Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Be greater and grander the while than they?

  Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?

  In both, of such lower types are we

  Precisely because of our wider nature;

  For time, theirs — ours, for eternity.

  XVI.

  To-day’s brief passion limits their range;

  It seethes with the morrow for us and more.

  They are perfect — how else? they shall never change:

  We are faulty — why not? we have time in store.

  The Artificer’s hand is not arrested

  With us — we are rough-hewn, nowise polished:

  They stand for our copy, and, once invested

  With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

  XVII.

  ‘Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven —

  The better! What’s come to perfection perishes.

  Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven:

  Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes.

  Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!

  Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish,

  Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) “O!”

  Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

  XVIII.

  Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,

  But what and where depend on life’s minute?

  Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter

  Our first step out of the gulf or in it?

  Shall Man, such step within his endeavour,

  Man’s face, have no more play and action

  Than joy which is crystallized for ever,

  Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

  XIX.

  On which I conclude, that the early painters,

  To cries of “Greek Art and what more wish you?” —

  Replied, “To become now self-acquainters,

  And paint man, man, — whatever the issue!

  Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray,

  New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:

  To bring the invisible full into play!

  Let the visible go to the dogs — what matters?”

  XX.

  Give these, I say, full honour and glory

  For daring so much, before they well did it.

  The first of the new, in our race’s story,

  Beats the last of the old; ‘tis no idle quiddit.

  The worthies began a revolution,

  Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge,

  Why, honour them now — (ends my allocution)

  Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college.

  XXI.

  There’s a fancy some lean to and others hate —

  That, when this life is ended, begins

  New work for the soul in another state,

  Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins:

  Where the strong and the weak, this world’s congeries,

  Repeat in large what they practised in small,

  Through life after life in unlimited series;

  Only the scale’s to be changed, that’s all.

  XXII.

  Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen

  By the means of Evil that Good is best,

  And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven’s serene, —

  When our faith in the same has stood the test —

  Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,

  The uses of labour are surely done;

  There remaineth a rest for the people of God:

  And I have had troubles enough, for one.

  XXIII.

  But at any rate I have loved the season

  Of Art’s spring-birth so dim and dewy;

  My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,

  My painter — who but Cimabue?

  Nor ever was man of them all indeed,

  From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandaio,

  Could say that he missed my critic-meed.

  So, now to my special grievance — heigh ho!

  XXIV.

  Their ghosts still stand, as I said before,

  Watching each fresco flaked and rasped,

  Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o’er:

  — No getting again what the church has grasped!

  The works on the wall must take their chance;

  ”Works never conceded to England’s thick clime!”

  (I hope they prefer their inheritance

  Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.)

  XXV.

  When they go at length, with such a shaking

  Of heads o’er the old delusion, sadly

  Each master his way through the black streets taking,

  Where many a lost work breathes though badly —

  Why don’t they bethink them of who has merited?

  Why not reveal, while their pictures dree

  Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted?

  Why is it they never remember me?

  XXVI.

  Not that I expect the great Bigordi,

  Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;

  Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I

  Say of a scrap of Fr Angelico’s:

  But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,

  To grant me a taste of your intonaco —

  Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?

  Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

  XXVII.

  Could not the ghost with the close red cap,

  My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman,

  Save me a sample, give me the hap

  Of a muscular Christ that shows the draughtsman?

  No Virgin by him the somewhat petty,

  Of finical touch and tempera crumbly —

  Could not Alesso Baldovinetti

  Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

  XXVIII.

  Margheritone of Arezzo,

  With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret

  (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,

  You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?)

  Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion,

  Where in the foreground kneels the donor?

  If such remain, as is my conviction,

  The hoarding it does you but little honour.

  XXIX.

  They pass; for them the panels may thrill,

  The tempera grow alive and tinglish;

  Their pictures are left to the mercies still

  Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English,

  Who, seeing mere money’s worth in their prize,

  Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno

  At naked High Art, and in ecstasies

  Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

  XXX.

  No matter for these! But Giotto, you,

  Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it,

  Oh, never! it shall not be counted true —

  That a certain precious little tablet

  Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover, —

  Was buried so long in oblivion’s womb

  And, left for another than I to discover,

  Turns up at last! and to whom? — to whom?

