Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  ‘Twixt tree and tree, a tent whence the red pennon made

  Its vivid reach for home and ocean-idleness —

  And where, my heart surmised, at that same moment, — yes, —

  Tugging her tricot on, — yet tenderly, lest stitch

  Announce the crack of doom, reveal disaster which

  Our Pornic’s modest stock of merceries in vain

  Were ransacked to retrieve, — there, cautiously a-strain,

  (My heart surmised) must crouch in that tent’s corner, curved

  Like Spring-month’s russet moon, some girl by fate reserved

  To give me once again the electric snap and spark

  Which prove, when finger finds out finger in the dark

  O’ the world, there’s fire and life and truth there, link but hands

  And pass the secret on. Lo, link by link, expands

  The circle, lengthens out the chain, till one embrace

  Of high with low is found uniting the whole race,

  Not simply you and me and our Fifine, but all

  The world: the Fair expands into the Carnival,

  And Carnival again to . . . ah, but that’s my dream!

  XCII.

  I somehow played the piece: remarked on each old theme

  I’ the new dress; saw how food o’ the soul, the stuff that’s made

  To furnish man with thought and feeling, is purveyed

  Substantially the same from age to age, with change

  Of the outside only for successive feasters. Range

  The banquet-room o’ the world, from the dim farthest head

  O’ the table, to its foot, for you and me bespread,

  This merry morn, we find sufficient fare, I trow.

  But, novel? Scrape away the sauce; and taste, below,

  The verity o’ the viand, — you shall perceive there went

  To board-head just the dish which other condiment

  Makes palatable now: guests came, sat down, fell-to,

  Rose up, wiped mouth, went way, — lived, died, — and never knew

  That generations yet should, seeking sustenance,

  Still find the selfsame fare, with somewhat to enhance

  Its flavour, in the kind of cooking. As with hates

  And loves and fears and hopes, so with what emulates

  The same, expresses hates, loves, fears and hopes in Art:

  The forms, the themes — no one without its counterpart

  Ages ago; no one but, mumbled the due time

  I’ the mouth of the eater, needs be cooked again in rhyme,

  Dished up anew in paint, sauce-smothered fresh in sound,

  To suit the wisdom-tooth, just cut, of the age, that’s found

  With gums obtuse to gust and smack which relished so

  The meat o’ the meal folk made some fifty years ago.

  But don’t suppose the new was able to efface

  The old without a struggle, a pang! The commonplace

  Still clung about his heart, long after all the rest

  O’ the natural man, at eye and ear, was caught, confessed

  The charm of change, although wry lip and wrinkled nose

  Owned ancient virtue more conducive to repose

  Than modern nothings roused to somethings by some shred

  Of pungency, perchance garlic in amber’s stead.

  And so on, till one day, another age, by due

  Rotation, pries, sniffs, smacks, discovers old is new,

  And sauce, our sires pronounced insipid, proves again

  Sole piquant, may resume its titillating reign —

  With music, most of all the arts, since change is there

  The law, and not the lapse: the precious means the rare,

  And not the absolute in all good save surprise.

  So I remarked upon our Schumann’s victories

  Over the commonplace, how faded phrase grew fine,

  And palled perfection — piqued, upstartled by that brine,

  His pickle — bit the mouth and burnt the tongue aright,

  Beyond the merely good no longer exquisite:

  Then took things as I found, and thanked without demur

  The pretty piece — played through that movement, you prefer,

  Where dance and shuffle past, — he scolding while she pouts,

  She canting while he calms, — in those eternal bouts

  Of age, the dog — with youth, the cat — by rose-festoon

  Tied teasingly enough — Columbine, Pantaloon:

  She, toe-tips and staccato, — legato shakes his poll

  And shambles in pursuit, the senior. Fi la folle !

  Lie to him! get his gold and pay its price! begin

  Your trade betimes, nor wait till you ‘ve wed Harlequin

  And need, at the week’s end, to play the duteous wife,

  And swear you still love slaps and leapings more than life!

  Pretty! I say.

  XCIII.

  And so, I somehow-nohow played

  The whole o’ the pretty piece; and then . . . whatever weighed

  My eyes down, furled the films about my wits? suppose,

  The morning-bath, — the sweet monotony of those

  Three keys, flat, flat and flat, never a sharp at all, —

  Or else the brain’s fatigue, forced even here to fall

  Into the same old track, and recognize the shift

  From old to new, and back to old again, and, — swift

  Or slow, no matter, — still the certainty of change,

  Conviction we shall find the false, where’er we range,

  In art no less than nature: or what if wrist were numb,

  And over-tense the muscle, abductor of the thumb,

  Taxed by those tenths’ and twelfths’ unconscionable stretch?

  Howe’er it came to pass, I soon was far to fetch —

  Gone off in company with Music!

  XCIV.

  Whither bound

  Except for Venice? She it was, by instinct found

  Carnival-country proper, who far below the perch

  Where I was pinnacled, showed, opposite, Mark’s Church,

  And, underneath, Mark’s Square, with those two lines of street,

  Procuratié -sides, each leading to my feet —

  Since from above I gazed, however I got there.

  XCV.

  And what I gazed upon was a prodigious Fair,

  Concourse immense of men and women, crowned or casqued,

  Turbaned or tiar’d, wreathed, plumed, hatted or wigged, but masked —

  Always masked, — only, how? No face-shape, beast or bird,

  Nay, fish and reptile even, but someone had preferred,

  From out its frontispiece, feathered or scaled or curled,

  To make the vizard whence himself should view the world,

  And where the world believed himself was manifest.

  Yet when you came to look, mixed up among the rest

  More funnily by far, were masks to imitate

  Humanity’s mishap: the wrinkled brow, bald pate

  And rheumy eyes of Age, peak’d chin and parchment chap,

  Were signs of day-work done, and wage-time near, — mishap

  Merely; but, Age reduced to simple greed and guile,

  Worn apathetic else as some smooth slab, erewhile

  A clear-cut man-at-arms i’ the pavement, till foot’s tread

  Effaced the sculpture, left the stone you saw instead, —

  Was not that terrible beyond the mere uncouth?

  Well, and perhaps the next revolting you was Youth,

  Stark ignorance and crude conceit, half smirk, half stare

  On that frank fool-face, gay beneath its head of hair

  Which covers nothing.

  XCVI.

  These, you are to understand,

  Were the mere hard and sharp distinctions. On each hand,

  I soon became aware, flocked the infinitude
>
  Of passions, loves and hates, man pampers till his mood

  Becomes himself, the whole sole face we name him by,

  Nor want denotement else, if age or youth supply

  The rest of him: old, young, — classed creature: in the main

  A love, a hate, a hope, a fear, each soul a-strain

  Some one way through the flesh — the face, an evidence

  O’ the soul at work inside; and, all the more intense,

  So much the more grotesque.

  XCVII.

  “Why should each soul be tasked

  Some one way, by one love or else one hate?” I asked.

  When it occurred to me, from all these sights beneath

  There rose not any sound: a crowd, yet dumb as death!

  XCVIII.

  Soon I knew why. (Propose a riddle, and ‘t is solved

  Forthwith — in dream!) They spoke; but, — since on me devolved

  To see, and understand by sight, — the vulgar speech

  Might be dispensed with. “He who cannot see, must reach

  As best he may the truth of men by help of words

  They please to speak, must fare at will of who affords

  The banquet,” — so I thought. “Who sees not, hears and so

  Gets to believe; myself it is that, seeing, know,

  And, knowing, can dispense with voice and vanity

  Of speech. What hinders then, that, drawing closer, I

  Put privilege to use, see and know better still

  These simulacra , taste the profit of my skill,

  Down in the midst?”

  XCIX.

  And plumb I pitched into the square —

  A groundling like the rest. What think you happened there?

  Precise the contrary of what one would expect!

  For, — whereas so much more monstrosities deflect

  From nature and the type, as you the more approach

  Their precinct, — here, I found brutality encroach

  Less on the human, lie the lightlier as I looked

  The nearlier on these faces that seemed but now so crook’d

  And clawed away from God’s prime purpose. They diverged

  A little from the type, but somehow rather urged

  To pity than disgust: the prominent, before,

  Now dwindled into mere distinctness, nothing more.

  Still, at first sight, stood forth undoubtedly the fact

  Some deviation was: in no one case there lacked

  The certain sign and mark, — say hint, say, trick of lip

  Or twist of nose, — that proved a fault in workmanship,

  Change in the prime design, some hesitancy here

  And there, which checked the man and let the beast appear;

  But that was all.

  C.

  All: yet enough to bid each tongue

  Lie in abeyance still. They talked, themselves among,

  Of themselves, to themselves; I saw the mouths at play,

  The gesture that enforced, the eye that strove to say

  The same thing as the voice, and seldom gained its point

  — That this was so, I saw; but all seemed out of joint

  I’ the vocal medium ‘twixt the world and me. I gained

  Knowledge by notice, not by giving ear, — attained

  To truth by what men seemed, not said: to me one glance

  Was worth whole histories of noisy utterance,

  — At least, to me in dream.

  CI.

  And presently I found

  That, just as ugliness had withered, so unwound

  Itself, and perished off, repugnance to what wrong

  Might linger yet i’ the make of man. My will was strong

  I’ the matter; I could pick and choose, project my weight:

  (Remember how we saw the boatman trim his freight!)

  Determine to observe, or manage to escape,

  Or make divergency assume another shape

  By shift of point of sight in me the observer: thus

  Corrected, added to, subtracted from, — discuss

  Each variant quality, and brute-beast touch was turned

  Into mankind’s safeguard! Force, guile, were arms which earned

  My praise, not blame at all: for we must learn to live,

  Case-hardened at all points, not bare and sensitive,

  But plated for defence, nay, furnished for attack,

  With spikes at the due place, that neither front nor back

  May suffer in that squeeze with nature, we find — life.

  Are we not here to learn the good of peace through strife,

  Of love through hate, and reach knowledge by ignorance?

  Why, those are helps thereto, which late we eyed askance,

  And nicknamed unaware! Just so, a sword we call

  Superfluous, and cry out against, at festival:

  Wear it in time of war, its clink and clatter grate

  O’ the ear to purpose then!

  CII.

  I found, one must abate

  One’s scorn of the soul’s casing, distinct from the soul’s self —

  Which is the centre-drop: whereas the pride in pelf,

  The lust to seem the thing it cannot be, the greed

  For praise, and all the rest seen outside, — these indeed

  Are the hard polished cold crystal environment

  Of those strange orbs unearthed i’ the Druid temple, meant

  For divination (so the learned please to think)

  Wherein you may admire one dew-drop roll and wink,

  All unaffected by — quite alien to — what sealed

  And saved it long ago: though how it got congealed

  I shall not give a guess, nor how, by power occult,

  The solid surface-shield was outcome and result

  Of simple dew at work to save itself amid

  The unwatery force around; protected thus, dew slid

  Safe through all opposites, impatient to absorb

  Its spot of life, and last for ever in the orb

  We, now, from hand to hand pass with impunity.

  CIII.

  And the delight wherewith I watch this crowd must be

  Akin to that which crowns the chemist when he winds

  Thread up and up, till clue be fairly clutched, — unbinds

  The composite, ties fast the simple to its mate,

  And, tracing each effect back to its cause, elate,

  Constructs in fancy, from the fewest primitives,

  The complex and complete, all diverse life, that lives

  Not only in beast, bird, fish, reptile, insect, but

  The very plants and earths and ores. Just so I glut

  My hunger both to be and know the thing I am,

  By contrast with the thing I am not; so, through sham

  And outside, I arrive at inmost real, probe

  And prove how the nude form obtained the chequered robe.

  CIV.

  — Experience, I am glad to master soon or late,

  Here, there and everywhere i’ the world, without debate!

  Only, in Venice why? What reason for Mark’s Square

  Rather than Timbuctoo?

  CV.

  And I became aware,

  Scarcely the word escaped my lips, that swift ensued

  In silence and by stealth, and yet with certitude,

  A formidable change of the amphitheatre

  Which held the Carnival; although the human stir

  Continued just the same amid that shift of scene.

  CVI.

  For as on edifice of cloud i’ the grey and green

  Of evening, — built about some glory of the west,

  To barricade the sun’s departure, — manifest,

  He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapour, crag and crest

  Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and deed

  They cluster round and keep their very own, nor
heed

  The world at watch; while we, breathlessly at the base

  O’ the castellated bulk, note momently the mace

  Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with every blow,

  Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico

  I’ the structure: heights and depths, beneath the leaden stress,

  Crumble and melt and mix together, coälesce

  Re-form, but sadder still, subdued yet more and more

  By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need pore

  No longer on the dull impoverished decadence

  Of all that pomp of pile in towering evidence

  So lately: —

  CVII.

  Even thus nor otherwise, meseemed

  That if I fixed my gaze awhile on what I dreamed

  Was Venice’ Square, Mark’s Church, the scheme was straight unschemed,

  A subtle something had its way within the heart

  Of each and every house I watched, with counterpart

  Of tremor through the front and outward face, until

  Mutation was at end; impassive and stock-still

  Stood now the ancient house, grown — new, is scarce the phrase,

  Since older, in a sense, — altered to . . . what i’ the ways,

  Ourselves are wont to see, coërced by city, town

  Or village, anywhere i’ the world, pace up or down

  Europe! In all the maze, no single tenement

  I saw, but I could claim acquaintance with.

  CVIII.

  There went

  Conviction to my soul, that what I took of late

  For Venice was the world; its Carnival — the state

  Of mankind, masquerade in life-long permanence

  For all time, and no one particular feast-day. Whence

  ‘T was easy to infer what meant my late disgust

  At the brute-pageant, each grotesque of greed and lust

  And idle hate, and love as impotent for good —

  When from my pride of place I passed the interlude

  In critical review; and what, the wonder that ensued

  When, from such pinnacled pre-eminence, I found

  Somehow the proper goal for wisdom was the ground

  And not the sky, — so, slid sagaciously betimes

  Down heaven’s baluster-rope, to reach the mob of mimes

  And mummers; whereby came discovery there was just

  Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,

  Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift

  The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift

  Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames

  Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names

  According to what stage i’ the process turned his rough,