Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  Respecting the fit use of faculty.’

  No whit the more did athlete slacken pace.

  Soon the jeers grew: ‘Cold hater of his kind,

  A sea-cave suits him, not the vulgar hearth!

  What need of tongue-talk, with a bookish store

  Would stock ten cities?’ Shadow of an ass!

  No whit the worse did athlete touch the mark

  And, at the turning-point, consign his scorn

  O’ the scorners to that final trilogy

  ‘Hupsipule,’ ‘Phoinissai,’ and the Match

  Of Life Contemplative with Active Life,

  Zethos against Amphion. Ended so?

  Nowise! — began again; for heroes rest

  Dropping shield’s oval o’er the entire man,

  And he who thus took Contemplation’s prize

  Turned stade-point but to face Activity.

  Out of all shadowy hands extending help

  For life’s decline pledged to youth’s labour still,

  Whatever renovation flatter age, —

  Society with pastime, solitude

  With peace, — he chose the hand that gave the heart,

  Bade Macedonian Archelaos take

  The leavings of Athenai, ash once flame.

  For fifty politicians’ frosty work,

  One poet’s ash proved ample and to spare:

  He propped the state and filled the treasury,

  Counselled the king as might a meaner soul,

  Furnished the friend with what shall stand in stead

  Of crown and sceptre, star his name about.

  When these are dust; for him, Euripides

  Last the old hand on the old phorminx flung,

  Clashed thence ‘Alkaion,’ maddened ‘Pentheus’ up;

  Then music sighed itself away, one moan

  Iphigeneia made by Aulis’ strand;

  With her and music died Euripides.

  “The poet-friend who followed him to Thrace,

  Agathon, writes thus much: the merchant-ship

  Moreover brings a message from the king

  To young Euripides, who went on board

  This morning at Mounuchia: all is true.”

  I said “Thank Zeus for the great news and good!”

  “Nay, the report is running in brief fire

  Through the town’s stubbly furrow,” he resumed:

  — ”Entertains brightly what their favourite styles

  ‘The City of Gapers’ for a week perhaps,

  Supplants three luminous tales, but yesterday

  Pronounced sufficient lamps to last the month:

  How Glauketes, outbidding Morsimos,

  Paid market-price for one Kopaic eel

  A thousand drachmai, and then cooked his prize

  Not proper conger-fashion but in oil

  And nettles, as man fries the foam-fish-kind;

  How all the captains of the triremes, late

  Victors at Arginousai, on return

  Will, for reward, be straightway put to death;

  How Mikon wagered a Thessalian mime

  Trained him by Lais, looked on as complete,

  Against Leogoras’ blood-mare koppa-marked,

  Valued six talents, — swore, accomplished so,

  The girl could swallow at a draught, nor breathe,

  A choinix of unmixed Mendesian wine;

  And having lost the match will — dine on herbs!

  Three stories late a-flame, at once extinct,

  Outblazed by just ‘Euripides is dead’!

  “I met the concourse from the Theatre,

  The audience flocking homeward: victory

  Again awarded Aristophanes

  Precisely for his old play chopped and changed

  ‘The Female Celebrators of the Feast’ —

  That Thesmophoria, tried a second time.

  ‘Never such full success!’ — assured the folk,

  Who yet stopped praising to have word of mouth

  With ‘Euthukles, the bard’s own intimate,

  Balaustion’s husband, the right man to ask.’

  “‘Dead, yes, but how dead, may acquaintance know?

  You were the couple constant at his cave:

  Tell us now, is it true that women, moved

  By reason of his liking Krateros . . .’

  “I answered ‘He was loved by Sokrates.’

  “‘Nay,’ said another, ‘envy did the work!

  For, emulating poets of the place,

  One Arridaios, one Krateues, both

  Established in the royal favour, these . . .’

  “Protagoras instructed him,” said I.

  “‘ Phu ,’ whistled Comic Platon, ‘hear the fact!

  ‘T was well said of your friend by Sophokles

  “He hate our women? In his verse, belike:

  But when it comes to prose-work, — ha, ha, ha!”

  New climes don’t change old manners: so, it chanced,

  Pursuing an intrigue one moonless night

  With Arethousian Nikodikos’ wife,

  (Come now, his years were simply seventy-five)

  Crossing the palace-court, what haps he on

  But Archelaos’ pack of hungry hounds?

  Who tore him piecemeal ere his cry brought help.’

  “I asked: Did not you write ‘The Festivals’?

  You best know what dog tore him when alive.

  You others, who now make a ring to hear,

  Have not you just enjoyed a second treat,

  Proclaimed that ne’er was play more worthy prize

  Than this, myself assisted at, last year,

  And gave its worth to, — spitting on the same?

  Appraise no poetry, — price cuttlefish,

  Or that seaweed-alphestes, scorpion-sort,

  Much famed for mixing mud with fantasy

  On midnights! I interpret no foul dreams.”

