Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  And just as far as ever from the end!

  Nought in the distance but the evening, nought

  To point my footstep further! At the thought,

  A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,

  Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned

  That brushed my cap — perchance the guide I sought.

  For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,

  ’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place

  All round to mountains — with such name to grace

  Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.

  How thus they had surprised me, — solve it, you!

  How to get from them was no clearer case.

  Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick

  Of mischief happened to me, God knows when —

  In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,

  Progress this way. When, in the very nick

  Of giving up, one time more, came a click

  As when a trap shuts — you’re inside the den!

  Burningly it came on me all at once,

  This was the place! those two hills on the right,

  Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;

  While to the left, a tall scalped mountain . . . Dunce,

  Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,

  After a life spent training for the sight!

  What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?

  The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart

  Built of brown stone, without a counterpart

  In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf

  Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf

  He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

  Not see? because of night perhaps? — why, day

  Came back again for that! before it left,

  The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

  The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay

  Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, —

  ”Now stab and end the creature — to the heft!”

  Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled

  Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears

  Of all the lost adventurers my peers, —

  How such a one was strong, and such was bold,

  And such was fortunate, yet each of old

  Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

  There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

  To view the last of me, a living frame

  For one more picture! in a sheet of flame

  I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

  Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

  And blew. “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

  Respectability

  I.

  DEAR, had the world in its caprice

  Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,

  “Have recognized your plighted troth,

  Am sponsor for you: live in peace!” —

  How many precious months and years

  Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,

  Before we found it out at last,

  The world, and what it fears?

  II.

  How much of priceless life were spent

  With men that every virtue decks,

  And women models of their sex,

  Society’s true ornament, —

  Ere we dared wander, nights like this,

  Thro’ wind and rain, and watch the Seine,

  And feel the Boulevart break again

  To warmth and light and bliss?

  III.

  I know! the world proscribes not love;

  Allows my finger to caress

  Your lips’ contour and downiness,

  Provided it supply a glove.

  The world’s good word! — the Institute!

  Guizot receives Montalembert!

  Eh? Down the court three lampions flare:

  Put forward your best foot!

  A Light Woman

  I.

  SO FAR as our story approaches the end,

  Which do you pity the most of us three? —

  My friend, or the mistress of my friend

  With her wanton eyes, or me?

  II.

  My friend was already too good to lose,

  And seemed in the way of improvement yet,

  When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose

  And over him drew her net.

  III.

  When I saw him tangled in her toils,

  A shame, said I, if she adds just him

  To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,

  The hundredth for a whim!

  IV.

  And before my friend be wholly hers,

  How easy to prove to him, I said,

  An eagle’s the game her pride prefers,

  Though she snaps at a wren instead!

  V.

  So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,

  My hand sought hers as in earnest need,

  And round she turned for my noble sake,

  And gave me herself indeed.

  VI.

  The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,

  The wren is he, with his maiden face.

  — You look away and your lip is curled?

  Patience, a moment’s space!

  VII.

  For see, my friend goes shaling and white;

  He eyes me as the basilisk:

  I have turned, it appears, his day to night,

  Eclipsing his sun’s disk.

  VIII.

  And I did it, he thinks, as a very thief:

  “Though I love her — that, he comprehends —

  “One should master one’s passions, (love, in chief)

  “And be loyal to one’s friends!”

  IX.

  And she, — she lies in my hand as tame

  As a pear late basking over a wall;

  Just a touch to try and off it came;

  ‘Tis mine, — can I let it fall?

  X.

  With no mind to eat it, that’s the worst!

  Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist?

  ‘Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies’ thirst

  When I gave its stalk a twist.

  XI.

  And I, — what I seem to my friend, you see:

  What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess:

  What I seem to myself, do you ask of me?

  No hero, I confess.

  XII.

  ‘Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,

  And matter enough to save one’s own:

  Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals

  He played with for bits of stone!

  XIII.

  One likes to show the truth for the truth;

  That the woman was light is very true:

  But suppose she says, — Never mind that youth!

  What wrong have I done to you?

  XIV.

  Well, any how, here the story stays,

  So far at least as I understand;

  And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,

  Here’s a subject made to your hand!

  The Statue and the Bust

  THERE’S a palace in Florence, the world knows well,

  And a statue watches it from the square,

  And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

  Ages ago, a lady there,

  At the farthest window facing the East,

  Asked, “Who rides by with the royal air?”

  The bridesmaids’ prattle around her ceased;

  She leaned forth, one on either hand;

  They saw how the blush of the bride increased —

  They felt by its beats her heart expand —

  As one at each ear and both in a breath

  Whispered, “The Great-Duke Ferdinand.”

  That self-same instant, underneath,

  The Duke rode past in his idle way
,

  Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.

  Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,

  Till he threw his head back — ”Who is she?”

  — ”A bride the Riccardi brings home today.”

  Hair in heaps lay heavily

  Over a pale brow spirit-pure —

  Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,

  Crisped like a war-steed’s encolure —

  And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes

  Of the blackest black our eyes endure.

  And lo, a blade for a knight’s emprise

  Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, —

  The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.

  He looked at her, as a lover can;

  She looked at him, as one who awakes:

  The past was a sleep, and their life began.

  Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,

  A feast was held that selfsame night

  In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.

  (For Via Larga is three-parts light,

  But the palace overshadows one,

  Because of a crime which may God requite!

  To Florence and God the wrong was done,

  Through the first republic’s murder there

  By Cosimo and his cursèd son.)

  The Duke (with the statue’s face in the square)

  Turned in the midst of his multitude

  At the bright approach of the bridal pair.

  Face to face the lovers stood

  A single minute and no more,

  While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued —

  Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor —

  For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,

  As the courtly custom was of yore.

  In a minute can lovers exchange a word?

