Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  “Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,

  “And, with water to wash the hands of her liege

  “In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,

  “ Let her preside at the disemboweling.”

  Now, my friend, if you had so little religion

  As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,

  And thrust her broad wings like a banner

  Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;

  And if day by day and week by week

  You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,

  And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,

  Would it cause you any great surprise

  If, when you decided to give her an airing,

  You found she needed a little preparing?

  — I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,

  If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?

  Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,

  Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,

  In what a pleasure she was to participate, —

  And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,

  Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,

  As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,

  And duly acknowledged the Duke’s forethought,

  But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,

  Of the weight by day and the watch by night,

  And much wrong now that used to be right,

  So, thanking him, declined the hunting, —

  Was conduct ever more affronting?

  With all the ceremony settled —

  With the towel ready, and the sewer

  Polishing up his oldest ewer,

  And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,

  Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled, —

  No wonder if the Duke was nettled

  And when she persisted nevertheless, —

  Well, I suppose here’s the time to confess

  That there ran half round our lady’s chamber

  A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;

  And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,

  Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?

  And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent

  Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;

  And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,

  How could I keep at any vast distance?

  And so, as I say, on the lady’s persistence,

  The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,

  Stood for a while in a sultry smother,

  And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,

  Turned her over to his yellow mother

  To learn what was held decorous and lawful;

  And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,

  As her cheek quick whitened thro’ all its quince-tinct —

  Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!

  What meant she? — Who was she? — Her duty and station,

  The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,

  Its decent regard and its fitting relation —

  In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free

  And turn them out to carouse in a belfry

  And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,

  And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!

  Well, somehow or other it ended at last

  And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;

  And after her, — making (he hoped) a face

  Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,

  Stalked the Duke’s self with the austere grace

  Of ancient hero or modern paladin, —

  From door to staircase — oh such a solemn

  Unbending of the vertebral column!

  XII.

  However, at sunrise our company mustered;

  And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,

  And there ‘neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,

  With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;

  For the court-yard walls were filled with fog

  You might have cut as an axe chops a log —

  Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;

  And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,

  Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,

  And a sinking at the lower abdomen

  Begins the day with indifferent omen:

  And lo, as he looked around uneasily,

  The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder

  This way and that from the valley under;

  And, looking through the court-yard arch,

  Down in the valley, what should meet him

  But a troop of Gipsies on their march?

  No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

  XIII.

  Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only

  After reaching all lands beside;

  North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,

  And still, as they travel far and wide,

  Catch they and keep now a trace here, trace there,

  That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.

  But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,

  And nowhere else, I take it, are found

  With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:

  Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on

  The very fruit they are meant to feed on.

  For the earth — not a use to which they don’t turn it,

  The ore that grows in the mountain’s womb,

  Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,

  They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it —

  Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle

  With side-bars never a brute can baffle;

  Or a lock that’s a puzzle of wards within wards;

  Or, if your colt’s fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,

  Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel

  And won’t allow the hoof to shrivel.

  Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle

  That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;

  But the sand — they pinch and pound it like otters;

  Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!

  Glasses they’ll blow you, crystal-clear,

  Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,

  As if in pure water you dropped and let die

  A bruised black-blooded mulberry;

  And that other sort, their crowning pride,

  With long white threads distinct inside,

  Like the lake-flower’s fibrous roots which dangle

  Loose such a length and never tangle,

  Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,

  And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:

  Such are the works they put their hand to,

  The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.

  And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally

  Toward his castle from out of the valley,

  Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,

  Come out with the morning to greet our riders.

  And up they wound till they reached the ditch,

  Whereat all stopped save one, a witch

  That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,

  By her gait, directly, and her stoop,

  I, whom Jacynth was used to importune

  To let that same witch tell us our fortune.

  The oldest Gipsy then above ground;

  And, sure as the autumn season came round,

  She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,

  And every time, as she swore, for the last time.

  And presently she was seen to sidle

  Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,

  So that the horse of a sudden reared up

  As under its nose the old witc
h peered up

  With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes

  Of no use now but to gather brine,

  And began a kind of level whine

  Such as they used to sing to their viols

  When their ditties they go grinding

  Up and down with nobody minding:

  And then, as of old, at the end of the humming

  Her usual presents were forthcoming

  — A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,

  (Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)

  Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end, —

  And so she awaited her annual stipend.

  But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe

  A word in reply; and in vain she felt

  With twitching fingers at her belt

  For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,

  Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe, —

  Till, either to quicken his apprehension,

  Or possibly with an after-intention,

  She was come, she said, to pay her duty

  To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.

  No sooner had she named his lady,

  Than a shine lit up the face so shady,

  And its smirk returned with a novel meaning —

  For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;

  If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,

  She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;

  And who so fit a teacher of trouble

  As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?

  So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture,

  (If such it was, for they grow so hirsute

  That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)

  He was contrasting, ‘twas plain from his gesture,

  The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate

  With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.

  I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned

  From out of the throng, and while I drew near

  He told the crone — as I since have reckoned

  By the way he bent and spoke into her ear

  With circumspection and mystery,

  The main of the Lady’s history,

  Her frowardness and ingratitude:

  And for all the crone’s submissive attitude

  I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,

  And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,

  As though she engaged with hearty good-will

  Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,

  And promised the lady a thorough frightening.

  And so, just giving her a glimpse

  Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps

  The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,

  He bade me take the Gipsy mother

  And set her telling some story or other

  Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,

  To wile away a weary hour

  For the lady left alone in her bower,

  Whose mind and body craved exertion

  And yet shrank from all better diversion.

  XIV.

  Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curvetter,

  Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo

  Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,

  And back I turned and bade the crone follow.

  And what makes me confident what’s to be told you

  Had all along been of this crone’s devising,

  Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,

  There was a novelty quick as surprising:

  For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,

  And her step kept pace with mine nor faultered,

  As if age had foregone its usurpature,

  And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,

  And the face looked quite of another nature,

  And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,

  Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak’s arrangement:

  For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,

  Gold coins were glittering on the edges,

  Like the band-roll strung with tomans

  Which proves the veil a Persian woman’s:

  And under her brow, like a snail’s horns newly

  Come out as after the rain he paces,

  Two unmistakeable eye-points duly

  Live and aware looked out of their places.

  So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry

  Of the lady’s chamber standing sentry;

  I told the command and produced my companion,

  And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,

  For since last night, by the same token,

  Not a single word had the lady spoken:

  They went in both to the presence together,

  While I in the balcony watched the weather.

  XV.

  And now, what took place at the very first of all,

  I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:

  Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall

  On that little head of hers and burn it,

  If she knew how she came to drop so soundly

  Asleep of a sudden and there continue

  The whole time sleeping as profoundly

  As one of the boars my father would pin you

  ‘Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,

  — Jacynth forgive me the comparison!

  But where I begin my own narration

  Is a little after I took my station

  To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,

  And, having in those days a falcon eye,

  To follow the hunt thro’ the open country,

  From where the bushes thinlier crested

  The hillocks, to a plain where’s not one tree.

  When, in a moment, my ear was arrested

  By — was it singing, or was it saying,

  Or a strange musical instrument playing

  In the chamber? — and to be certain

  I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,

  And there lay Jacynth asleep,

  Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,

  In a rosy sleep along the floor

  With her head against the door;

  While in the midst, on the seat of state,

  Was a queen — the Gipsy woman late,

  With head and face downbent

  On the Lady’s head and face intent:

  For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,

  The lady sate between her knees

  And o’er them the Lady’s clasped hands met,

  And on those hands her chin was set,

  And her upturned face met the face of the crone

  Wherein the eyes had grown and grown

  As if she could double and quadruple

  At pleasure the play of either pupil

  — Very like, by her hands’ slow fanning,

  As up and down like a gor-crow’s flappers

  They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.

  I said Is it blessing, is it banning,

  Do they applaud you or burlesque you?

  Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?

  But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,

  At once I was stopped by the lady’s expression:

  For it was life her eyes were drinking

  From the crone’s wide pair above unwinking,

  Life’s pure fire received without shrinking,

  Into the heart and breast whose heaving

  Told you no single drop they were leaving, —

  Life, that filling her, passed redundant

  Into her very hair, back swerving

  Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,

  As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;

  And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,

  Moving to the mystic measure,

  Bounding
as the bosom bounded.

  I stopped short, more and more confounded,

  As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,

  As she listened and she listened, —

  When all at once a hand detained me,

  The selfsame contagion gained me,

  And I kept time to the wondrous chime,

  Making out words and prose and rhyme,

  Till it seemed that the music furled

  Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped

  From under the words it first had propped,

  And left them midway in the world,

  Word took word as hand takes hand,

  I could hear at last, and understand,

  And when I held the unbroken thread,

  The Gipsy said: —

  “And so at last we find my tribe.

  “And so I set thee in the midst,

  “And to one and all of them describe

  “What thou saidst and what thou didst,

  “Our long and terrible journey through,

  “And all thou art ready to say and do

  “In the trials that remain:

  “I trace them the vein and the other vein

  “That meet on thy brow and part again,

  “Making our rapid mystic mark;

  “And I bid my people prove and probe

  “Each eye’s profound and glorious globe

  “Till they detect the kindred spark

  “In those depths so dear and dark,

  “Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,

  “Circling over the midnight sea.

  “And on that round young cheek of thine

  “I make them recognize the tinge,

  “As when of the costly scarlet wine

  “They drip so much as will impinge

  “And spread in a thinnest scale afloat

  “One thick gold drop from the olive’s coat

  “Over a silver plate whose sheen

  “Still thro’ the mixture shall be seen.

  “For so I prove thee, to one and all,

  “Fit, when my people ope their breast,

  “To see the sign, and hear the call,

  “And take the vow, and stand the test

  “Which adds one more child to the rest —

  “When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,

  “And the world is left outside.

  “For there is probation to decree,

  “And many and long must the trials be

  “Thou shalt victoriously endure,

  “If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;

  “Like a jewel-finder’s fierce assay

  “Of the prize he dug from its mountain-tomb —

  “Let once the vindicating ray

  “Leap out amid the anxious gloom,

  “And steel and fire have done their part

  “And the prize falls on its finder’s heart;

  ‘‘So, trial after trial past,