  If so said Euthukles, so could not I,

  Balaustion, say. After “Lusistraté”

  No more for me of “people’s privilege,”

  No witnessing “the Grand old Comedy

  Coëval with our freedom, which, curtailed,

  Were freedom’s deathblow: relic of the past,

  When Virtue laughingly told truth to Vice,

  Uncensured, since the stern mouth, stuffed with flowers,

  Through poetry breathed satire, perfumed blast

  Which sense snuffed up while searched unto the bone!”

  I was a stranger: “For first joy,” urged friends,

  “Go hear our Comedy, some patriot piece

  That plies the selfish advocates of war

  With argument so unevadable

  That crash fall Kleons whom the finer play

  Of reason, tickling, deeper wounds no whit

  Than would a spear-thrust from a savory-stalk!

  No: you hear knave and fool told crime and fault,

  And see each scourged his quantity of stripes.

  ‘Rough dealing, awkward language,’ whine our fops:

  The world’s too squeamish now to bear plain words

  Concerning deeds it acts with gust enough:

  But, thanks to wine-lees and democracy,

  We’ve still our stage where truth calls spade a spade!

  Ashamed? Phuromachos’ decree provides

  The sex may sit discreetly, witness all,

  Sorted, the good with good, the gay with gay,

  Themselves unseen, no need to force a blush.

  A Rhodian wife and ignorant so long?

  Go hear next play!”

  I heard “Lusistraté.”

  Waves, said to wash pollution from the world,

  Take that plague-memory, cure that pustule caught

  As, past escape, I sat and saw the piece

  By one appalled at Phaidra’s fate, — the chaste,

  Whom, because chaste, the wicked goddess chained

  To that same serpent of unchast
ity

  She loathed most, and who, coiled so, died distraught

  Rather than make submission, loose one limb

  Love-wards, at lambency of honeyed tongue,

  Or torture of the scales which scraped her snow

  — I say, the piece by him who charged this piece

  (Because Euripides shrank not to teach,

  If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,

  May prove their match by willing to be good)

  With infamies the Scythian’s whip should cure —

  “Such outrage done the public — Phaidra named!

  Such purpose to corrupt ingenuous youth,

  Such insult cast on female character!” —

  Why, when I saw that bestiality —

  So beyond all brute-beast imagining,

  That when, to point the moral at the close,

  Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair

  Was “Reconciliation,” stripped her charms,

  That exhibition simply bade us breathe,

  Seemed something healthy and commendable

  After obscenity grotesqued so much

  It slunk away revolted at itself.

  Henceforth I had my answer when our sage

  Pattern-proposing seniors pleaded grave

  “You fail to fathom here the deep design!

  All’s acted in the interest of truth,

  Religion, and those manners old and dear

  Which made our city great when citizens

  Like Aristeides and like Miltiades

  Wore each a golden tettix in his hair.”

  What do they wear now under — Kleophon?

  Well, for such reasons, — I am out of breath,

  But loathsomeness we needs must hurry past, —

  I did not go to see, nor then nor now,

  The “Thesmophoriazousai.” But, since males

  Choose to brave first, blame afterward, nor brand

  Without fair taste of what they stigmatize,

  Euthukles had not missed the first display,

  Original portrait of Euripides

  By “Virtue laughingly reproving Vice”:

  “Virtue,” — the author, Aristophanes,

  Who mixed an image out of his own depths,

  Ticketed as I tell you. Oh, this time

  No more pretension to recondite worth!

  No joke in aid of Peace, no demagogue

  Pun-pelleted from Pnux, no kordax-dance

  Overt helped covertly the Ancient Faith!

  All now was muck, home-produce, honestman

  The author’s soul secreted to a play

  Which gained the prize that day we heard the death.

  I thought “How thoroughly death alters things!

  Where is the wrong now, done our dead and great?

  How natural seems grandeur in relief,

  Cliff-base with frothy spites against its calm!”

  Euthukles interposed — he read my thought —

  “O’er them, too, in a moment came the change.

  The crowd’s enthusiastic, to a man:

  Since, rake as such may please the ordure-heap

  Because of certain sparkles presumed ore,

  At first flash of true lightning overhead,

  They look up, nor resume their search too soon.

  The insect-scattering sign is evident,

  And nowhere winks a fire-fly rival now,

  Nor bustles any beetle of the brood

  With trundled dung-ball meant to menace heaven.

  Contrariwise, the cry is ‘Honour him!’

  ‘A statue in the theatre!’ wants one;

  Another ‘Bring the poet’s body back,

  Bury him in Peiraios: o’er his tomb

  Let Alkamenes carve the music-witch,

  The songstress-seiren, meed of melody:

  Thoukudides invent his epitaph!’

  To-night the whole town pays its tribute thus.”

  Our tribute should not be the same, my friend!

  Statue? Within our heart he stood, he stands!

  As for the vest outgrown now by the form,

  Low flesh that clothed high soul, — a vesture’s fate —

  Why, let it fade, mix with the elements

  There where it, falling, freed Euripides!

  But for the soul that’s tutelary now

  Till time end, o’er the world to teach and bless —

  How better hail its freedom than by first

  Singing, we two, its own song back again,

  Up to that face from which flowed beauty — face

  Now abler to see triumph and take love

  Than when it glorified Athenai once?