  If a word did pass, which I do not think,

  Only one out of the thousand heard.

  That was the bridegroom. At day’s brink

  He and his bride were alone at last

  In a bedchamber by a taper’s blink.

  Calmly he said that her lot was cast,

  That the door she had passed was shut on her

  Till the final catafalque repassed.

  The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,

  Through a certain window facing the East,

  She could watch like a convent’s chronicler.

  Since passing the door might lead to a feast,

  And a feast might lead to so much beside,

  He, of many evils, chose the least.

  “Freely I choose too,” said the bride —

  “Your window and its world suffice,”

  Replied the tongue, while the heart replied —

  “If I spend the night with that devil twice,

  May his window serve as my loop of hell

  Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

  “I fly to the Duke who loves me well,

  Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow

  Ere I count another ave-bell.

  “‘Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,

  And tie my hair in a horse-boy’s trim,

  And I save my soul — but not tomorrow” —

  (She checked herself and her eye grew dim)

  “My father tarries to bless my state:

  I must keep it one day more for him.

  “Is one day more so long to wait?

  Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;

  We shall see each other, sure as fate.”

  She turned on her side and slept. Just so!

  So we resolve on a thing and sleep:

  So did the lady, ages ago.

  That night the Duke said, “Dear or cheap

  As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove

  To body or soul, I will drain it deep.”

  And on the morrow, bold with love,

  He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,

  As his duty bade, by the Duke’s alcove)

  And smiled “‘Twas a very funeral,

  Your lady will think, this feast of ours, —

  A shame to efface, whate’er befall!

  “What if we break from the Arno bowers,

  And try if Petraja, cool and green,

  Cure last night’s fault with this morning’s flowers?”

  The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen

  On his steady brow and quiet mouth,

  Said, “Too much favour for me so mean!

  “But, alas! my lady leaves the South;

  Each wind that comes from the Apennine

  Is a menace to her tender youth:

  “Nor a way exists, the wise opine,

  If she quits her palace twice this year,

  To avert the flower of life’s decline.”

  Quoth the Duke, “A sage and a kindly fear.

  Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:

  Be our feast tonight as usual here!”

  And then to himself — ”Which night shall bring

  Thy bride to her lover’s embraces, fool —

  Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

  “Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool —

  For tonight the Envoy arrives from France

  Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.

  “I need thee still and might miss perchance.

  Today is not wholly lost, beside,

  With its hope of my lady’s countenance:

  “For I ride — what should I do but ride?

  And passing her palace, if I list,

  May glance at its window — well betide!”

  So said, so done: nor the lady missed

  One ray that broke from the ardent brow,

  Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

  Be sure that each renewed the vow,

  No morrow’s sun should arise and set

  And leave them then as it left them now.

  But next day passed, and next day yet,

  With still fresh cause to wait one day more

  Ere each leaped over the parapet.

  And still, as love’s brief morning wore,

  With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,

  They found love not as it seemed before.

  They thought it would work infallibly,

  But not in despite of heaven and earth:

  The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

  Meantime they could profit in winter’s dearth

  By store of fruits that supplant the rose:

  The world and its ways have a certain worth:

  And to press a point while these oppose

  Were simple policy; better wait:

  We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

  Meantime, worse fates than a lover’s fate,

  Who daily may ride and pass and look

  Where his lady watches behind the grate!

  And she — she watched the square like a book

  Holding one picture and only one,

  Which daily to find she undertook:

  When the picture was reached the book was done,

  And she turned from the picture at night to scheme

  Of tearing it out for herself next sun.

  So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam

  The glory dropped from their youth and love,

  And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

  Which hovered as dreams do, still above:

  But who can take a dream for a truth?

  Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

  One day as the lady saw her youth

  Depart, and the silver thread that streaked

  Her hair, and, worn by the serpent’s tooth,

  The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, —

  And wondered who the woman was,

  Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

  Fronting her silent in the glass —

  “Summon here,” she suddenly said,

  “Before the rest of
my old self pass,

  “Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,

  Who fashions the clay no love will change,

  And fixes a beauty never to fade.

  “Let Robbia’s craft so apt and strange

  Arrest the remains of young and fair,

  And rivet them while the seasons range.

  “Make me a face on the window there,

  Waiting as ever, mute the while,

  My love to pass below in the square!

  “And let me think that it may beguile

  Dreary days which the dead must spend

  Down in their darkness under the aisle,

  “To say, ‘What matters it at the end?

  I did no more while my heart was warm

  Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.’

  “Where is the use of the lip’s red charm,

  The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,

  And the blood that blues the inside arm —

  “Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,

  The earthly gift to an end divine?

  A lady of clay is as good, I trow.”

  But long ere Robbia’s cornice, fine,

  With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,

  Was set where now is the empty shrine —

  (And, leaning out of a bright blue space,

  As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,

  The passionate pale lady’s face —

  Eyeing ever, with earnest eye

  And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,

  Some one who ever is passing by — )

  The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch

  In Florence, “Youth — my dream escapes!

  Will its record stay?” And he bade them fetch

  Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes —

  “Can the soul, the will, die out of a man

  Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

  “John of Douay shall effect my plan,

  Set me on horseback here aloft,

  Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

  “In the very square I have crossed so oft:

  That men may admire, when future suns

  Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

  “While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze —

  Admire and say, ‘When he was alive

  How he would take his pleasure once!’

  “And it shall go hard but I contrive

  To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb

  At idleness which aspires to strive.”

  So! While these wait the trump of doom,

  How do their spirits pass, I wonder,

  Nights and days in the narrow room?

  Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder

  What a gift life was, ages ago,

  Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

  Only they see not God, I know,

  Nor all that chivalry of his,

  The soldier-saints who, row on row,

  Burn upward each to his point of bliss —