Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  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 earthen 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 befal the Pope,

  Turn’d sick at last of the day’s buffoonery,

  Of his posturings and his petticoatings,

  Beside the 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;

  And 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,

  Without 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 the frothy spume and frequent sputter

  Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest!

  May the 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 in Whitfield’s Collection,

  To conclude with the doxology.

  Easter-Day

  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 or the human soul —

  For that is always hard to do;

  But hard, I mean, for me and you

  To realise it, more or less,

  With even the moderate success

  Which commonly repays our strife

  To carry out the aims of life.

  “This aim is greater,” you may say,

  “And so more arduous every way.”

  — But the importance of the fruits

  Still proves to man, in all pursuits,

  Proportional encouragement.

  “Then, what if it be God’s intent

  “That labour to this one result

  “Shall seem unduly difficult?”

  — Ah, that’s a question in the dark —

  And the sole thing that I remark

  Upon the difficulty, this;

  We do not see it where it is,

  At the beginning of the race:

  As we proceed, it shifts its place,

  And where we looked for palms to fall,

  We find the tug’s to come, — that’s all.

  II.

  At first you say, “The whole, or chief

  “Of difficulties, is Belief.

  “Could I believe once thoroughly,

  “The rest were simple. What? Am I

  “An idiot, do you think? A beast?

  “Prove to me only that the least

  “Command of God is God’s indeed,

  “And what injunction shall I need

  “To pay obedience? Death so nigh

  “When time must end, eternity

  “Begin, — and cannot I compute?

  “Weigh loss and gain together? suit

  “My actions to the balance drawn,

  “And give my body to be sawn

  “Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied

  “To horses, stoned, burned, crucified,

  “Like any martyr of the list?

  “How gladly, — if I made acquist,

  “Through the brief minutes’ fierce annoy,

  “Of God’s eternity of joy.”

  III.

  — And certainly you name the point

  Whereon all turns: for could you joint

  This flexile finite life once tight

  Into the fixed and infinite,

  You, safe inside, would spurn what’s out,

  With carelessness enough, no doubt —

  Would spurn mere life: but where time brings

  To their next stage your reasonings,

  Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink

  Nor see the path so well, I think.

  IV.

  You say, “Faith may be, one agrees,

  “A touchstone for God’s purposes,

  “Even as ourselves conceive of them.

  “Could He acquit us or condemn

  “For holding what no hand can loose,

  “Rejecting when we can’t but choose?

  “As well award the victor’s wreath

  “To whosoever should take breath

  “Duly each minute while he lived —

  “Grant Heaven, because a man contrived

  “To see the sunlight every day

  “He walked forth on the public way.

  “You must mix some uncertainty

  “With faith, if you would have faith be.

  “Why, what but faith, do we abhor

  “And idolize each other for —

  “ — Faith in our evil, or our good,

  “Which is or is not understood

  “Aright by those we love or those

  “We hate, thence called our friends or foes?

  “Your mistress saw your spirit’s grace,

  “When, turning from the ugly face,

  “I found belief in it too hard;

  “And both of us have our reward.

  “ — Yet here a doubt peeps: well for us

  “Weak beings, to go using thus

  “A touchstone for our little ends,

  “And try with faith the foes and friends;

  “ — But God, bethink you! I would fain

  “Conceive of the Creator’s reign

  “As based upon exacter laws

  “Than creatures build by with applause.

  “In all God’s acts — (as Plato cries

  “He doth) — He should geometrise.

  “Whence, I desiderate . . .

  V.

  I see!

  You would grow smoothly as a tree.

  Soar heavenward, straightly up like fire —

  God bless you — there’s your world entire

  Needing no faith, if you think fit;

  Go there, walk up and down in it!

  The whole creation travails, groans —

  Contrive your music from its moans,

  Without or let or hindrance, friend!

 
That’s an old story, and its end

  As old — you come back (be sincere)

  With every question you put here

  (Here where there once was, and is still,

  We think, a living oracle,

  Whose answers you stood carping at)

  This time flung back unanswered flat, —

  Besides, perhaps, as many more

  As those that drove you out before,

  Now added, where was little need!

  Questions impossible, indeed,

  To us who sate still, all and each

  Persuaded that our earth had speech

  Of God’s, writ down, no matter if

  In cursive type or hieroglyph, —

  Which one fact frees us from the yoke

  Of guessing why He never spoke.

  You come back in no better plight

  Than when you left us, — am I right?

  VI.

  So the old process, I conclude,

  Goes on, the reasoning’s pursued

  Further. You own. “‘Tis well averred,

  “A scientific faith’s absurd,

  “ — Frustrates the very end ‘twas meant

  “To serve: so I would rest content

  “With a mere probability,

  “But, probable; the chance must lie

  “Clear on one side, — lie all in rough,

  “So long as there is just enough

  “To pin my faith to, though it hap

  “Only at points: from gap to gap

  “One hangs up a huge curtain so,

  “Grandly, nor seeks to have it go

  “Foldless and flat along the wall:

  “ — What care I that some interval

  “Of life less plainly might depend

  “On God? I’d hang there to the end;

  “And thus I should not find it hard

  “To be a Christian and debarred

  “From trailing on the earth, till furled

  “Away by death! — 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 see

  “His list of lepidopteræ:

  “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.”

  VII.

  Good! and the next thing is, — look round

  For evidence enough. ‘Tis found,

  No doubt: as is your sort of mind,

  So is your sort of search — you’ll find

  What you desire, and that’s to be

  A Christian: what says History?

  How comforting a point it were

  To find some mummy-scrap declare

  There lived a Moses! Better still,

  Prove Jonah’s whale translatable

  Into some quicksand of the seas,

  Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please,

  That Faith might clap her wings and crow

  From such an eminence! Or, no —

  The Human Heart’s best; you prefer

  Making that prove the minister

  To truth; you probe its wants and needs

  And hopes and fears, then try what creeds

  Meet these most aptly, — resolute

  That Faith plucks such substantial fruit

  Wherever these two correspond,

  She little needs to look beyond,

  To puzzle out what Orpheus was,

  Or Dionysius Zagrias.

  You’ll find sufficient, as I say,

  To satisfy you either way.

  You wanted to believe; your pains

  Are crowned — you do: and what remains?

  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!

  Such is man’s usual gratitude,

  Such thanks to God do we return,

  For not exacting that we spurn

  A single gift of life, forego

  One real gain, — only taste them so

  With gravity and temperance,

  That those mild virtues may enhance

  Such pleasures, rather than abstract —

  Last spice of which, will be the fact

  Of love discerned in every gift;

  While, when the scene of life shall shift,

  And the gay heart be taught to ache,

  As sorrows and privations take

  The place of joy, — the thing that seems

  Mere misery, under human schemes,

  Becomes, regarded by the light

  Of Love, as very near, or quite

  As good a gift as joy before.

  So plain is it that all the more

  God’s dispensation’s merciful,

  More pettishly we try and cull

  Briars, thistles, from our private plot,

  To mar God’s ground where thorns are not!

  VIII.

  Do you say this, or I? — Oh, you!

  Then, what, my friend, — (so 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, — it 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,

  Leave 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, to 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 thi
nk fit,

  But I who thrill through every nerve

  At thought of what deaf ears deserve, —

  How do you counsel in the case?

  IX.

  “I’d take, by all means, in your place,

  “The safe side, since it so appears:

  “Deny myself, a few brief years,

  “The natural pleasure, leave the fruit

  “Or cut the plant up by the root.

  “Remember what a martyr said

  “On the rude tablet overhead —

  “‘I was born sickly, poor and mean,

  “‘A slave: no misery could screen

  “‘The holders of the pearl of price

  “‘From Cæsar’s envy; therefore twice

  “‘I fought with beasts, and three times saw

  “‘My children suffer by his law —

  “‘At last my own release was earned:

  “‘I was some time in being burned,

  “‘But at the close a Hand came through

  “‘The fire above my head, and drew

  “‘My soul to Christ, whom now I see.

  “‘Sergius, a brother, writes for me

  “‘This testimony on the wall —

  “‘For me, I have forgot it all.’

  “You say right; this were not so hard!

  “And since one nowise is debarred

  “From this, why not escape some sins

  “By such a method?”

  X.

  — Then begins

  To the old point, revulsion new —

  (For ‘tis just this, I bring you to)

  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!

  So, the contemner we contemn, —

  And, when doubt strikes us, so, 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!

  XI.

  “Proved, or not,

  “Howe’er you wis, small thanks, I wot,

  “You get of mine, for taking pains

  “To make it hard to me. Who gains