  The sweet and strange Alkestis, which saved me,

  Secured me — you, ends nowise, to my mind,

  In pardon of Admetos. Hearts are fain

  To follow cheerful weary Herakles

  Striding away from the huge gratitude,

  Club shouldered, lion-fleece round loin and flank,

  Bound on the next new labour “height o’er height

  Ever surmounting, — destiny’s decree!”

  Thither He helps us: that’s the story’s end;

  He smiling said so, when I told him mine —

  My great adventure, how Alkestis helped.

  Afterward, when the time for parting fell,

  He gave me, with two other precious gifts,

  This third and best, consummating the grace

  “Herakles,” writ by his own hand, each line.

  “If it have worth, reward is still to seek.

  Somebody, I forget who, gained the prize

  And proved arch-poet: time must show!” he smiled:

  “Take this, and, when the noise tires out, judge me —

  Some day, not slow to dawn, when somebody —

  Who? I forget — proves nobody at all!”

  Is not that day come? What if you and I

  Re-sing the song, inaugurate the fame?

  We have not waited to acquaint ourselves

  With song and subject; we can prologuize

  How, at Eurustheus’ bidding, — hate strained hard, —

  Herakles had departed, one time more,

  On his last labour, worst of all the twelve;

  Descended into Haides, thence to drag

  The triple-headed hound, which sun should see

  Spite of the god whose darkness whelped the Fear.

  Down went the hero, “back — how should he come?”

  So laughed King Lukos, an old enemy,

  Who judged that absence testified defeat

  Of the land’s loved one, — since he saved the land

  And for that service wedded Megara

  Daughter of Thebai, realm her child should rule.

  Ambition, greed and malice seized their prey,

  The Heracleian House, defenceless left,

  Father and wife and child, to trample out

  Trace of its hearth-fire: since extreme old age

  Wakes pity, woman’s wrong wins championship,

  And child may grow up man and take revenge.

  Hence see we that, from out their palace-home

  Hunted, for last resource they cluster now

  Couched on the cold ground, hapless supplicants

  About their courtyard altar, — Household Zeus

  It is, the Three in funeral garb beseech,

  Delaying death so, till deliverance come —

  When did it ever? — from the deep and dark.

  And thus breaks silence old Amphitruon’s voice. . . .

  Say I not true thus far, my Euthukles?

  Suddenly, torch-light! knocking at the door,

  Loud, quick, “Admittance for the revels’ lord!”

  Some unintelligible Komos-cry —

  Raw-flesh red, no cap upon his head,

  Dionusos, Bacchos, Phales, Iacchos,

  In let him reel with the kid-skin at his heel,

  Whe
re it buries in the spread of the bushy myrtlebed!

  (Our Rhodian Jackdaw-song was sense to that!)

  Then laughter, outbursts ruder and more rude,

  Through which, with silver point, a fluting pierced,

  And ever “Open, open, Bacchos bids!”

  But at last — one authoritative word,

  One name of an immense significance:

  For Euthukles rose up, threw wide the door.

  There trooped the Choros of the Comedy

  Crowned and triumphant; first, those flushed Fifteen

  Men that wore women’s garb, grotesque disguise.

  Then marched the Three, — who played Mnesilochos,

  Who, Toxotes, and who, robed right, masked rare,

  Monkeyed our Great and Dead to heart’s content

  That morning in Athenai. Masks were down

  And robes doffed now; the sole disguise was drink.

  Mixing with these — I know not what gay crowd,

  Girl-dancers, flute-boys, and pre-eminent

  Among them, — doubtless draped with such reserve

  As stopped fear of the fifty-drachma fine

  (Beside one’s name on public fig-tree nailed)

  Which women pay who in the streets walk bare, —

  Behold Elaphion of the Persic dance!

  Who lately had frisked fawn-foot, and the rest,

  — All for the Patriot Cause, the Antique Faith,

  The Conservation of True Poesy —

  Could I but penetrate the deep design!

  Elaphion, more Peiraios-known as “Phaps,”

  Tripped at the head of the whole banquet-band

  Who came in front now, as the first fell back;

  And foremost — the authoritative voice,

  The revels-leader, he who gained the prize,

  And got the glory of the Archon’s feast —

  There stood in person Aristophanes.

  And no ignoble presence! On the bulge

  Of the clear baldness, — all his head one brow, —

  True, the veins swelled, blue network, and there surged

  A red from cheek to temple, — then retired

  As if the dark-leaved chaplet damped a flame, —

  Was never nursed by temperance or health.

  But huge the eyeballs rolled back native fire,

  Imperiously triumphant: nostrils wide

  Waited their incense; while the pursed mouth’s pout

  Aggressive, while the beak supreme above,

  While the head, face, nay, pillared throat thrown back,

  Beard whitening under like a vinous foam,

  These made a glory, of such insolence —

  I thought, — such domineering deity

  Hephaistos might have carved to cut the brine

  For his gay brother’s prow, imbrue that path

  Which, purpling, recognized the conqueror.

  Impudent and majestic: drunk, perhaps,

  But that’s religion; sense too plainly snuffed: