Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Symmetric on the sheet they blurred before —

  Such little act sufficed, this time, such thought.

  Now, we’ll extend rays, widen out the verge,

  Describe a larger circle; leave this first

  Clod of an instance we began with, rise

  To the complete world many clods effect.

  Only continue patient while I throw,

  Delver-like, spadeful after spadeful up,

  Just as truths come, the subsoil of me, mould

  Whence spring my moods: your object, — just to find,

  Alike from handlift and from barrow-load,

  What salts and silts may constitute the earth —

  If it be proper stuff to blow man glass,

  Or bake him pottery, bear him oaks or wheat —

  What’s born of me, in brief; which found, all’s known.

  If it were genius did the digging-job,

  Logic would speedily sift its product smooth

  And leave the crude truths bare for poetry;

  But I’m no poet, and am stiff i’ the back.

  What one spread fails to bring, another may.

  In goes the shovel and out comes scoop — as here!

  I live to please myself. I recognize

  Power passing mine, immeasurable, God —

  Above me, whom He made, as heaven beyond

  Earth — to use figures which assist our sense.

  I know that He is there as I am here,

  By the same proof, which seems no proof at all,

  It so exceeds familiar forms of proof.

  Why “there,” not “here”? Because, when I say “there,”

  I treat the feeling with distincter shape

  That space exists between us: I, — not he, —

  Live, think, do human work here — no machine,

  His will moves, but a being by myself,

  His, and not he who made me for a work,

  Watches my working, judges its effect,

  But does not interpose. He did so once,

  And probably will again some time — not now,

  Life being the minute of mankind, not God’s,

  In a certain sense, like time before and time

  After man’s earthly life, so far as man

  Needs apprehend the matter. Am I clear?

  Suppose I bid a courier take to-night —

  ( . . . Once for all, let me talk as if I smoked

  Yet in the Residenz, a personage:

  I must still represent the thing I was,

  Galvanically make dead muscle play,

  Or how shall I illustrate muscle’s use?)

  I could then, last July, bid courier take

  Message for me, post-haste, a thousand miles.

  I bid him, since I have the right to bid,

  And, my part done so far, his part begins;

  He starts with due equipment, will and power.

  Means he may use, misuse, not use at all,

  At his discretion, at his peril too.

  I leave him to himself: but, journey done,

  I count the minutes, call for the result

  In quickness and the courier quality,

  Weigh its worth, and then punish or reward

  According to proved service; not before.

  Meantime, he sleeps through noontide, rides till dawn,

  Sticks to the straight road, tries the crooked path,

  Measures and manages resource, trusts, doubts

  Advisers by the wayside, does his best

  At his discretion, lags or launches forth,

  (He knows and I know) at his peril too.

  You see? Exactly thus men stand to God:

  I with my courier, God with me. Just so

  I have His bidding to perform; but mind

  And body, all of me, though made and meant

  For that sole service, must consult, concert

  With my own self and nobody beside,

  How to effect the same: God helps not else.

  ‘Tis I who, with my stock of craft and strength,

  Choose the directer cut across the hedge,

  Or keep the foot-track that respects a crop.

  Lie down and rest, rise up and run, — live spare,

  Feed free, — all that’s my business: but, arrive,

  Deliver message, bring the answer back,

  And make my bow, I must: then God will speak,

  Praise me or haply blame as service proves.

  To other men, to each and every one,

  Another law! what likelier? God, perchance,

  Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,

  Intercommunication with Himself,

  Wreaking on finiteness infinitude;

  By such a series of effects, gives each

  Last his own imprint: old yet ever new

  The process: ‘tis the way of Deity.

  How it succeeds, He knows: I only know

  That varied modes of creatureship abound,

  Implying just as varied intercourse

  For each with the creator of them all.

  Each has his own mind and no other’s mode.

  What mode may yours be? I shall sympathize!

  No doubt, you, good young lady that you are,

  Despite a natural naughtiness or two,

  Turn eyes up like a Pradier Magdalen

  And see an outspread providential hand

  Above the owl’s-wing aigrette — guard and guide —

  Visibly o’er your path, about your bed,

  Through all your practisings with London-town.

  It points, you go; it stays fixed, and you stop;

  You quicken its procedure by a word

  Spoken, a thought in silence, prayer and praise.

  Well, I believe that such a hand may stoop,

  And such appeals to it may stave off harm,

  Pacify the grim guardian of this Square,

  And stand you in good stead on quarter-day:

  Quite possible in your case; not in mine.

  “Ah, but I choose to make the difference,

  Find the emancipation?” No, I hope!

