Fin-fashion, either hand, and nostril soon conveyed
Assurance light and life were still in reach as erst:
Always the last and, — wait and watch, — sometimes the first.
Try to ascend breast-high? wave arms wide free of tether?
Be in the air and leave the water altogether?
Under went all again, till I resigned myself
To only breathe the air, that’s footed by an elf,
And only swim the water, that’s native to a fish.
But there is no denying that, ere I curbed my wish,
And schooled my restive arms, salt entered mouth and eyes
Often enough — sun, sky, and air so tantalize!
Still, the adept swims, this accorded, that denied;
Can always breathe, sometimes see and be satisfied!
LXV.
I liken to this play o’ the body, — fruitless strife
To slip the sea and hold the heaven, — my spirit’s life
‘Twixt false, whence it would break, and true, where it would bide.
I move in, yet resist, am upborne every side
By what I beat against, an element too gross
To live in, did not soul duly obtain her dose
Of life-breath, and inhale from truth’s pure plenitude
Above her, snatch and gain enough to just illude
With hope that some brave bound may baffle evermore
The obstructing medium, make who swam henceforward soar:
— Gain scarcely snatched when, foiled by the very effort, sowse,
Underneath ducks the soul, her truthward yearnings dowse
Deeper in falsehood! ay, but fitted less and less
To bear in nose and mouth old briny bitterness
Proved alien more and more: since each experience proves
Air — the essential good, not sea, wherein who moves
Must thence, in the act, escape, apart from will or wish.
Move a mere hand to take waterweed, jelly-fish,
Upward you tend! And yet our business with the sea
Is not with air, but just o’ the water, watery:
We must endure the false, no particle of which
Do we acquaint us with, but up we mount a pitch
Above it, find our head reach truth, while hands explore
The false below: so much while here we bathe, — no more!
LXVI.
Now, there is one prime point (hear and be edified!)
One truth more true for me than any truth beside —
To-wit, that I am I, who have the power to swim,
The skill to understand the law whereby each limb
May bear to keep immersed, since, in return, made sure
That its mere movement lifts head clean through coverture.
By practice with the false, I reach the true? Why, thence
It follows, that the more I gain self-confidence,
Get proof I know the trick, can float, sink, rise, at will,
The better I submit to what I have the skill
To conquer in my turn, even now, and by and by
Leave wholly for the land, and there laugh, shake me dry
To last drop, saturate with noonday — no need more
Of wet and fret, plagued once: on Pornic’s placid shore,
Abundant air to breathe, sufficient sun to feel!
Meantime I buoy myself: no whit my senses reel
When over me there breaks a billow; nor, elate
Too much by some brief taste, I quaff intemperate
The air, o’ertop breast-high the wave-environment.
Full well I know the thing I grasp, as if intent
To hold, — my wandering wave, — will not be grasped at all:
The solid-seeming grasped, the handful great or small
Must go to nothing, glide through fingers fast enough;
But none the less, to treat liquidity as stuff —
Though failure — certainly succeeds beyond its aim,
Sends head above, past thing that hands miss, all the same.
LXVII.
So with this wash o’ the world, wherein life-long we drift;
We push and paddle through the foam by making shift
To breathe above at whiles when, after deepest duck
Down underneath the show, we put forth hand and pluck
At what seems somehow like reality — a soul.
I catch at this and that, to capture and control,
Presume I hold a prize, discover that my pains
Are run to nought: my hands are baulked, my head regains
The surface where I breathe and look about, a space.
The soul that helped me mount? Swallowed up in the race
O’ the tide, come who knows whence, gone gaily who knows where!
I thought the prize was mine; I flattered myself there.
It did its duty, though: I felt it, it felt me,
Or, where I look about and breathe, I should not be.
The main point is — the false fluidity was bound
Acknowledge that it frothed o’er substance, nowise found
Fluid, but firm and true. Man, outcast, “howls,” — at rods? —
If “sent in playful spray a-shivering to his gods!”
Childishest childe, man makes thereby no bad exchange.
Stay with the flat-fish, thou! We like the upper range
Where the “gods” live, perchance the dæmons also dwell:
Where operates a Power, which every throb and swell
Of human heart invites that human soul approach,
“Sent” near and nearer still, however “spray” encroach
On “shivering” flesh below, to altitudes, which gained,
Evil proves good, wrong right, obscurity explained,
And “howling” childishness. Whose howl have we to thank,
If all the dogs ‘gan bark and puppies whine, till sank
Each yelper’s tail ‘twixt legs? for Huntsman Commonsense
Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense
Quiet i’ the kennel; taught that ocean might be blue,
And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too,
Its touch of God’s own flame, which He may so expand
“Who measurèd the waters i’ the hollow of His hand”
That ocean’s self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect
Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect
Once fairly matched; bade him who egged on hounds to bay,
Go curse, i’ the poultry yard, his kind: “there let him lay”
The swan’s one addled egg: which yet shall put to use,
Rub breast-bone warm against, so many a sterile goose!
