Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  “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.

  Meeting at Night

  I.

  THE GREY sea and the long black land;

  And the yellow half-moon large and low;

  And the startled little waves that leap

  In fiery ringlets from their sleep,

  As I gain the cove with pushing prow,

  And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

  II.

  Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;

  Three fields to cross till a farm appears;

  A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch

  And blue spurt of a lighted match,

  And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,

  Than the two hearts beating each to each!

  Parting at Morning

  ROUND the cape of a sudden came the sea,

  And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim —

  And straight was a path of gold for him,

  And the need of a world of men for me.

  Saul

  SAID Abner, “At last thou art come!

  ”Ere I tell, ere thou speak, —

  “Kiss my cheek, wish me well!” Then I wished it,

  And did kiss his cheek.

  And he, “Since the King, O my friend,

  ”For thy countenance sent,

  Nor drunken nor eaten have we;

  Nor until from his tent

  Thou return with the joyful assurance

  The King liveth yet,

  Shall our lip with the honey be brightened,

  — The water be wet.

  “For out of the black mid-tent’s silence,

  A space of three days,

  No sound hath escaped to thy servants,

  Of prayer nor of praise,

  To betoken that Saul and the Spirit

  Have ended their strife,

  And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch

  Sinks back upon life.

  “Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved!

  God’s child with his dew

  On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies

  Still living and blue

  As thou brak’st them to twine round thy harp-strings,

  As if no wild heat

  Were now raging to torture the desert!”

  Then I, as was meet,

  Knelt down to the God of my fathers,

  And rose on my feet,

  And ran o’er the sand burnt to powder.

  The tent was unlooped;

  I pulled up the spear that obstructed,

  And under I stooped;

  Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, —

  All withered and gone —

  That extends to the second enclosure,

  I groped my way on

  Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open;

  Then once more I prayed,

  And opened the foldskirts and entered,

  And was not afraid

  And spoke, “Here is David, thy servant!”

  And no voice replied.

  At the first I saw nought but the blackness;

  But soon I descried

  A something more black than the blackness;

  — The vast, the upright

  Main prop which sustains the pavilion, —

  And slow into sight

  Grew a figure against it, gigantic,

  And blackest of all; —

  Then a sunbeam, that burst thro’ the tent-roof,

  Showed Saul.

  He stood as erect as that tent-prop;

  Both arms stretched out wide

  On the great cross-support in the centre

  That goes to each side:

  So he bent not a muscle, but hung there

  As, caught in his pangs

  And waiting his change, the king-serpent

  All heavily hangs,

  Far away from his kind, in the pine,

  Till deliverance come

  With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul,

  Drear and stark, blind and dumb.

  Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies

  We twine round its chords

  Lest they snap ‘neath the stress of the noon-tide

  — Those sunbeams like swords!

  And I first played the tune all our sheep know,

  As, one after one,

  So docile they come to the pen-door

  Till folding be done;

  — They are white and untorn by the bushes,

  For lo, they have fed

  Where the long grasses stifle the water

  Within the stream’s bed:

  And now one after one seeks its lodging,

  As star follows star

  Into eve and the blue far above us,

  — So blue
and so far!

  — Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland

  Will each leave his mate

  To fly after the player; then, what makes

  The crickets elate

  Till for boldness they fight one another:

  And then, what has weight

  To set the quick jerboa a-musing

  Outside his sand house

  — There are none such as he for a wonder —

  Half bird and half mouse!

  — God made all the creatures and gave them

  Our love and our fear,

  To give sign, we and they are his children,

  One family here.

  Then I played the help-tune of our reapers,

  Their wine-song, when hand

  Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,

  And great hearts expand

  And grow one in the sense of this world’s life;

  And then, the low song

  When the dead man is praised on his journey —

  ”Bear, bear him along

  “With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets;

  ”Are balm-seeds not here

  “To console us? The land has left none such

  ”As he on the bier —

  “Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!”

  And then, the glad chaunt

  Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens,

  Next, she whom we vaunt

  As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling:

  And then, the great march

  Where man runs to man to assist him

  And buttress an arch

  Nought can break . . . who shall harm them, our friends?

  Then, the chorus intoned

  As the Levites go up to the altar

  In glory enthroned.

  But I stopped here — for here in the darkness,

  Saul groaned.

  And I paused, held my breath in such silence!

  And listened apart;

  And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered, —

  And sparkles gan dart

  From the jewels that woke in his turban

  — At once with a start,

  All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies

  Courageous at heart.

  So the head — but the body still moved not,

  Still hung there erect.

  And I bent once again to my playing,

  Pursued it unchecked,

  As I sang, “Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour!

  — No spirit feels waste,

  Not a muscle is stopped in its playing

  No sinew unbraced; —

  Oh, the wild joys of living! The leaping

  From rock up to rock —

  The rending of their boughs from the palm-tree, —

  The cool silver shock

  Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, —

  The hunt of the bear,

  And the sultriness showing the lion

  Is couched in his lair:

  And the meal — the rich dates — yellowed over

  With gold dust divine,

  And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher,

  The full draught of wine,

  And the sleep in the dried river-channel

  Where bulrushes tell

  That the water was wont to go warbling

  So softly and well, —

  How good is man’s life, the mere living!

  How fit to employ

  “All the heart and the soul and the senses

  For ever in joy!

  Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father

  Whose sword thou didst guard

  When he trusted thee forth with the armies

  For glorious reward?

  Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother

  Held up as men sung

  The low song of the nearly-departed

  And heard her faint tongue

  Joining in while it could to the witness

  ’Let one more attest,

  ‘I have lived, seen God’s hand thro’ that life-time,

  And all was for best . . . ”

  Then they sung thro’ their tears, in strong triumph,

  Not much, — but the rest!

  And thy brothers — the help and the contest,

  The working whence grew

  Such result, as from seething grape-bundles

  The spirit so true:

  And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood

  With wonder and hope,

  Present promise, and wealth of the future, —

  The eye’s eagle scope, —

  Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch,

  A people is thine;

  Oh all gifts the world offers singly,

  On one head combine!

  On one head, all the joy and the pride,

  Even rage like the throe

  That opes the rock, helps its glad labour,

  And lets the gold go —

  And ambition that sees a sun lead it —

  Oh, all of these — all

  Combine to unite in one creature

  — Saul!

  END OF PART THE FIRST

  Time’s Revenges

  I’VE a Friend, over the sea;

  I like him, but he loves me;

  It all grew out of the books I write;

  They find such favour in his sight

  That he slaughters you with savage looks

  Because you don’t admire my books:

  He does himself though, — and if some vein

  Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,

  To-morrow month, if I lived to try,

  Round should I just turn quietly,

  Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand

  Till I found him, come from his foreign land

  To be my nurse in this poor place,

  And make my broth and wash my face,

  And light my fire and, all the while,

  Bear with his old good-humoured smile

  That I told him “Better have kept away

  “Than come and kill me, night and day,

  “With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,

  “The creaking of his clumsy boots.”

  I am as sure that this he would do

  As that Saint Paul’s is striking two:

  And I think I rather . . . woe is me!

  — Yes, rather see him than not see,

  If lifting a hand could seat him there

  Before me in the empty chair

  To-night, when my head aches indeed,

  And I can neither think nor read

  Nor make these purple fingers hold

  The pen; this garret’s freezing cold!

  And I’ve a Lady — There he wakes,

  The laughing fiend and prince of snakes

  Within me, at her name, to pray

  Fate send some creature in the way

  Of my love for her, to be down-torn,

  Upthrust and outward borne,

  So I might prove myself that sea

  Of passion which I needs must be!

  Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint,

  And my style infirm and its figures faint,

  All the critics say, and more blame yet,

  And not one angry word you get!

  But, please you, wonder I would put

  My cheek beneath that Lady’s foot

  Rather than trample under mine

  The laurels of the Florentine,

  And you shall see how the devil spends

  A fire God gave for other ends!

  I tell you, I stride up and down

  This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,

  And feasted with love’s perfect feast,

  To think I kill for her, at least,

  Body and soul and peace and fame,

  Alike youth’s end and manhood’s aim,

  — So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,

&
nbsp; Filled full, eaten out and in

  With the face of her, the eyes of her,

  The lips, the little chin, the stir

  Of shadow round her month; and she

  — I’ll tell you, — calmly would decree

  That I should roast at a slow fire,

  If that would compass her desire

  And make her one whom they invite

  To the famous ball to-morrow night.

  There may be Heaven; there must be Hell;

  Meantime, there is our Earth here — well!

  The Glove

  (PETER RONSARD loquitur.)

  “HEIGHO!” yawned one day King Francis,

  “Distance all value enhances!

  “When a man’s busy, why, leisure

  “Strikes him as wonderful pleasure —

  “‘Faith, and at leisure once is he?

  “Straightway he wants to be busy.

  “Here we’ve got peace; and aghast I’m

  “Caught thinking war the true pastime!

  “Is there a reason in metre?

  “Give us your speech, master Peter!”

  I who, if mortal dare say so,

  Ne’er am at loss with my Naso,

  “Sire,” I replied, “joys prove cloudlets:

  “Men are the merest Ixions” —

  Here the King whistled aloud, “Let’s

  “ . . Heigho . . go look at our lions!”

  Such are the sorrowful chances

  If you talk fine to King Francis.

  And so, to the courtyard proceeding,

  Our company, Francis was leading,

  Increased by new followers tenfold

  Before he arrived at the penfold;

  Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen

  At sunset the western horizon.

  And Sir De Lorge pressed ‘mid the foremost

  With the dame he professed to adore most.

  Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed

  Her, and the horrible pitside;

  For the penfold surrounded a hollow

  Which led where the eye scarce dared follow,

  And shelved to the chamber secluded

  Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.

  The King bailed his keeper, an Arab

  As glossy and black as a scarab,

  And bade him make sport and at once stir

  Up and out of his den the old monster.

  They opened a hole in the wire-work

  Across it, and dropped there a firework,

  And fled: one’s heart’s beating redoubled;

  A pause, while the pit’s mouth was troubled,

  The blackness and silence so utter,

  By the firework’s slow sparkling and sputter;

  Then earth in a sudden contortion

  Gave out to our gaze her abortion!

  Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot

  (Whose experience of nature’s but narrow,

  And whose faculties move in no small mist

  When he versifies David the Psalmist)

  I should study that brute to describe you