Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Do you not understand?

  NORBERT

  The Queen’s the Queen,

  I am myself — no picture, but alive

  In every nerve and every muscle, here

  At the palace-window or in the people’s street,

  As she in the gallery where the pictures glow.

  The good of life is precious to us both.

  She cannot love — what do I want with rule?

  When first I saw your face a year ago

  I knew my life’s good — my soul heard one voice

  “The woman yonder, there’s no use of life

  But just to obtain her! heap earth’s woes in one

  And bear them — make a pile of all earth’s joys

  And spurn them, as they help or help not here;

  Only, obtain her!” — How was it to be?

  I found she was the cousin of the Queen;

  I must then serve the Queen to get to her —

  No other way. Suppose there had been one,

  And I by saying prayers to some white star

  With promise of my body and my soul

  Might gain you, — should I pray the star or no?

  Instead, there was the Queen to serve! I served,

  And did what other servants failed to do.

  Neither she sought nor I declared my end.

  Her good is hers, my recompense be mine,

  And let me name you as that recompense.

  She dreamed that such a thing could never be?

  Let her wake now. She thinks there was some cause —

  The love of power, of fame, pure loyalty?

  — Perhaps she fancies men wear out their lives

  Chasing such shades. Then I’ve a fancy too.

  I worked because I want you with my soul —

  I therefore ask your hand. Let it be now.

  CONSTANCE

  Had I not loved you from the very first,

  Were I not yours, could we not steal out thus

  So wickedly, so wildly, and so well,

  You might be thus impatient. What’s conceived

  Of us without here, by the folks within?

  Where are you now? immersed in cares of state —

  Where am I now? — intent on festal robes —

  We two, embracing under death’s spread hand!

  What was this thought for, what this scruple of yours

  Which broke the council up, to bring about

  One minute’s meeting in the corridor?

  And then the sudden sleights, long secresies,

  The plots inscrutable, deep telegraphs,

  Long-planned chance-meetings, hazards of a look,

  “Does she know? does she not know? saved or lost?”

  A year of this compression’s ecstasy

  All goes for nothing? you would give this up

  For the old way, the open way, the world’s,

  His way who beats, and his who sells his wife?

  What tempts you? their notorious happiness,

  That you’re ashamed of ours? The best you’ll get

  Will be, the Queen grants all that you require,

  Concedes the cousin, and gets rid of you

  And her at once, and gives us ample leave

  To live as our five hundred happy friends.

  The world will show us with officious hand

  Our chamber-entry and stand sentinel,

  When we so oft have stolen across her traps!

  Get the world’s warrant, ring the falcon’s foot,

  And make it duty to be bold and swift,

  When long ago ‘twas nature. Have it so!

  He never hawked by rights till flung from fist?

  Oh, the man’s thought! — no woman’s such a fool.

  NORBERT

  Yes, the man’s thought and my thought, which is more —

  One made to love you, let the world take note.

  Have I done worthy work? be love’s the praise,

  Though hampered by restrictions, barred against

  By set forms, blinded by forced secresies.

  Set free my love, and see what love will do

  Shown in my life — what work will spring from that!

  The world is used to have its business done

  On other grounds, find great effects produced

  For power’s sake, fame’s sake, motives you have named.

  So good. But let my low ground shame their high.

  Truth is the strong thing. Let man’s life be true!

  And love’s the truth of mine. Time prove the rest

  I choose to have you stamped all over me,

  Your name upon my forehead and my breast,

  You, from the sword’s blade to the ribbon’s edge,

  That men may see, all over, you in me —

  That pale loves may die out of their pretence

  In face of mine, shames thrown on love fall off —

  Permit this, Constance! Love has been so long

  Subdued in me, eating me through and through,

  That now it’s all of me and must have way.

  Think of my work, that chaos of intrigues,

  Those hopes and fears, surprises and delays,

  That long endeavour, earnest, patient, slow,

  Trembling at last to its assured result —

  Then think of this revulsion. I resume

  Life, after death, (it is no less than life

  After such long unlovely labouring days)

  And liberate to beauty life’s great need

  Of the beautiful, which, while it prompted work,

  Supprest itself erewhile. This eve’s the time —

  This eve intense with yon first trembling star

  We seem to pant and reach; scarce ought between

  The earth that rises and the heaven that bends —

  All nature self-abandoned — every tree

  Flung as it will, pursuing its own thoughts

  And fixed so, every flower and every weed,

  No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat:

  All under God, each measured by itself

  These statues round us, each abrupt, distinct,

  The strong in strength, the weak in weakness fixed,

  The Muse for ever wedded to her lyre,

  The Nymph to her fawn, the Silence to her rose,

  And God’s approval on his universe!

