Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  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,