  If I deceive myself, take noon for night,

  Please to become determinedly blind

  To the true ordinance of human life,

  Through mere presumption — that is my affair,

  And truly a grave one; but as grave I think

  Your affair, yours, the specially observed, —

  Each favored person that perceives his path

  Pointed him, inch by inch, and looks above

  For guidance, through the mazes of this world,

  In what we call its meanest life-career

  — Not how to manage Europe properly,

  But how keep open shop, and yet pay rent,

  Rear household, and make both ends meet, the same.

  I say, such man is no less tasked than I

  To duly take the path appointed him

  By whatsoever sign he recognize.

  Our insincerity on both our heads!

  No matter what the object of a life,

  Small work or large, — the making thrive a shop,

  Or seeing that an empire take no harm, —

  There are known fruits to judge obedience by.

  You’ve read a ton’s weight, now, of newspaper —

  Lives of me, gabble about the kind of prince —

  You know my work i’ the rough; I ask you, then,

  Do I appear subordinated less

  To hand-impulsion, one prime push for all,

  Than little lives of men, the multitude

  That cried out, every quarter of an hour,

  For fresh instructions, did or did not work,

  And praised in the odd minutes?

  Eh, my dear?

  Such is the reason why I acquiesced

  In doing what seemed best for me to do,

  So as to please myself on the great scale,

  Having rega
rd to immortality

  No less than life — did that which head and heart

  Prescribed my hand, in measure with its means

  Of doing — used my special stock of power —

  Not from the aforesaid head and heart alone,

  But every sort of helpful circumstance,

  Some problematic and some nondescript:

  All regulated by the single care

  I’ the last resort — that I made thoroughly serve

  The when and how, toiled where was need, reposed

  As resolutely at the proper point,

  Braved sorrow, courted joy, to just one end:

  Namely, that just the creature I was bound

  To be, I should become, nor thwart at all

  God’s purpose in creation. I conceive

  No other duty possible to man, —

  Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law

  By which to judge life failure or success:

  What folk call being saved or cast away.

  Such was my rule of life: I worked my best

  Subject to ultimate judgment, God’s not man’s.

  Well then, this settled, — take your tea, I beg,

  And meditate the fact, ‘twixt sip and sip, —

  This settled — why I pleased myself, you saw,

  By turning blot and blot into a line,

  O’ the little scale, — we’ll try now (as your tongue

  Tries the concluding sugar-drop) what’s meant

  To please me most o’ the great scale. Why, just now,

  With nothing else to do within my reach,

  Did I prefer making two blots one line

  To making yet another separate

  Third blot, and leaving those I found unlinked?

  It meant, I like to use the thing I find,

  Rather than strive at unfound novelty:

  I make the best of the old, nor try for new.

  Such will to act, such choice of action’s way,

  Constitute — when at work on the great scale,

  Driven to their farthest natural consequence

  By all the help from all the means — my own

  Particular faculty of serving God,

  Instinct for putting power to exercise

  Upon some wish and want o’ the time, I prove

  Possible to mankind as best I may.

  This constitutes my mission, — grant the phrase, —

  Namely, to rule men — men within my reach,

  To order, influence and dispose them so

  As render solid and stabilify

  Mankind in particles, the light and loose,

  For their good and my pleasure in the act.

  Such good accomplished proves twice good to me —

  Good for its own sake, as the just and right,

  And, in the effecting also, good again

  To me its agent, tasked as suits my taste.

  Is this much easy to be understood

  At first glance? Now begin the steady gaze!

  My rank — (if I must tell you simple truth —

  Telling were else not worth the whiff o’ the weed

  I lose for the tale’s sake) — dear, my rank i’ the world

  Is hard to know and name precisely: err

  I may, but scarcely over-estimate

  My style and title. Do I class with men

  Most useful to their fellows? Possibly, —

  Therefore, in some sort, best; but, greatest mind

  And rarest nature? Evidently no.

  A conservator, call me, if you please,

  Not a creator nor destroyer: one

  Who keeps the world safe. I profess to trace

  The broken circle of society,

  Dim actual order, I can redescribe

  Not only where some segment silver-true

  Stays clear, but where the breaks of black commence

  Baffling you all who want the eye to probe —

  As I make out yon problematic thin

  White paring of your thumb-nail outside there,

  Above the plaster-monarch on his steed —

  See an inch, name an ell, and prophesy

  O’ the rest that ought to follow, the round moon

  Now hiding in the night of things: that round,

  I labor to demonstrate moon enough

  For the month’s purpose, — that society,

  Render efficient for the age’s need:

  Preserving you in either case the old,

  Nor aiming at a new and greater thing,

  A sun for moon, a future to be made

  By first abolishing the present law:

  No such proud task for me by any means!

