And (our travelled friend assured you) — if such miracle might be —
Comparable for completeness of both blessings — all around
Nature, and, inside her circle, safety from world’s sight and sound —
Comparable to our Saisiaz. “Hold it fast and guard it well!
Go and see and vouch for certain, then come back and never tell
Living soul but us; and haply, prove our sky from cloud as clear,
There may we four meet, praise fortune just as now, another year!”
Thus you charged him on departure: not without the final charge,
“Mind to-morrow’s early meeting! We must leave our journey marge 70
Ample for the wayside wonders: there’s the stoppage at the inn
Three-parts up the mountain, where the hardships of the track begin;
There’s the convent worth a visit; but, the triumph crowning all —
There’s Salève’s own platform facing glory which strikes greatness small,
— Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, needles red and white and green,
Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in his demesne.
So, some three weeks since, we saw them: so, to-morrow we intend
You shall see them likewise; therefore Good Night till to-morrow, friend!”
Last, the nothings that extinguish embers of a vivid day:
“What might be the Marshal’s next move, what Gambetta’s counter-play?” 80
Till the landing on the staircase saw escape the latest spark:
“Sleep you well!” “Sleep but as well, you!” — lazy love quenched, all was dark.
Nothing dark next day at sundawn! Up I rose and forth I fared:
Took my plunge within the bath-pool, pacified the watch-dog scared,
Saw proceed the transmutation — Jura’s black to one gold glow,
Trod your level path that let me drink the morning deep and slow,
Reached the little quarry — ravage recompensed by shrub and fern —
Till the overflowing ardours told me time was for return.
So, return I did, and gaily. But, for once, from no far mound
Waved salute a tall white figure. “Has her sleep been so profound? 90
Foresight, rather, prudent saving strength for day’s expenditure!
Ay, the chamber-window’s open: out and on the terrace, sure!”
No, the terrace showed no figure, tall, white, leaning through the wreaths,
Tangle-twine of leaf and bloom that intercept the air one breathes,
Interpose between one’s love and Nature’s loving, hill and dale
Down to where the blue lake’s wrinkle marks the river’s inrush pale
— Mazy Arve: whereon no vessel but goes sliding white and plain,
Not a steamboat pants from harbour but one hears pulsate amain,
Past the city’s congregated peace of homes and pomp of spires
— Man’s mild protest that there’s something more than Nature, man requires, 100
And that, useful as is Nature to attract the tourist’s foot,
Quiet slow sure money-making proves the matter’s very root, —
Need for body, — while the spirit also needs a comfort reached
By no help of lake or mountain, but the texts whence Calvin preached.
“Here’s the veil withdrawn from landscape: up to Jura and beyond,
All awaits us ranged and ready; yet she violates the bond,
Neither leans nor looks nor listens: why is this?” A turn of eye
Took the whole sole answer, gave the undisputed reason “why!”
This dread way you had your summons! No premonitory touch,
As you talked and laughed (‘tis told me) scarce a minute ere the clutch 110
Captured you in cold forever. Cold? nay, warm you were as life
When I raised you, while the others used, in passionate poor strife,
All the means that seemed to promise any aid, and all in vain.
Gone you were, and I shall never see that earnest face again
Grow transparent, grow transfigured with the sudden light that leapt,
At the first word’s provocation, from the heart-deeps where it slept.
Therefore, paying piteous duty, what seemed you have we consigned
Peacefully to — what I think were, of all earth-beds, to your mind
Most the choice for quiet, yonder: low walls stop the vines’ approach,
Lovingly Salève protects you; village-sports will ne’er encroach 120
On the stranger lady’s silence, whom friends bore so kind and well
Thither “just for love’s sake,” — such their own word was: and who can tell?
You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world:
May be! flower that’s full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that’s furled.
But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand
Bud to bell and outspread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand
— Maybe, throb of heart, beneath which — quickening farther than it knew, —
Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.
Disembosomed, re-embosomed, — must one memory suffice,
Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside named Edelweiss? 130
Rare thing, red or white, you rest now: two days slumbered through; and since
One day more will see me rid of this same scene whereat I wince,
Tetchy at all sights and sounds and pettish at each idle charm
Proffered me who pace now singly where we two went arm in arm, —
I have turned upon my weakness: asked, “And what, forsooth, prevents
That, this latest day allowed me, I fulfil of her intents
One she had the most at heart — that we should thus again survey
From Salève Mont Blanc together?” Therefore, — dared and done to-day
Climbing, — here I stand: but you — where?
If a spirit of the place
Broke the silence, bade me question, promised answer, — what disgrace 140
Did I stipulate “Provided answer suit my hopes, not fears!”
Would I shrink to learn my life-time’s limit — days, weeks, months or years?
Would I shirk assurance on each point whereat I can but guess —
“Does the soul survive the body? Is there God’s self, no or yes?”
If I know my mood, ‘twere constant — come in whatsoe’er uncouth
Shape it should, nay, formidable — so the answer were but truth.
Well, and wherefore shall it daunt me, when ‘tis I myself am tasked,
When, by weakness weakness questioned, weakly answers — weakly asked?
Weakness never needs be falseness: truth is truth in each degree
— Thunderpealed by God to Nature, whispered by my soul to me. 150
Nay, the weakness turns to strength and triumphs in a truth beyond:
“Mine is but man’s truest answer — how were it did God respond?”
I shall no more dare to mimic such response in futile speech,
Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach,
Than, — because it well may happen yonder, where the far snows blanch
Mute Mont Blanc, that who stands near them sees and hears an avalanche, —
I shall pick a clod and throw, — cry, “Such the sight and such the sound!
What though I nor see nor hear them? Others do, the proofs abound!”
Can I make my eye an eagle’s, sharpen ear to recognize
Sound o’er league and league of silence? Can I know, who but surmise? 160
If I dared no self-deception when, a week since, I and you
Walked and talked along the grass-path, passing lightly in review
What seemed hits and what seemed misses in a certain fence-play, — strife
Sundry minds of mark engaged in “On the Soul and Future Life,” —
If I ventured estimating what was come of parried thrust,
Subtle stroke, and, rightly, wrongly, estimating could be just
— Just, though life so seemed abundant in the form which moved by mine,
I might well have played at feigning, fooling, — laughed “What need opine
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain,
And this first life claims a second, else I count its good no gain?” 170
Much less have I heart to palter when the matter to decide
Now becomes “Was ending ending once and always, when you died?”
Did the face, the form I lifted as it lay, reveal the loss
Not alone of life but soul? A tribute to yon flowers and moss,
What of you remains beside? A memory! Easy to attest
“Certainly from out the world that one believes who knew her best
Such was good in her, such fair, which fair and good were great perchance
Had but fortune favoured, bidden each shy faculty advance;
After all — who knows another? Only as I know, I speak.”
So much of you lives within me while I live my year or week. 180
Then my fellow takes the tale up, not unwilling to aver
Duly in his turn, “I knew him best of all, as he knew her:
Such he was, and such he was not, and such other might have been
But that somehow every actor, somewhere in this earthly scene,
Fails.” And so both memories dwindle, yours and mine together linked,
Till there is but left for comfort, when the last spark proves extinct,
This — that somewhere new existence led by men and women new
Possibly attains perfection coveted by me and you;
While ourselves, the only witness to what work our life evolved,
Only to ourselves proposing problems proper to be solved 190
By ourselves alone, — who working ne’er shall know if work bear fruit
Others reap and garner, heedless how produced by stalk and root, —
We who, darkling, timed the day’s birth, — struggling, testified to peace, —
Earned, by dint of failure, triumph, — we, creative thought, must cease
In created word, thought’s echo, due to impulse long since sped!
Why repine? There’s ever some one lives although ourselves be dead!
Well, what signifies repugnance? Truth is truth howe’er it strike.
Fair or foul the lot apportioned life on earth, we bear alike.
Stalwart body idly yoked to stunted spirit, powers, that fain
Else would soar, condemned to grovel, groundlings through the fleshly chain, — 200
Help that hinders, hindrance proved but help disguised when all too late, —
Hindrance is the fact acknowledged, howsoe’er explained as Fate,
Fortune, Providence: we bear, own life a burthen more or less.
Life thus owned unhappy, is there supplemental happiness
Possible and probable in life to come? or must we count
Life a curse and not a blessing, summed-up in its whole amount,
Help and hindrance, joy and sorrow?
Why should I want courage here?
I will ask and have an answer, — with no favour, with no fear, —
From myself. How much, how little, do I inwardly believe
True that controverted doctrine? Is it fact to which I cleave, 210
Is it fancy I but cherish, when I take upon my lips
Phrase the solemn Tuscan fashioned, and declare the soul’s eclipse
Not the soul’s extinction? take his “I believe and I declare —
Certain am I — from this life I pass into a better, there
Where that lady lives of whom enamoured was my soul” — where this
Other lady, my companion dear and true, she also is?
