Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Purity, pallor grace the lawn no doubt

  When there’s the costly bordure to unthread

  And make again an ingot: but what’s grace

  When you want meat and drink and clothes and fire?

  A tale comes to my mind that’s apposite —

  Possibly true, probably false, a truth

  Such as all truths we live by, Cardinal!

  ‘Tis said, a certain ancestor of mine

  Followed — whoever was the potentate,

  To Paynimrie, and in some battle, broke

  Through more than due allowance of the foe

  And, risking much his own life, saved the lord’s

  Battered and bruised, the Emperor scrambles up,

  Rubs his eyes and looks round and sees my sire,

  Picks a furze-sprig from out his hauberk-joint,

  (Token how near the ground went majesty)

  And says “Take this, and, if thou get safe home,

  “Plant the same in thy garden-ground to grow:

  “Run thence an hour in a straight line, and stop:

  “Describe a circle round (for central point)

  “The furze aforesaid, reaching every way

  “The length of that hour’s run: I give it thee, —

  “The central point, to build a castle there,

  “The circumjacent space, for fit demesne,

  “The whole to be thy children’s heritage, —

  “Whom, for my sake, bid thou wear furze on cap!”

  Those are my arms: we turned the furze a tree

  To show more, and the greyhound tied thereto,

  Straining to start, means swift and greedy both;

  He stands upon a triple mount of gold —

  By Jove, then, he’s escaping from true gold

  And trying to arrive at empty air!

  Aha! the fancy never crossed my mind!

  My father used to tell me, and subjoin

  “As for the castle, that took wings and flew:

  “The broad lands, — why, to traverse them to-day

  “Would task my gouty feet, though in my prime

  “I doubt not I could stand and spit so far:

  “But for the furze, boy, fear no lack of that,

  “So long as fortune leaves one field to grub!

  “Wherefore hurra for furze and loyalty!”

  What may I mean, where may the lesson lurk?

  “Do not bestow on man by way of gift

  “Furze without some substantial framework, — grace

  “Of purity, a furze-sprig of a wife,

  “To me i’ the thick of battle for my bread,

  “Without some better dowry, — house and land!”

  No other gift than sordid muck? Yes, Sir!

  Many more and much better. Give them me!

  O those Olimpias bold, those Biancas brave,

  That brought a husband will worth Ormuz’ wealth!

  Cried “Thou being mine, why, what but thine am I?

  “Be thou to me law, right, wrong, heaven and hell!

  “Let us blend souls, be thou in me to bid

  “Two bodies work one pleasure! What are these

  “Called king, priest, father, mother, stranger, friend?

  “They fret thee or they frustrate? Give the word —

  “Be certain they shall frustrate nothing more!

  “And who is this young florid foolishness

  “That holds thy fortune in his pigmy clutch,

  “ — Being a prince and potency, forsooth! —

  “And hesitates to let the trifle go?

  “Let me but seal up eye, sing ear to sleep

  “Sounder than Samson, — pounce thou on the prize

  “Shall slip from off my breast, and down couch-side

  “And on to floor, and far as my lord’s feet —

  “Where he stands in the shadow with the sword

  “Waiting to see what Delilah dares do!

  “Is the youth fair? What is a man to me

  “Who am thy call-bird? Twist his neck — my dupe’s, —

  “Then take the breast shall turn a breast indeed!”

  Such women are there; and they marry whom?

  Why, when a man has gone and hanged himself

  Because of what he calls a wicked wife, —

  See, if the turpitude, he makes his moan,

  Be not mere excellence the fool ignores!

  His monster is perfection, Circe, sent

  Straight from the sun, with rod the idiot blames

  As not an honest distaff to spin wool!

  O thou Lucrezia, is it long to wait

  Yonder where all the gloom is in a glow

  With thy suspected presence? — virgin yet,

  Virtuous again in face of what’s to teach —

  Sin unimagined, unimaginable, —

  I come to claim my bride, — thy Borgia’s self

  Not half the burning bridegroom I shall be!

  Cardinal, take away your crucifix!

  Abate, leave my lips alone, they bite!

  ‘Tis vain you try to change, what should not change,

  And cannot. I have bared, you bathe my heart —

  It grows the stonier for your saving dew!

  You steep the substance, you would lubricate,

  In waters that but touch to petrify!

  You too are petrifactions of a kind:

  Move not a muscle that shows mercy; rave

  Another twelve hours, every word were waste!

  I thought you would not slay impenitence, —

  Teazed first contrition from the man you slew, —

  I thought you had a conscience. Cardinal,

  You know I am wronged! — wronged, say, and wronged maintain.

  Was this strict inquisition made for blood

  When first you showed us scarlet on your back,

  Called to the College? That straightforward way

  To that legitimate end, — I think it passed

  Over a scantling of heads brained, hearts broke,

  Lives trodden into dust, — how otherwise?

  Such is the way o’ the world, and so you walk:

  Does memory haunt your pillow? Not a whit.

