“Pay thou misprision of a single point
“Plain to thy happy self who lift’st the light,
“Lament’st the darkling, — bold to all beneath!
“What if thyself adventure, now the place
“Is purged so well? Leave pavement and mount roof,
“Look round thee for the light of the upper sky,
“The fire which lit thy fire which finds default
“In Guido Franceschini to his cost!
“What if, above in the domain of light,
“Thou miss the accustomed signs, remark eclipse?
“Shalt thou still gaze on ground nor lift a lid, —
“Steady in thy superb prerogative,
“Thy inch of inkling, — nor once face the doubt
“I’ the sphere above thee, darkness to be felt?”
Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;
Thither I sent the great looks which compel
Light from its fount: all that I do and am
Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,
Remembered or divined, as mere man may:
I know just so, nor otherwise. As I know,
I speak, — what should I know, then, and how speak
Were there a wild mistake of eye or brain
In the recorded governance above?
If my own breath, only, blew coal alight
I called celestial and the morning-star?
I, who in this world act resolvedly,
Dispose of men, the body and the soul,
As they acknowledge or gainsay this light
I show them, — shall I too lack courage? — leave
I, too, the post of me, like those I blame?
Refuse, with kindred inconsistency,
Grapple with danger whereby souls grow strong?
I am near the end; but still not at the end;
All till the very end is trial in life:
At this stage is the trial of my soul
Danger to face, or danger to refuse?
Shall I dare try the doubt now, or not dare?
O Thou, — as represented here to me
In such conception as my soul allows, —
Under Thy measureless my atom width! —
Man’s mind — what is it but a convex glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven on earth,
Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?
Existent somewhere, somehow, as a whole;
Here, as a whole proportioned to our sense, —
There, (which is nowhere, speech must babble thus!)
In the absolute immensity, the whole
Appreciable solely by Thyself, —
Here, by the little mind of man, reduced
To littleness that suits his faculty,
Appreciable too in the degree;
Between Thee and ourselves — nay even, again,
Below us, to the extreme of the minute,
Appreciable by how many and what diverse
Modes of the life Thou makest be! (why live
Except for love, — how love unless they know?)
Each of them, only filling to the edge,
Insect or angel, his just length and breadth,
Due facet of reflection, — full, no less,
Angel or insect, as Thou framedst things, —
I it is who have been appointed here
To represent Thee, in my turn, on earth,
Just as, if new philosophy know aught,
This one earth, out of all the multitude
Of peopled worlds, as stars are now supposed, —
Was chosen, and no sun-star of the swarm,
For stage and scene of Thy transcendent act
Beside which even the creation fades
Into a puny exercise of power.
Choice of the world, choice of the thing I am,
Both emanate alike from the dread play
Of operation outside this our sphere
Where things are classed and counted small or great, —
Incomprehensibly the choice is Thine!
I therefore bow my head and take Thy place.
There is, beside the works, a tale of Thee
In the world’s mouth which I find credible:
I love it with my heart: unsatisfied,
I try it with my reason, nor discept
From any point I probe and pronounce sound.
Mind is not matter nor from matter, but
Above, — leave matter then, proceed with mind:
Man’s be the mind recognised at the height, —
Leave the inferior minds and look at man.
Is he the strong, intelligent and good
Up to his own conceivable height? Nowise.
Enough o’ the low, — soar the conceivable height,
Find cause to match the effect in evidence,
Works in the world, not man’s, then God’s; leave man:
Conjecture of the worker by the work:
Is there strength there? — enough: intelligence?
Ample: but goodness in a like degree?
Not to the human eye in the present state,
This isoscele deficient in the base.
What lacks, then, of perfection fit for God
But just the instance which this tale supplies
Of love without a limit? So is strength,
So is intelligence; then love is so,
Unlimited in its self-sacrifice:
Then is the tale true and God shows complete.
Beyond the tale, I reach into the dark,
Feel what I cannot see, and still faith stands:
I can believe this dread machinery
Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
Devised, — all pain, at most expenditure
Of pain by Who devised pain, — to evolve,
By new machinery in counterpart,
The moral qualities of man — how else? —
To make him love in turn and be beloved,
Creative and self-sacrificing too,
And thus eventually God-like, (ay,
“I have said ye are Gods,” — shall it be said for nought?)
Enable man to wring, from out all pain,
All pleasure for a common heritage
To all eternity: this may be surmised,
The other is revealed, — whether a fact,
Absolute, abstract, independent truth,
Historic, not reduced to suit man’s mind, —
Or only truth reverberate, changed, made pass
A spectrum into mind, the narrow eye, —
The same and not the same, else unconceived —
Though quite conceivable to the next grade
Above it in intelligence, — as truth
Easy to man were blindness to the beast
By parity of procedure, — the same truth
In a new form, but changed in either case:
What matter so the intelligence be filled?
To the child, the sea is angry, for it roars;
Frost bites, else why the tooth-like fret on face?
Man makes acoustics deal with the sea’s wrath,
Explains the choppy cheek by chymic law, —
To both, remains one and the same effect
On drum of ear and root of nose, change cause
Never so thoroughly: so our heart be struck,
What care I, — by God’s gloved hand or the bare?
Nor do I much perplex me with aught hard,
Dubious in the transmitting of the tale, —
No, nor with certain riddles set to solve.
This life is training and a passage; pass, —
Still, we march over some flat obstacle
We made give way before us; solid truth
In front of it, were motion for the world?
The moral sens
e grows but by exercise.
‘Tis even as man grew probatively
Initiated in Godship, set to make
A fairer moral world than this he finds,
Guess now what shall be known hereafter. Thus,
O’ the present problem: as we see and speak,
A faultless creature is destroyed, and sin
Has had its way i’ the world where God should rule.
Ay, but for this irrelevant circumstance
Of inquisition after blood, we see
Pompilia lost and Guido saved: how long?
For his whole life: how much is that whole life?
We are not babes, but know the minute’s worth,
And feel that life is large and the world small,
So, wait till life have passed from out the world.
Neither does this astonish at the end,
That, whereas I can so receive and trust,
Men, made with hearts and souls the same as mine,
Reject and disbelieve, — subordinate
The future to the present, — sin, nor fear.
This I refer still to the foremost fact,
Life is probation and this earth no goal
But starting-point of man: compel him strive,
Which means, in man, as good as reach the goal, —
Why institute that race, his life, at all?
But this does overwhelm me with surprise,
Touch me to terror, — not that faith, the pearl,
Should be let lie by fishers wanting food, —
Nor, seen and handled by a certain few
Critical and contemptuous, straight consigned
To shore and shingle for the pebble it proves, —
But that, when haply found and known and named
By the residue made rich for evermore,
These, — ay, these favoured ones, should in a trice
Turn, and with double zest go dredge for whelks,
Mud-worms that make the savoury soup. Enough
O’ the disbelievers, see the faithful few!
How do the Christians here deport them, keep
Their robes of white unspotted by the world?
What is this Aretine Archbishop, this
Man under me as I am under God,
This champion of the faith, I armed and decked,
Pushed forward, put upon a pinnacle,
To show the enemy his victor, — see!
What’s the best fighting when the couple close?
Pompilia cries, “Protect me from the fiend!”
“No, for thy Guido is one heady, strong,
“Dangerous to disquiet: let him bide!
“He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse
“The darkness of his den with: so, the fawn
“Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies,
“ — Come to me, daughter, — thus I throw him back!”
Have we misjudged here, over-armed the knight,
Given gold and silk where the plain steel serves best,
Enfeebled whom we sought to fortify,
Made an archbishop and undone a saint?
Well then, descend these heights, this pride of life,
Sit in the ashes with the barefoot monk
Who long ago stamped out the worldly sparks.
Fasting and watching, stone cell and wire scourge,
— No such indulgence as unknits the strength —
These breed the tight nerve and tough cuticle,
Let the world’s praise or blame run rillet-wise
Off the broad back and brawny breast, we know!
He meets the first cold sprinkle of the world
And shudders to the marrow, “Save this child?
“Oh, my superiors, oh, the Archbishop here!
“Who was it dared lay hand upon the ark
“His betters saw fall nor put finger forth?
“Great ones could help yet help not: why should small?
“I break my promise: let her break her heart!”
These are the Christians not the wordlings, not
The sceptics, who thus battle for the faith!
If foolish virgins disobey and sleep,
What wonder? But the wise that watch, this time
Sell lamps and buy lutes, exchange oil for wine,
The mystic Spouse betrays the Bridegroom here.
To our last resource, then! Since all flesh is weak,
Bind weaknesses together, we get strength:
The individual weighed, found wanting, try
Some institution, honest artifice
Whereby the units grow compact and firm:
Each props the other, and so stand is made
By our embodied cowards that grow brave.
The Monastery called of Convertites,
Meant to help women because these helped Christ, —
A thing existent only while it acts,
Does as designed, else a nonentity,
For what is an idea unrealised? —
Pompilia is consigned to these for help.
They do help; they are prompt to testify
To her pure life and saintly dying days.
She dies, and lo, who seemed so poor, proves rich!
What does the body that lives through helpfulness
To women for Christ’s sake? The kiss turns bite,
The dove’s note changes to the crow’s cry: judge!
“Seeing that this our Convent claims of right
“What goods belong to those we succour, be
“The same proved women of dishonest life, —
“And seeing that this Trial made appear
“Pompilia was in such predicament, —
“The Convent hereupon pretends to said
“Succession of Pompilia, issues writ,
“And takes possession by the Fisc’s advice.”
Such is their attestation to the cause
Of Christ, who had one saint at least, they hoped:
But, is a title-deed to filch, a corpse
To slander, and an infant-heir to cheat?
Christ must give up his gains then! They unsay
All the fine speeches, — who was saint is whore.
Why, scripture yields no parallel for this!
The soldiers only threw dice for Christ’s coat;
We want another legend of the Twelve
Disputing if it was Christ’s coat at all,
Claiming as prize the woof of price — for why?
The Master was a thief, purloined the same,
Or paid for it out of the common bag!
Can it be this is end and outcome, all
I take with me to show as stewardship’s fruit,
The best yield of the latest time, this year
The seventeen-hundredth since God died for man?
Is such effect proportionate to cause?
And still the terror keeps on the increase
When I perceive . . . how can I blink the fact?
That the fault, the obduracy to good,
Lies not with the impracticable stuff
Whence man is made, his very nature’s fault,
As if it were of ice, the moon may gild
Not melt, or stone, ‘twas meant the sun should warm
Not make bear flowers, — nor ice nor stone to blame:
But it can melt, that ice, and bloom, that stone,
Impassible to rule of day and night!
This terrifies me, thus compelled perceive
Whatever love and faith we looked should spring
At advent of the authoritative star,
Which yet lie sluggish, curdled at the source, —
These have leapt forth profusely in old time,
These still respond with promptitude to-day,
At challenge of — what unacknowledged powers
O’ the air, what uncommissioned meteors, warmth
By law, and light by rule should supersede?
For see t
his priest, this Caponsacchi, stung
At the first summons, — ”Help for honour’s sake,
“Play the man, pity the oppressed!” — no pause,
How does he lay about him in the midst,
Strike any foe, right wrong at any risk,
All blindness, bravery and obedience! — blind?
Ay, as a man would be inside the sun,
Delirious with the plenitude of light
Should interfuse him to the finger-ends —
Let him rush straight, and how shall he go wrong?
Where are the Christians in their panoply?
The loins we girt about with truth, the breasts
Righteousness plated round, the shield of faith,
The helmet of salvation, and that sword
O’ the Spirit, even the word of God, — where these?
Slunk into corners! Oh, I hear at once
Hubbub of protestation! “What, we monks
“We friars, of such an order, such a rule,
“Have not we fought, bled, left our martyr-mark
“At every point along the boundary-line
“‘Twixt true and false, religion and the world,
“Where this or the other dogma of our Church
“Called for defence?” And I, despite myself,
How can I but speak loud what truth speaks low,
“Or better than the best, or nothing serves!
“What boots deed, I can cap and cover straight
“With such another doughtiness to match,
“Done at an instinct of the natural man?”
Immolate body, sacrifice soul too, —
Do not these publicans the same? Outstrip!
Or else stop race, you boast runs neck and neck,
You with the wings, they with the feet, — for shame!
Oh, I remark your diligence and zeal!
Five years long, now, rounds faith into my ears,
“Help thou, or Christendom is done to death!”
Five years since, in the Province of To-kien,
Which is in China as some people know,
Maigrot, my Vicar Apostolic there,
Having a great qualm, issues a decree.
Alack, the converts use as God’s name, not
Tien-chu but plain Tien or else mere Shang-ti,
As Jesuits please to fancy politic,
While, say Dominicans, it calls down fire, —
For Tien means heaven, and Shang-ti, supreme prince,
While Tien-chu means the lord of heaven: all cry,
“There is no business urgent for despatch
“As that thou send a legate, specially
“Cardinal Tournon, straight to Pekin, there
“To settle and compose the difference!”
So have I seen a potentate all fume
For some infringement of his realm’s just right,
Some menace to a mud-built straw-thatched farm
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 127