I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer presuppose
Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers, — is, it knows;
As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself, — a force
Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course, 220
Unaffected by its end, — that this thing likewise needs must be;
Call this — God, then, call that — soul, and both — the only facts for me.
Prove them facts? that they o’erpass my power of proving, proves them such:
Fact it is I know I know not something which is fact as much.
What before caused all the causes, what effect of all effects
Haply follows, — these are fancy. Ask the rush if it suspects
Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how
Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except that now
Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain than itself,
Is the everyway external stream that now through shoal and shelf 230
Floats it onward, leaves it — may be — wrecked at last, or lands on shore
There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore.
— May be! mere surmise not knowledge: much conjecture styled belief,
What the rush conceives the stream means through the voyage blind and brief.
Why, because I doubtless am, shall I as doubtless be? “Because
God seems good and wise.” Yet under this our life’s apparent laws
Reigns a wrong which, righted once, would give quite other laws to life.
“He seems potent.” Potent here, then: why are right and wrong at strife?
Has in life the wrong the better? Happily life ends so soon!
Right predominates in life? Then why two lives and double boon? 240
“Anyhow, we want it: wherefore want?” Because, without the want,
Life, now human, would be brutish: just that hope, however scant,
Makes the actual life worth leading; take the hope therein away,
All we have to do is surely not endure another day.
This life has its hopes for this life, hopes that promise joy: life done —
Out of all the hopes, how many had complete fulfilment? none,
“But the soul is not the body:” and the breath is not the flute;
Both together make the music: either marred and all is mute.
Truce to such old sad contention whence, according as we shape
Most of hope or most of fear, we issue in a half-escape: 250
“We believe” is sighed. I take the cup of comfort proffered thus,
Taste and try each soft ingredient, sweet infusion, and discuss
What their blending may accomplish for the cure of doubt, till — slow,
Sorrowful, but how decided! needs must I o’erturn it — so!
Cause before, effect behind me — blanks! The midway point I am,
Caused, itself — itself efficient: in that narrow space must cram
All experience — out of which there crowds conjecture manifold,
But, as knowledge, this comes only — things may be as I behold,
Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;
I myself am what I know not — ignorance which proves no bar 260
To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize
What to rne is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest — surmise.
If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain, —
Mere surmise: my own experience — that is knowledge, once again!
I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
This — there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
If — (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!) —
&
nbsp; If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil’s place,
And life, time, — with all their chances, changes — just probation-space, 270
Mine, for me. But those apparent other mortals — theirs, for them?
Knowledge stands on my experience: all outside its narrow hem,
Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect mankind
Just as they affect myself? Why, here’s my neighbour color-blind,
Eyes like mine to all appearance: “green as grass” do I affirm?
“Red as grass” he contradicts me: which employs the proper term?
Were we two the earth’s sole tenants, with no third for referee,
How should I distinguish? Just so, God must judge ‘twixt man and me.
To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green; 280
Still, without what seems such mortal’s pleasure, pain, my life were lost
— Life, my whole sole chance to prove — although at man’s apparent cost —
What is beauteous and what ugly, right to strive for, right to shun,
Fit to help and fit to hinder, — prove my forces every one,
Good and evil, — learn life’s lesson, hate of evil, love of good,
As ‘tis set me, understand so much as may be understood —
Solve the problem: “From thine apprehended scheme of things, deduce
Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
In each good or evil issue! nor miscalculate alike
Counting one the other in the final balance, which to strike, 290
Soul was born and life allotted: ay, the show of things unfurled
For thy summing-up and judgment, — thine, no other mortal’s world!”
What though fancy scarce may grapple with the complex and immense
— ”His own world for every mortal?” Postulate omnipotence!
Limit power, and simple grows the complex: shrunk to atom size,
That which loomed immense to fancy low before my reason lies, —
I survey it and pronounce it work like other work: success
Here and there, the workman’s glory, — here and there, his shame no less.
Failure as conspicuous. Taunt not “Human work ape work divine?”
As the power, expect performance! God’s be God’s as mine is mine! 300
God whose power made man and made man’s wants, and made, to meet those wants,
Heaven and earth which, through the body, prove the spirit’s ministrants,
Excellently all, — did He lack power or was the will in fault
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 197