  God wills you never pace your garden-path

  One appetising hour ere dinner-time

  But your intrusion there treads out of life

  An universe of happy innocent things:

  Feel you remorse about that damsel-fly

  Which buzzed so near your mouth and flapped your face,

  You blotted it from being at a blow?

  It was a fly, you were a man, and more,

  Lord of created things, so took your course.

  Manliness, mind, — these are things fit to save,

  Fit to brush fly from: why, because I take

  My course, must needs the Pope kill me? — kill you!

  Because this instrument he throws away

  Is strong to serve a master: it were yours

  To have and hold and get such good from out!

  The Pope who dooms me, needs must die next year;

  I’ll tell you how the chances are supposed

  For his successor: first the Chamberlain,

  Old San Cesario, — Colloredo, next, —

  Then, one, two, three, four, I refuse to name,

  After these, comes Altieri; then come you —

  Seventh on the list you are, unless . . . ha, ha,

  How can a dead hand give a friend a lift?

  Are you the person to despise the help

  O’ the head shall drop in pannier presently?

  So a child seesaws on or kicks away

  The fulcrum-stone that’s all the sage requires

  To fit his lever to and move the world.

  Cardinal, I adjure you in God’s name,

  Save my life, fall at the Pope’s feet, set forth

  Things your own fashion, not in words like these

  Made for a sense li
ke yours who apprehend!

  Translate into the court-conventional

  “Count Guido must not die, is innocent!

  “Fair, be assured! But what an he were foul,

  “Blood-drenched and murder-crusted head to foot?

  “Spare one whose death insults the Emperor,

  “And outrages the Louis you so love!

  “He has friends who will avenge him; enemies

  “Who hate the church now with impunity

  “Missing the old coercive: would you send

  “A soul straight to perdition, dying frank

  “An atheist?” Go and say this, for God’s sake!

  — Why, you don’t think I hope you’ll say one word?

  Neither shall I persuade you from your stand

  Nor you persuade me from my station: take

  Your crucifix away, I tell you twice!

  Come, I am tired of silence! Pause enough!

  You have prayed: I have gone inside my soul

  And shut its door behind me: ‘tis your torch

  Makes the place dark, — the darkness let alone

  Grows tolerable twilight, — one may grope

  And get to guess at length and breadth and depth.

  What is this fact I feel persuaded of —

  This something like a foothold in the sea,

  Although Saint Peter’s bark scuds, billow-borne,

  Leaves me to founder where it flung me first?

  Spite of your splashing, I am high and dry!

  God takes his own part in each thing he made;

  Made for a reason, he conserves his work,

  Gives each its proper instinct of defence.

  My lamblike wife could neither bark nor bite,

  She bleated, bleated, till for pity pure,

  The village roused it, ran with pole and prong

  To the rescue, and behold the wolf’s at bay!

  Shall he try bleating? — or take turn or two,

  Since the wolf owns to kinship with the fox,

  And failing to escape the foe by these,

  Give up attempt, die fighting quietly?

  The last bad blow that strikes fire in at eye

  And on to brain, and so out, life and all,

  How can it but be cheated of a pang

  While, fighting quietly, the jaws enjoy

  Their re-embrace in mid back-bone they break,

  After their weary work thro’ the foes’ flesh?

  That’s the wolf-nature. Don’t mistake my trope!

  The Cardinal is qualmish! Eminence,

  My fight is figurative, blows i’ the air,

  Brain-war with powers and principalities,

  Spirit-bravado, no real fisticuffs!

  I shall not presently, when the knock comes,

  Cling to this bench nor flee the hangman’s face,

  No, trust me! I conceive worse lots than mine.

  Whether it be the old contagious fit

  And plague o’ the prison have surprised me too,

  The appropriate drunkenness of the death-hour

  Creep on my sense, the work o’ the wine and myrrh, —

  I know not, — I begin to taste my strength,

  Careless, gay even: what’s the worth of life?

  The Pope is dead, my murderous old man,

  For Tozzi told me so: and you, forsooth —

  Why, you don’t think, Abate, do your best,

  You’ll live a year more with that hacking cough

  And blotch of crimson where the cheek’s a pit?

  Tozzi has got you also down in book.

  Cardinal, only seventh of seventy near,

  Is not one called Albano in the lot?

  Go eat your heart, you’ll never be a Pope!

  Inform me, is it true you left your love,

  A Pucci, for promotion in the church?

  She’s more than in the church, — in the churchyard!

  Plautilla Pucci, your affianced bride,

  Has dust now in the eyes that held the love, —

  And Martinez, suppose they make you Pope,

  Stops that with veto, — so, enjoy yourself!

  I see you all reel to the rock, you waves —

  Some forthright, some describe a sinuous track,

  Some crested, brilliantly with heads above,

  Some in a strangled swirl sunk who knows how,

  But all bound whither the main-current sets,

  Rockward, an end in foam for all of you!

