Only let me go on, go on, - “Still hoping ever and anon - “To reach one eve the Better Land!” - - XXXII. - - Then did the form expand, expand— - I knew him through the dread disguise - As the whole God within his eyes - Embraced me. - - XXXIII. - - When I lived again, - The day was breaking,—the grey plain - I rose from, silvered thick with dew. - Was this a vision? False or true? - Since then, three varied years are spent, - And commonly my mind is bent - To think it was a dream—be sure - A mere dream and distemperature— - The last day’s watching: then the night,— - The shock of that strange Northern Light - Set my head swimming, bred in me - A dream. And so I live, you see, - Go through the world, try, prove, reject, - Prefer, still struggling to effect - My warfare; happy that I can - Be crossed and thwarted as a man, - Not left in God’s contempt apart, - With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, - Tame in earth’s paddock as her prize. - Thank God, she still each method tries - To catch me, who may yet escape, - She knows, the fiend in angel’s shape! - Thank God, no paradise stands barred - To entry, and I find it hard - To be a Christian, as I said! - Still every now and then my head - Raised glad, sinks mournful—all grows drear - Spite of the sunshine, while I fear - And think, “How dreadful to be grudged - “No ease henceforth, as one that’s judged, - “Condemned to earth for ever, shut - “From heaven!” - But Easter-Day breaks! But - Christ rises! Mercy every way - Is infinite,—and who can say? - - -[Illustration] - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. - - THE CHAUTAUQUA PRESS. - -In order to create a permanent library of useful and standard books for -the homes of our C. L. S. C. members, and to reduce the expense of the -Seal courses, we have organized the CHAUTAUQUA PRESS. - -The first issues of the Chautauqua Press will be “THE GARNET SERIES,” -four volumes in the general line of the “required readings” for the -coming year, as follows:— - - READINGS FROM RUSKIN. - - With an Introduction by H. A. BEERS, Professor of English Literature - in Yale College. - -This volume contains chapters from Ruskin on “The Poetry of -Architecture,” “The Cottage—English, French, and Italian,” “The -Villa—Italian,” and “St. Mark’s,” from “Stones of Venice.” - - READINGS FROM MACAULAY. - - With an Introduction by DONALD G. MITCHELL (“Ik Marvel”). - -This volume contains Lord Macaulay’s Essays on “Dante,” “Petrarch,” and -“Machiavelli,” “Lays of Ancient Rome,” and “Pompeii.” - - ART, AND THE FORMATION OF - TASTE. - - BY LUCY CRANE. - - With an Introduction by CHARLES G. WHITING of “The Springfield - [Mass.] Republican.” - -This volume contains lectures on “Decorative Art, Form, Color, Dress, -and Needlework,” “Fine Arts,” “Sculpture,” “Architecture,” “Painting.” - - THE LIFE AND WORKS OF MICHAEL - ANGELO. - - BY R. DUPPA [BOHN’S EDITION]. - - With an Introduction by CHARLES G. WHITING. - -Any graduate or undergraduate of the C. L. S. C. reading the four -volumes of the CHAUTAUQUA LIBRARY GARNET SERIES will be entitled to the -new Garnet Seal (University Seal) on his diploma. - -These volumes are designed as much for the general market as for members -of the C. L. S. C., and will form the nucleus of a valuable library of -standard literature. - - PRICE OF EACH VOLUME, 75 CENTS. - OR $3 FOR THE SET, ENCLOSED IN NEAT BOX. - -Address - - CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, - 117 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - Transcriber’s note: - -Page vi, ‘implicity’ changed to ‘implicitly,’ “explicitly or implicitly -affirmed” - -Page 13, apostrophe inserted before ‘Twas,’ “’Twas moonset at starting” - -Page 15, single quote changed to double quote before ‘How,’ ““How -they’ll greet us!” - -Page 42, comma changed to full stop after ‘chivalry,’ “of chivalry. In -those days” - -Page 50, double quote inserted after ‘awhile,’ “since, and lost -awhile.”” - -Page 51, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Touch,’ ““Touch -him ne’er so” - -Page 54, full stop inserted after ‘shone,’ “his presence shone.” - -Page 61, full stop inserted after ‘sight,’ “soul was in sight.” - -Page 67, double quote inserted after ‘sound,’ “new sense was sound.”” - -Page 77, full stop inserted after ‘end,’ “uninterruptedly to the end.” - -Page 81, single quote changed to double quote before ‘Here,’ ““Here, the -creature” - -Page 108, quoting regularized in stanza VIII. - -Page 122, single quote inserted before ‘My,’ “‘My list of coleoptera!” - -Page 133, ‘omipotence’ changed to ‘omnipotence,’ “Like the omnipotence -which” - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pomegranates from an English Garden, by -Robert Browning - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POMEGRANATES FROM AN ENGLISH GARDEN *** - -***** This file should be named 53335-0.txt or 53335-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/3/3/53335/ - -Produced by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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