  Let us do so — aspire to live as these

  In harmony with truth, ourselves being true.

  Take the first way, and let the second come,

  My first is to possess myself of you;

  The music sets the march-step — forward then!

  And there’s the Queen, I go to claim you of,

  The world to witness, wonder and applaud.

  Our flower of life breaks open. No delay!

  CONSTANCE

  And so shall we be ruined, both of us.

  Norbert, I know her to the skin and bone —

  You do not know her, were not born to it,

  To feel what she can see or cannot see.

  Love, she is generous, — ay, despite your Smile,

  Generous as you are. For, in that thin frame,

  Pain-twisted, punctured through and through with cares,

  There lived a lavish soul until it starved

  Debarred all healthy food. Look to the soul —

  Pity that, stoop to that, ere you begin

  (The true man’s way) on justice and your rights,

  Exactions and acquittance of the past.

  Begin so — see what justice she will deal!

  We women hate a debt as men a gift.

  Suppose her some poor keeper of a school

  Whose business is to sit thro’ summer-months

  And dole out children’s leave to go and play,

  Herself superior to such lightness — she

  In the arm-chair’s state and pædagogic pomp,

  To the life, the laughter, sun and y
outh outside —

  We wonder such an one looks black on us?

  I do not bid you wake her tenderness,

  — That were vain truly — none is left to wake —

  But, let her think her justice is engaged

  To take the shape of tenderness, and mark

  If she’ll not coldly do its warmest deed!

  Does she love me, I ask you? not a whit.

  Yet, thinking that her justice was engaged

  To help a kinswoman, she took me up —

  Did more on that bare ground than other loves

  Would do on greater argument. For me,

  I have no equivalent of that cold kind

  To pay her with; my love alone to give

  If I give anything. I give her love.

  I feel I ought to help her, and I will.

  So for her sake, as yours, I tell you twice

  That women hate a debt as men a gift.

  If I were you, I could obtain this grace —

  Would lay the whole I did to love’s account,

  Nor yet be very false as courtiers go —

  Declare that my success was recompense;

  It would be so, in fact: what were it else?

  And then, once loosed her generosity

  As you will mark it — then, — were I but you

  To turn it, let it seem to move itself,

  And make it give the thing I really take,

  Accepting so, in the poor cousin’s hand,

  All value as the next thing to the queen —

  Since none loves her directly, none dares that!

  A shadow of a thing, a name’s mere echo

  Suffices those who miss the name and thing;

  You pick up just a ribbon she has worn

  To keep in proof how near her breath you came.

  Say I’m so near I seem a piece of her —

  Ask for me that way — (oh, you understand)

  And find the same gift yielded with a grace,

  Which if you make the least show to extort

  — You’ll see! and when you have ruined both of us,

  Dis[s]ertate on the Queen’s ingratitude!

  NORBERT

  Then, if I turn it that way, you consent?

  ‘Tis not my way; I have more hope in truth.

  Still if you won’t have truth — why, this indeed,

  Is scarcely false, I’ll so express the sense.

  Will you remain here?

  CONSTANCE

  O best heart of mine,

  How I have loved you! then, you take my way?

  Are mine as you have been her minister,

  Work out my thought, give it effect for me,

  Paint plain my poor conceit and make it serve?

  I owe that withered woman everything —

  Life, fortune, you, remember! Take my part —

  Help me to pay her! Stand upon your rights?

  You, with my rose, my hands, my heart on you?

  Your rights are mine — you have no rights but mine.

  NORBERT

  Remain here. How you know me!

  CONSTANCE

  Ah, but still — —

  [He breaks from her: she remains.

  Dance music from within.

  SECOND PART

  Enter the QUEEN

  QUEEN

  Constance! — She is here as he said. Speak! quick!

  Is it so? is it true — or false? One word!

  CONSTANCE

  True.

  QUEEN

  Mercifullest Mother, thanks to thee!

  CONSTANCE

  Madam

  QUEEN

  I love you, Constance, from my soul.

  Now say once more, with any words you will,

  ‘Tis true — all true — as true as that I speak,

  CONSTANCE

  Why should you doubt it?

  QUEEN

  Ah, why doubt? why doubt?

  Dear, make me see it. Do you see it so?

  None see themselves — another sees them best.

  You say “why doubt it?” — you see him and me.

  It is because the Mother has such grace

  That if we had but faith — wherein we fail —

  Whate’er we yearn for would be granted us;

  Howbeit we let our whims prescribe despair,

  Our very fancies thwart and cramp our will,

  And so accepting life, abjure ourselves!

  Constance, I had abjured the hope of love

  And of being loved, as truly as yon palm

  The hope of seeing Egypt from that turf.

  CONSTANCE

  Heaven!