  History shows you men whose master-touch

  Not so much modifies as makes anew:

  Minds that transmute nor need restore at all.

  A breath of God made manifest in flesh

  Subjects the world to change, from time to time,

  Alters the whole conditions of our race

  Abruptly, not by unperceived degrees

  Nor play of elements already there,

  But quite new leaven, leavening the lump,

  And liker, so, the natural process. See!

  Where winter reigned for — ages by a turn

  I’ the time, some star-change, (ask geologists)

  The ice-tracts split, clash, splinter and disperse,

  And there’s an end of immobility,

  Silence, and all that tinted pageant, base

  To pinnacle, one flush from fairyland

  Dead-asleep and deserted somewhere, — see! —

  As a fresh sun, wave, spring and joy outburst.

  Or else the earth it is, time starts from trance,

  Her mountains tremble into fire, her plains

  Heave blinded by confusion: what result?

  New teeming growth, surprises of strange life

  Impossible before, a world broke up

  And re-made, order gained by law destroyed.

  Not otherwise, in our society

  Follow like portents, all as absolute

  Regenerations: they have birth at rare

  Uncertain unexpected intervals

  O’ the world, by ministry impossible

  Before and after fulness of the days:

  Some dervish desert-spectre, swordsman, saint,

  Law-giver, lyrist, — oh, we know the names!

  Quite other these than I. Our time requires.

  Nosuch strange potentate, — who else would dawn, —

  No fresh force till the old have spent itself.

  Such seems the natural ceconomy.

  To shoot a beam into the dark, assists:

  To make that beam do fuller service, spread

  And utilize such bounty to the height,

  That assists also, — and that work is mine,

  I recognize, contemplate, and approve

  The general compact of society,

  Not simply as I see effected good,

  But good i’ the germ, each chance that’s possible

  I’ the plan traced so far: all results, in short,

  For better or worse of the operation due

  To those exceptional natures, unlike mine,

  Who, helping, thwarting, conscious, unaware,

  Did somehow manage to so far describe

  This diagram left ready to my hand,

  Waiting my turn of trial. I see success,

  See failure, see what makes or mars throughout.

  How shall I else but help complete this plan

  Of which I know the purpose and approve,

  By letting stay therein what seems to stand,

  And adding good thereto of easier reach

  To-day than yesterday?

  So much, no more!

  Whereon, “No more than that?” — inquire aggrieved

  Half of my critics:” Nothing new at all?

  The old plan saved, instead of a sponged slate
<
br />   And fresh-drawn figure?” — while, “So much as that?”

  Object their fellows of the other faith:

  “Leave uneffaced the crazy labyrinth

  Of alteration and amendment, lines

  Which every dabster felt in duty bound

  To signalize his power of pen and ink

  By adding to a plan once plain enough?

  Why keep, each fool’s bequeathment, scratch and blur

  Which overscrawl and underscore the piece —

  Nay, strengthen them by touches of your own?”

  Well, that’s my mission, so I serve the world,

  Figure as man o’ the moment, — in default

  Of somebody inspired to strike such change

  Into society — from round to square,

  The ellipsis to the rhomboid, how you please,

  As suits the size and shape o’ the world he finds.

  But this I can, — and nobody my peer, —

  Do the best with the least change possible:

  Carry the incompleteness on, a stage,

  Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth,

  And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed,

  It will not prove the worst achievement, sure,

  In the eyes at least of one man, one I look

  Nowise to catch in critic company:

  To-wit, the man inspired, the genius’ self

  Destined to come and change things thoroughly.

  He, at least, finds his business simplified,

  Distinguishes the done from undone, reads

  Plainly what meant and did not mean this time

  We live in, and I work on, and transmit

  To such successor: he will operate

  On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine.

  Let all my critics, born to idleness

  And impotency, get their good, and have

  Their hooting at the giver: I am deaf —

  Who find great good in this society,

  Great gain, the purchase of great labor. Touch

  The work I may and must, but — reverent

  In every fall o’ the finger-tip, no doubt.

  Perhaps I find all good there’s warrant for

  I’ the world as yet: nay, to the end of time, —

  Since evil never means part company

  With mankind, only shift side and change shape.

  I find advance i’ the main, and notably

  The Present an improvement on the Past,

  And promise for the Future — which shall prove

  Only the Present with its rough made smooth,

  Its indistinctness emphasized; I hope

  No better, nothing newer for mankind,

  But something equably smoothed everywhere,

  Good, reconciled with hardly-quite-as-good,

  Instead of good and bad each jostling each.

  “And that’s all?” Ay, and quite enough for me!

  We have toiled so long to gain what gain I find