  What if I am o’ertaken, pushed to the front

  By all you crowding smoother souls behind,

  And reach, a minute sooner than was meant,

  The boundary, whereon I break to mist?

  Go to! the smoothest safest of you all,

  Most perfect and compact wave in my train,

  Spite of the blue tranquillity above,

  Spite of the breadth before of lapsing peace

  Where broods the halcyon and the fish leaps free,

  Will presently begin to feel the prick

  At lazy heart, the push at torpid brain,

  Will rock vertiginously in turn, and reel,

  And, emulative, rush to death like me:

  Later or sooner by a minute then,

  So much for the untimeliness of death, —

  And, as regards the manner that offends,

  The rude and rough, I count the same for gain —

  Be the act harsh and quick! Undoubtedly

  The soul’s condensed and, twice itself, expands

  To burst thro’ life, in alternation due,

  Into the other state whate’er it prove.

  You never know what life means till you die:

  Even throughout life, ‘tis death that makes life live,

  Gives it whatever the significance.

  For see, on your own ground and argument,

  Suppose life had no death to fear, how find

  A possibility of nobleness

  In man, prevented daring any more?

  What’s love, what’s faith without a worst to dread?

  Lack-lustre jewelry; but faith and love

  With death behind them bidding do or die —

  Put such a foil at back, the sparkle’s born!

  From out myself how the strange colours come!

  Is there a new rule in another world?

  Be sure I shall resign myself: as here

  I recognised no law I could not see,

  There, what I see, I shall acknowledge too:

  On earth I never took the Pope for God,

  In heaven I shall scarce take God for the Pope.

  Unmanned, remade: I hold it probable —

  With something changeless at the heart of me

  To know me by, some nucleus that’s myself:

  Accretions did it wrong? Away with them —

  You soon shall see the use of fire!

  Till when,

  All that was, is; and must for ever be.

  Nor is it in me to unhate my hates, —

  I use up my last strength to strike once more

  Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,

  To trample underfoot the whine and wile

  Of that Violante, — and I grow one gorge

  To loathingly reject Pompilia’s pale

  Poison my hasty hunger took for food.

  A strong tree wants no wreaths about its trunk,

  No cloying cups, no sickly sweet of scent,

  But sustenance at root, a bucketful.

  How else lived that Athenian who died so,

  Drinking hot bull’s-blood, fit for men like me?

  I lived and died a man, and take man’s chance,

  Honest and bold: right will be done to such.

  Who are these you have let descend my stair?

  Ha, their accursed psalm! Lights at the sill!

  Is it “Open” they dare bid you? Treachery!

  Sirs, have I spoken one word all this while

  Out of
the world of words I had to say?

  Not one word! All was folly — I laughed and mocked!

  Sirs, my first true word all truth and no lie,

  Is — save me notwithstanding! Life is all!

  I was just stark mad, — let the madman live

  Pressed by as many chains as you please pile!

  Don’t open! Hold me from them! I am yours,

  I am the Granduke’s — no, I am the Pope’s!

  Abate, — Cardinal, — Christ, — Maria, — God, . . .

  Pompilia, will you let them murder me?

  The Book and the Ring

  HERE were the end, had anything an end:

  Thus, lit and launched, up and up roared and soared

  A rocket, till the key o’ the vault was reached,

  And wide heaven held, a breathless minute-space,

  In brilliant usurpature: thus caught spark,

  Rushed to the height, and hung at full of fame

  Over men’s upturned faces, ghastly thence,

  Our glaring Guido: now decline must be.

  In its explosion, you have seen his act,

  By my power — may-be, judged it by your own, —

  Or composite as good orbs prove, or crammed

  With worse ingredients than the Wormwood Star.

  The act, over and ended, falls and fades:

  What was once seen, grows what is now described,

  Then talked of, told about, a tinge the less

  In every fresh transmission; till it melts,

  Trickles in silent orange or wan grey

  Across our memory, dies and leaves all dark,

  And presently we find the stars again.

  Follow the main streaks, meditate the mode

  Of brightness, how it hastes to blend with black!

  After that February Twenty-two,

  Since our salvation, Sixteen-Ninety-Eight,

  Of all reports that were, or may have been,

  Concerning those the day killed or let live,

  Four I count only. Take the first that comes.

  A letter from a stranger, man of rank,

  Venetian visitor at Rome, — who knows,

  On what pretence of busy idleness?

  Thus he begins on evening of that day.

  “Here are we at our end of Carnival;

  “Prodigious gaiety and monstrous mirth,

  “And constant shift of entertaining show:

  “With influx, from each quarter of the globe,

  “Of strangers nowise wishful to be last

  “I’ the struggle for a good place presently

  “When that befalls, fate cannot long defer.

  “The old Pope totters on the verge o’ the grave:

  “You see, Malpichi understood far more

  “Than Tozzi how to treat the ailments: age,

  “No question, renders these inveterate.

  “Cardinal Spada, actual Minister,