LXVIII.
No, I want sky not sea, prefer the larks to shrimps,
And never dive so deep but that I get a glimpse
O’ the blue above, a breath of the air around. Elvire,
I seize — by catching at the melted beryl here,
The tawny hair that just has trickled off, — Fifine!
Did not we two trip forth to just enjoy the scene,
The tumbling-troop arrayed, the strollers on their stage,
Drawn up and under arms, and ready to engage —
Dabble, and there an end, with foam and froth o’er face,
Till suddenly Fifine suggested change of place?
Now we taste æther, scorn the wave, and interchange apace
No ordinary thoughts, but such as evidence
The cultivated mind in both. On what pretence
Are you and I to sneer at who lent help to hand,
And gave the lucky lift?
LXIX.
Still sour? I understand!
One ugly circumstance discredits my fair plan —
That Woman does the work; I waive the help of Man.
“Why should experiment be tried with only waves,
When solid sp
ars float round? Still some Thalassia saves
Too pertinaciously, as though no Triton, bluff
As e’er blew brine from conch, were free to help enough!
Surely, to recognize a man, his mates serve best!
Why is there not the same or greater interest
In the strong spouse as in the pretty partner, pray,
Were recognition just your object, as you say,
Amid this element o’ the false?”
LXX.
We come to terms.
I need to be proved true; and nothing so confirms
One’s faith in the prime point that one’s alive, not dead,
In all Descents to Hell whereof I ever read,
As when a phantom there, male enemy or friend,
Or merely stranger-shade, is struck, is forced suspend
His passage: “You that breathe, along with us the ghosts?”
Here, why must it be still a woman that accosts?
LXXI.
Because, one woman’s worth, in that respect, such hairy hosts
Of the other sex and sort! Men? Say you have the power
To make them yours, rule men, throughout life’s little hour,
According to the phrase; what follows? Men, you make,
By ruling them, your own: each man for his own sake
Accepts you as his guide, avails him of what worth
He apprehends in you to sublimate his earth
With fire: content, if so you convoy him through night,
That you shall play the sun, and he, the satellite,
Pilfer your light and heat and virtue, starry pelf,
While, caught up by your course, he turns upon himself.
Women rush into you, and there remain absorbed.
Beside, ‘t is only men completely formed, full-orbed,
Are fit to follow track, keep pace, illustrate so
The leader: any sort of woman may bestow
Her atom on the star, or clod she counts for such, —
Each little making less bigger by just that much.
Women grow you, while men depend on you at best.
And what dependence! Bring and put him to the test,
Your specimen disciple, a handbreadth separate
From you, he almost seemed to touch before! Abate
Complacency you will, I judge, at what ‘s divulged!
Some flabbiness you fixed, some vacancy outbulged,
Some — much — nay, all, perhaps, the outward man’s your work:
But, inside man? — find him, wherever he may lurk,
And where’s a touch of you in his true self?
LXXII.
I wish
Some wind would waft this way a glassy bubble-fish
O’ the kind the sea inflates, and show you, once detached
From wave . . . or no, the event is better told than watched:
Still may the thing float free, globose and opaline
All over, save where just the amethysts combine
To blue their best, rim-round the sea-flower with a tinge
Earth’s violet never knew! Well, ‘neath that gem-tipped fringe,
A head lurks — of a kind — that acts as stomach too;
Then comes the emptiness which out the water blew
So big and belly-like, but, dry of water drained,
Withers away nine-tenths. Ah, but a tenth remained!
That was the creature’s self: no more akin to sea,
Poor rudimental head and stomach, you agree,
Than sea’s akin to sun who yonder dips his edge.
LXXIII.
But take the rill which ends a race o’er yonder ledge
O’ the fissured cliff, to find its fate in smoke below!
Disengage that, and ask — what news of life, you know
It led, that long lone way, through pasture, plain and waste?
All’s gone to give the sea! no touch of earth, no taste
Of air, reserved to tell how rushes used to bring
The butterfly and bee, and fisher-bird that’s king
O’ the purple kind, about the snow-soft silver-sweet
Infant of mist and dew; only these atoms fleet,
Embittered evermore, to make the sea one drop
More big thereby — if thought keep count where sense must stop.
LXXIV.
The full-blown ingrate, mere recipient of the brine,
That takes all and gives nought, is Man; the feminine
Rillet that, taking all and giving nought in turn,
Goes headlong to her death i’ the sea, without concern
For the old inland life, snow-soft and silver-clear,
That’s woman — typified from Fifine to Elvire.
LXXV.
Then, how diverse the modes prescribed to who would deal
With either kind of creature! ‘T is Man, you seek to seal
Your very own? Resolve, for first step, to discard
Nine-tenths of what you are! To make, you must be marred, —
To raise your race, must stoop, — to teach them aught, must learn
Ignorance, meet half-way what most you hope to spurn
I’ the sequel. Change yourself, dissimulate the thought
And vulgarize the word, and see the deed be brought
To look like nothing done with any such intent
As teach men — though perchance it teach, by accident!
So may you master men: assured that if you show
One point of mastery, departure from the low
And level, — head or heart-revolt at long disguise,
Immurement, stifling soul in mediocrities, —
If inadvertently a gesture, much more, word
Reveal the hunter no companion for the herd,
His chance of capture’s gone. Success means, they may snuff,
Examine, and report, — a brother, sure enough,
Disports him in brute-guise; for skin is truly skin,
Horns, hoofs are hoofs and horns, and all, outside and in,
Is veritable beast, whom fellow-beasts resigned
May follow, made a prize in honest pride, behind
One of themselves and not creation’s upstart lord!
Well, there’s your prize i’ the pound — much joy may it afford
My Indian! Make survey and tell me, — was it worth
You acted part so well, went all-fours upon earth
The live-long day, brayed, belled, and all to bring to pass
That stags should deign eat hay when winter stints them grass?
LXXVI.
So much for men, and how disguise may make them mind
Their master. But you have to deal with womankind?
Abandon stratagem for strategy! Cast quite
The vile disguise away, try truth clean-opposite
Such creep-and-crawl, stand forth all man and, might it chance,
Somewhat of angel too! — whate’er inheritance,
Actual on earth, in heaven prospective, be your boast,
Lay claim to! Your best self revealed at uttermost, —
That’s the wise way o’ the strong! And e’en should falsehood tempt
The weaker sort to swerve, — at least the lie’s exempt
From slur, that’s loathlier still, of aiming to debase
Rather than elevate its object. Mimic grace,
Not make deformity your mask! Be sick by stealth,
Nor traffic with disease — malingering in health!
No more of: “Countrymen, I boast me one like you —
My lot, the common strength, the common weakness too!
I think the thoughts you think; and if I have the knack
Of fitting thoughts to words, you peradventure lack,
Envy me not the chance, yourselves more fortunate!
Many the loaded ship self-sunk through treasure-freight,
Many the pregnant brain brought never child to birth,
&n
bsp; Many the great heart broke beneath its girdle-girth!
Be mine the privilege to supplement defect,
Give dumbness voice, and let the labouring intellect
Find utterance in word, or possibly in deed!
What though I seem to go before? ‘t is you that lead!
I follow what I see so plain — the general mind
Projected pillar-wise, flame kindled by the kind,
Which dwarfs the unit — me — to insignificance!
Halt you, I stop forthwith, — proceed, I too advance!”
LXXVII.
Ay, that’s the way to take with men you wish to lead,
Instruct and benefit. Small prospect you succeed
With women so! Be all that’s great and good and wise,
August, sublime — swell out your frog the right ox-size —
He’s buoyed like a balloon, to soar, not burst, you ‘ll see!
The more you prove yourself, less fear the prize will flee
The captor. Here you start after no pompous stag
Who condescends be snared, with toss of horn, and brag
Of bray, and ramp of hoof; you have not to subdue
The foe through letting him imagine he snares you!
‘T is rather with . . .
LXXVIII.
Ah, thanks! quick — where the dipping disk
Shows red against the rise and fall o’ the fin! there frisk
In shoal the — porpoises? Dolphins, they shall and must
Cut through the freshening clear — dolphins, my instance just!
‘T is fable, therefore truth: who has to do with these,
Needs never practise trick of going hands and knees
As beasts require. Art fain the fish to captivate?
Gather thy greatness round, Arion! Stand in state,
As when the banqueting thrilled conscious — like a rose
Throughout its hundred leaves at that approach it knows
Of music in the bird — while Corinth grew one breast
A-throb for song and thee; nay, Periander pressed
The Methymnæan hand, and felt a king indeed, and guessed
How Phoebus’ self might give that great mouth of the gods
Such a magnificence of song! The pillar nods,
Rocks roof, and trembles door, gigantic, post and jamb,
As harp and voice rend air — the shattering dithyramb!
So stand thou, and assume the robe that tingles yet
With triumph; strike the harp, whose every golden fret
Still smoulders with the flame, was late at fingers’ end —
So, standing on the bench o’ the ship, let voice expend
Thy soul, sing, unalloyed by meaner mode, thine own,
The Orthian lay; then leap from music’s lofty throne,
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 158
