Do you forget him? I remember though!
Consult our ship’s conditions and you find
One and but one choice suitable to all;
The choice, that you unluckily prefer,
Turning things topsy-turvy — they or it
Going to the ground. Belief or unbelief
Bears upon life, determines its whole course,
Begins at its beginning. See the world
Such as it is, — you made it not, nor I;
I mean to take it as it is, — and you,
Not so you’ll take it, — though you get nought else.
I know the special kind of life I like,
What suits the most my idiosyncrasy,
Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit
In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.
I find that positive belief does this
For me, and unbelief, no whit of this.
— For you, it does, however? — that, we’ll try!
‘Tis clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,
Induce the world to let me peaceably,
Without declaring at the outset, “Friends,
I absolutely and peremptorily
Believe!” — I say, faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking’s the main point with us
And my provision’s for life’s waking part.
Accordingly, I use heart, head and hand
All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;
And when night overtakes me, down I lie,
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,
The sooner the better, to begin afresh.
What’s midnight doubt before the dayspring’s faith?
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve,
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight —
To be consistent you should keep your bed,
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!
And certainly at night you’ll sleep and dream,
Live through the day and bustle as you please.
And so you live to sleep as I to wake,
To unbelieve as I to still believe?
Well, and the common sense o’ the world calls you
Bed-ridden, — and its good things come to me.
Its estimation, which is half the fight,
That’s the first-cabin comfort I secure —
The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!
Come, come, it’s best believing, if we may;
You can’t but own that!
Next, concede again,
If once we choose belief, on all accounts
We can’t be too decisive in our faith,
Conclusive and exclusive in its terms,
To suit the world which gives us the good things.
In every man’s career are certain points
Whereon he dares not be indifferent;
The world detects him clearly, if he dare,
As baffled at the game, and losing life.
He may care little or he may care much
For riches, honour, pleasure, work, repose,
Since various theories of life and life’s
Success are extant which might easily
Comport with either estimate of these;
And whoso chooses wealth or poverty,
Labour or quiet, is not judged a fool
Because his fellow would choose otherwise:
We let him choose upon his own account
So long as he’s consistent with his choice.
But certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most
Or needs most, whatsoe’er the love or need —
For he can’t wed twice. Then, he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate’er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.
Well now, there’s one great form of Christian faith
I happened to be born in — which to teach
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,
As best and readiest means of living by;
The same on examination being proved
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise
And absolute form of faith in the whole world —
Accordingly, most potent of all forms
For working on the world. Observe, my friend!
Such as you know me, I am free to say,
In these hard latter days which hamper one,
Myself — by no immoderate exercise
Of intellect and learning, but the tact
To let external forces work for me,
— Bid the street’s stones be bread and they are bread;
Bid Peter’s creed, or rather, Hildebrand’s,
Exalt me o’er my fellows in the world
And make my life an ease and joy and pride;
It does so, — which for me’s a great point gained,
Who have a soul and body that exact
A comfortable care in many ways.
There’s power in me and will to dominate
Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:
In many ways I need mankind’s respect,
Obedience, and the love that’s born of fear:
While at the same time, there’s a taste I have,
A toy of soul, a titillating thing,
Refuses to digest these dainties crude.
The naked life is gross till clothed upon:
I must take what men offer, with a grace
As though I would not, could I help it, take!
An uniform I wear though over-rich —
Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;
No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy’s sake
And despicable therefore! now folk kneel
And kiss my hand — of course the Church’s hand.
Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,
And thus that it should be I have procured;
And thus it could not be another way,
I venture to imagine.
You’ll reply —
So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;
But were I made of better elements,
With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,
I hardly would account the thing success
Though it did all for me I say.
But, friend,
We speak of what is — not of what might be,
And how ‘twere better if ‘twere otherwise.
I am the man you see here plain enough:
Grant I’m a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts’ lives!
Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;
The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed
I’ll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes
To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made.
Or — our first simile — though you prove me doomed
To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,
The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive
To make what use of each were possible;
And as this cabin gets upholstery,
That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.
But, friend, I don’t acknowledge quite so fast
I fail of all your manhood’s lofty tastes
Enumerated so complacently,
On the mere ground that you forsooth can find
&nbs
p; In this particular life I choose to lead
No fit provision for them. Can you not?
Say you, my fault is I address myself
To grosser estimators than should judge?
And that’s no way of holding up the soul —
Which, nobler, needs men’s praise perhaps, yet knows
One wise man’s verdict outweighs all the fools’ —
Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.
I pine among my million imbeciles
(You think) aware some dozen men of sense
Eye me and know me, whether I believe
In the last winking Virgin, as I vow,
And am a fool, or disbelieve in her
And am a knave, — approve in neither case,
Withhold their voices though I look their way:
Like Verdi when, at his worst opera’s end
(The thing they gave at Florence, — what’s its name?)
While the mad houseful’s plaudits near out-bang
His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,
He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths
Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.
Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here —
That even your prime men who appraise their kind
Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,
See more in a truth than the truth’s simple self,
Confuse themselves. You see lads walk the street
Sixty the minute; what’s to note in that?
You see one lad o’erstride a chimney-stack;
Him you must watch — he’s sure to fall, yet stands!
Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist, demireps
That loves and saves her soul in new French books —
We watch while these in equilibrium keep
The giddy line midway: one step aside,
They’re classed and done with. I, then, keep the line
Before your sages, — just the men to shrink
From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad
You offer their refinement. Fool or knave?
Why needs a bishop be a fool or knave
When there’s a thousand diamond weights between?
So, I enlist them. Your picked twelve, you’ll find,
Profess themselves indignant, scandalized
At thus being held unable to explain
How a superior man who disbelieves
May not believe as well: that’s Schelling’s way!
It’s through my coming in the tail of time,
Nicking the minute with a happy tact.
Had I been born three hundred years ago
They’d say, “What’s strange? Blougram of course believes;”
And, seventy years since, “disbelieves of course.”
But now, “He may believe; and yet, and yet
How can he?” All eyes turn with interest.
Whereas, step off the line on either side —
You, for example, clever to a fault,
The rough and ready man who write apace,
Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less —
You disbelieve! Who wonders and who cares?
Lord So-and-so — his coat bedropped with wax,
All Peter’s chains about his waist, his back
Brave with the needlework of Noodledom —
Believes! Again, who wonders and who cares?
But I, the man of sense and learning too,
The able to think yet act, the this, the that,
I, to believe at this late time of day!
Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.
— Except it’s yours! Admire me as these may,
You don’t. But whom at least do you admire?
Present your own perfection, your ideal,
Your pattern man for a minute — oh, make haste
Is it Napoleon you would have us grow?
Concede the means; allow his head and hand,
(A large concession, clever as you are)
Good! — In our common primal element
Of unbelief (we can’t believe, you know —
We’re still at that admission, recollect!)
Where do you find — apart from, towering o’er
The secondary temporary aims
Which satisfy the gross taste you despise —
Where do you find his star? — his crazy trust
God knows through what or in what? it’s alive
And shines and leads him, and that’s all we want.
Have we aught in our sober night shall point
Such ends as his were, and direct the means
Of working out our purpose straight as his,
Nor bring a moment’s trouble on success
With after-care to justify the same?
— Be a Napoleon, and yet disbelieve!
Why, the man’s mad, friend, take his light away!
What’s the vague good o’ the world, for which you dare
With comfort to yourself blow millions up?
We neither of us see it! we do see
The blown-up millions — spatter of their brains
And writhing of their bowels and so forth,
In that bewildering entanglement
Of horrible eventualities
Past calculation to the end of time!
Can I mistake for some clear word of God
(Which were my ample warrant for it all)
His puff of hazy instinct, idle talk,
“The State, that’s I,” quack-nonsense about crowns,
And (when one beats the man to his last hold)
A vague idea of setting things to rights,
Policing people efficaciously,
More to their profit, most of all to his own;
The whole to end that dismallest of ends
By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,
And resurrection of the old regime?
Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,
Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?
No: for, concede me but the merest chance
Doubt may be wrong — there’s judgment, life to come!
With just that chance, I dare not. Doubt proves right?
This present life is all? — you offer me
Its dozen noisy years, without a chance
That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,
And getting called by divers new-coined names,
Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,
Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!
Therefore I will not.
Take another case;
Fit up the cabin yet another way.
What say you to the poets? shall we write
Hamlet, Othello — make the world our own,
Without a risk to run of either sort?
I can’t — to put the strongest reason first.
“But try,” you urge, “the trying shall suffice;
The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:
Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!”
Spare my self-knowledge — there’s no fooling me!
If I prefer remaining my poor self,
I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.
If I’m a Shakespeare, let the well alone;
Why should I try to be what now I am?
If I’m no Shakespeare, as too probable, —
His power and consciousness and self-delight
And all we want in common, shall I find —
Trying for ever? while on points of taste
Wherewith, to speak it humbly, he and I
Are dowered alike — I’ll ask you, I or he,
Which in our two lives realizes most?
Much, he imagined — somewhat, I possess.
He had the imagination; sti
ck to that!
Let him say, “In the face of my soul’s works
Your world is worthless and I touch it not
Lest I should wrong them” — I’ll withdraw my plea.
But does he say so? look upon his life!
Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;
Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,
Giulio Romano’s pictures, Dowland’s lute;
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,
And none more, had he seen its entry once,
Than “Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal.”
Why then should I who play that personage,
The very Pandulph Shakespeare’s fancy made,
Be told that had the poet chanced to start
From where I stand now (some degree like mine
Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)
He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,
And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?
Ah, the earth’s best can be but the earth’s best!
Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home
And get himself in dreams the Vatican,
Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,
And English books, none equal to his own,
Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).
— Terni, Naples’ bay and Gothard’s top —
Eh, friend? I could not fancy one of these;
But, as I pour this claret, there they are:
I’ve gained them — crossed St. Gothard last July
With ten mules to the carriage and a bed
Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?
We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,
And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,
Could fancy he too had them when he liked,
But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,
He would not have them also in my sense.
We play one game; I send the ball aloft
No less adroitly that of fifty strokes
Scarce five go o’er the wall so wide and high
Which sends them back to me: I wish and get
He struck balls higher and with better skill,
But at a poor fence level with his head,
And hit — his Stratford house, a coat of arms,
Successful dealings in his grain and wool, —
While I receive heaven’s incense in my nose
And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.
Ask him, if this life’s all, who wins the game?
Believe — and our whole argument breaks up.
Enthusiasm’s the best thing, I repeat;
Only, we can’t command it; fire and life
Are all, dead matter’s nothing, we agree:
And be it a mad dream or God’s very breath,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 50