  XXXI.

  I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito,

  (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?)

  Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe!

  Nay, I shall have it yet! Detur amanti!

  My Koh-i-noor — or (if that’s a platitude)

  Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi’s eye

  So, in anticipative gratitude,

  What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

  XXXII.

  When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard

  Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing,

  To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard,

  We shall begin by way of rejoicing;

  None of that shooting the sky
(blank cartridge),

  Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer,

  Hunting Radetzky’s soul like a partridge

  Over Morello with squib and cracker.

  XXXIII.

  This time we’ll shoot better game and bag ‘em hot —

  No mere display at the stone of Dante,

  But a kind of sober Witan-agemot

  (“Casa Guidi,” quod videas ante)

  Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,

  How Art may return that departed with her.

  Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine’s,

  And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

  XXXIV.

  How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate,

  Utter fit things upon art and history —

  Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate,

  Make of the want of the age no mystery;

  Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,

  Show — monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks

  Out of the bear’s shape into Chimra’s,

  While Pure Art’s birth is still the republic’s.

  XXXV.

  Then one shall propose (in a speech curt Tuscan,

  Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an “issimo,”)

  To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan,

  And turn the bell-tower’s alt altissimo.

  And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia

  The Campanile, the Duomo’s fit ally,

  Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia,

  Completing Florence, as Florence Italy.

  XXXVI.

  Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold

  Is broken away, and the long-pent fire,

  Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled

  Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire

  While “God and the People” plain for its motto,

  Thence the new tricolour flaps at the sky?

  At least to foresee that glory of Giotto

  And Florence together, the first am I!

  In a Balcony

  FIRST PART

  CONSTANCE and NORBERT

  NORBERT

  Now.

  CONSTANCE

  Not now.

  NORBERT

  Give me them again, those hands —

  Put them upon my forehead, how it throbs!

  Press them before my eyes, the fire comes through.

  You cruellest, you dearest in the world,

  Let me! the Queen must grant whate’er I ask —

  How can I gain you and not ask the Queen?

  There she stays waiting for me, here stand you.

  Some time or other this was to be asked,

  Now is the one time — what I ask, I gain —

  Let me ask now, Love!

  CONSTANCE

  Do, and ruin us.

  NORBERT

  Let it be now, Love! All my soul breaks forth.

  How I do love you! give my love its way!

  A man can have but one life and one death,

  One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate —

  Grant me my heaven now. Let me know you mine,

  Prove you mine, write my name upon your brow,

  Hold you and have you, and then die away

  If God please, with completion in my soul.

  CONSTANCE

  I am not yours then? how content this man?

  I am not his, who change into himself,

  Have passed into his heart and beat its beats,

  Who give my hands to him, my eyes, my hair,

  Give all that was of me away to him —

  So well, that now, my spirit turned his own,

  Takes part with him — against the woman here,

  Bids him — not stumble at so mere a straw

  As caring that the world be cognisant

  How he loves her and how she worships him — .

  You have this woman, not as yet that world.

  Go on, I bid, nor stop to care for me

  By saving what I cease to care about,

  The courtly name and pride of circumstance —

  The name you’ll pick up and be cumbered with

  Just for the poor parade’s sake, nothing more;

  Just that the world may slip from under you —

  Just that the world may cry “So much for him —

  The man predestined to the heap of crowns!

  There goes his chance of winning one, at least.”

  NORBERT

  The world!

  CONSTANCE

  You love it. Love me quite as well,

  And see if I shall pray for this in vain!

  Why must you ponder what it knows or thinks?

  NORBERT

  You pray for — what, in vain?

  CONSTANCE

  Oh my heart’s heart,

  How I do love you, Norbert! — that is right!

  But listen, or I take my hands away.

  You say, “let it be now” — you would go now

  And tell the Queen, perhaps six steps from us,

  You love me — so you do, thank God!

  NORBERT

  Thank God!

  CONSTANCE

  Yes, Norbert, — but you fain would tell your love,

  And, what succeeds the telling, ask of her

  My hand. Now take this rose and look at it,

  Listening to me. You are the minister,

  The Queen’s first favourite, nor without a cause.

  To-night completes your wonderful year’s-work

  (This palace-feast is held to celebrate)

  Made memorable by her life’s success,

  That junction of two crowns on her sole head

  Her house had only dreamed of anciently.

  That this mere dream is grown a stable truth

  To-night’s feast makes authentic. Whose the praise?

  Whose genius, patience, energy, achieved

  What turned the many heads and broke the hearts?

  You are the fate — your minute’s in the heaven.

  Next comes the Queen’s turn. Name your own reward!

  With leave to clench the past, chain the to-come,

  Put out an arm and touch and take the sun

  And fix it ever full-faced on your earth,

  Possess yourself supremely of her life,

  You choose the single thing she will not grant —

  The very declaration of which choice

  Will turn the scale and neutralise your work.

  At best she will forgive you, if she can.

  You think I’ll let you choose — her cousin’s hand?

  NORBERT

  Wait. First, do you retain your old belief

  The Queen is generous, — nay, is just?

  CONSTANCE

  There, there!

  So men make women love them, while they know

  No more of women’s hearts than . . . look you here,

  You that are just and generous beside,

  Make it your own case. For example now,

  I’ll say — I let you kiss me and hold my hands —

  Why? do you know why? I’ll instruct you, then —

  The kiss, because you have a name at court,

  This hand and this, that you may shut in each

  A jewel, if you please to pick up such.

  That’s horrible! Apply it to the Queen —

  Suppose, I am the Queen to whom you speak.

  “I was a nameless man: you needed me:

  Why did I proffer you my aid? there stood

  A certain pretty Cousin by your side.

  Why did I make such common cause with you?

  Access to her had not been easy else.

  You give my labours here abundant praise

  ‘Faith, labour, while she overlooked, grew play.

  How shall your gratitude discharge itself?

  Give me her hand!”

  NORBERT


  And still I urge the same.

  Is the Queen just? just — generous or no!

  CONSTANCE

  Yes, just. You love a rose — no harm in that —

  But was it for the rose’s sake or mine

  You put it in your bosom? mine, you said —

  Then mine you still must say or else be false.

  You told the Queen you served her for herself

  If so, to serve her was to serve yourself

  She thinks, for all your unbelieving face!

  I know her. In the hall, six steps from us,

  One sees the twenty pictures — there’s a life

  Better than life — and yet no life at all;

  Conceive her born in such a magic dome,

  Pictures all round her! why, she sees the world

  Can recognise its given things and facts,

  The fight of giants or the feast of gods,

  Sages in senate, beauties at the bath,

  Chaces and battles, the whole earth’s display,

  Landscape and sea-piece, down to flowers and fruit —

  And who shall question that she knows them all

  In better semblance than the things outside?

  Yet bring into the silent gallery

  Some live thing to contrast in breath and blood,

  Some lion, with the painted lion there —

  You think she’ll understand composedly?

  — Say, “that’s his fellow in the hunting-piece

  Yonder, I’ve turned to praise a hundred times?”

  Not so. Her knowledge of our actual earth,

  Its hopes and fears, concerns and sympathies,

  Must be too far, too mediate, too unreal.

  The real exists for us outside, not her —

  How should it, with that life in these four walls,

  That father and that mother, first to last

  No father and no mother — friends, a heap,

  Lovers, no lack — a husband in due time,

  And everyone of them alike a lie!

  Things painted by a Rubens out of nought

  Into what kindness, friendship, love should be;

  All better, all more grandiose than life,

  Only no life; mere cloth and surface-paint

  You feel while you admire. How should she feel?

  And now that she has stood thus fifty years

  The sole spectator in that gallery,

  You think to bring this warm real struggling love

  In to her of a sudden, and suppose

  She’ll keep her state untroubled? Here’s the truth —

  She’ll apprehend its value at a glance,

  Prefer it to the pictured loyalty!

  You only have to say “so men are made,

  For this they act, the thing has many names

  But this the right one — and now, Queen, be just!”

  And life slips back — you lose her at the word —

  You do not even for amends gain me.

  He will not understand! oh, Norbert, Norbert,