  QUEEN

  But it was so, Constance, it was so.

  Men say — or do men say it? fancies say —

  “Stop here, your life is set, you are grown old;

  Too late — no love for you, too late for love —

  Leave love to girls. Be queen — let Constance love!”

  One takes the hint — half meets it like a child,

  Ashamed at any feelings that oppose.

  “Oh, love, true, never think of love again

  I am a queen — I rule, not love, indeed.”

  So it goes on; so a face grows like this,

  Hair like this hair, poor arms as lean as these,

  Till, — nay, it does not end so, I thank God! 433

  CONSTANCE

  I cannot understand — —

  QUEEN

  The happier you!

  Constance, I know not how it is with men.

  For women, (I am a woman now like you)

  There is no good of life but love — but love!

  What else looks good, is some shade flung from love —

  Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me,

  Never you cheat yourself one instant. Love,

  Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!

  O Constance, how I love you!

  CONSTANCE

  I love you.

  QUEEN

  I do believe that all is come through you.

  I took you to my heart to keep it warm

  When the last chance of love seemed dead in me;

  I thought your fresh youth warmed my withered heart.

  Oh, I am very old now, am I not?

  Not so! it is true and it shall be true!

  CONSTANCE

  Tell it me! let me judge if true or false.

  QUEEN

  Ah, but I fear you — you will look at me

  And say “she’s old, she’s grown unlovely quite

  Who ne’er was beauteous! men want beauty still.”

  Well, so I feared — the curse! so I felt sure.

  CONSTANCE

  Be calm. And now you feel not sure, you say?

  QUEEN

  Constance, he came, the coming was not strange —

  Do not I stand and see men come and go?

  I turned a half look from my pedestal

  Where I grow marble — ”one young man the more!

  He will love some one, — that is nought to me —

  What would he with my marble stateliness?”

  Yet this seemed somewhat worse than heretofore;

  The man more gracious, youthful, like a god,

  And I still older, with less flesh to change —

  We two those dear extremes that long to touch.

  It seemed still harder when he first began

  Absorbed to labour at the state-affairs

  The old way for the old end, interest.

  Oh, to live with a thousand beating hearts

  Around you, swift eyes, serviceable hands,

  Professing they’ve no care but for your cause,

  Thought but to help you, love but for yourself,

  And you the marble statue all the time

  They praise and point at as preferred to life,

  Yet leave for the first breathing woman’s cheek,

  First dancer’s, gypsy�
��s, or street baladine’s!

  Why, how I have ground my teeth to hear men’s speech

  Stifled for fear it should alarm my ear,

  Their gait subdued lest step should startle me,

  Their eyes declined, such queendom to respect,

  Their hands alert, such treasure to preserve,

  While not a man of these broke rank and spoke,

  Or wrote me a vulgar letter all of love,

  Or caught my hand and pressed it like a hand.

  There have been moments, if the sentinel

  Lowering his halbert to salute the queen,

  Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees,

  I would have stooped and kissed him — with my soul.

  CONSTANCE

  Who could have comprehended!

  QUEEN

  Ay, who — who?

  Why, no one, Constance, but this one who did.

  Not they, not you, not I. Even now perhaps

  it comes too late — would you but tell the truth.

  CONSTANCE

  I wait to tell it.

  QUEEN

  Well, you see, he came,

  Outfaced the others, did a work this year

  Exceeds in value all was ever done

  You know — it is not I who say it — all

  Say it, And so (a second pang and worse)

  I grew aware not only of what he did,

  But why so wondrously. Oh, never work

  Like his was done for work’s ignoble sake —

  It must have finer aims to spur it on!

  I felt, I saw he loved — loved somebody.

  And Constance, my dear Constance, do you know,

  I did believe this while ‘twas you he loved.

  CONSTANCE

  Me, madam?

  QUEEN

  It did seem to me your face

  Met him — where’er he looked: and whom but you

  Was such a man to love? it seemed to me

  You saw he loved you, and approved the love,

  And that you both were in intelligence.

  You could not loiter in the garden, step

  Into this balcony, but I straight was stung

  And forced to understand. It seemed so true,

  So right, so beautiful, so like you both

  That all this work should have been done by him —

  Not for the vulgar hope of recompense,

  But that at last — suppose some night like this —

  Borne on to claim his due reward of me

  He might say, “Give her hand and pay me so.”

  And I (O Constance, you shall love me now)

  I thought, surmounting all the bitterness,

  — ”And he shall have it. I will make her blest,

  My flower of youth, my woman’s self that was,

  My happiest woman’s self that might have been!

  These two shall have their joy and leave me here.”

  Yes — yes —

  CONSTANCE

  Thanks!

  QUEEN

  And the word was on my lips