Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

In wisdom, should call to her side with an affable ‘Up hither, come, mate!’ “

  “The Good are my mates — how else? Why doubt it?” the Queen upbridled:

  “Sure even above the Wise, — or in travel my eyes have idled, —

  I see the Good stand plain: be they rich, poor, shrewd or simple,

  If Good they only are. . . . Permit me to drop my wimple!”

  And, in that bashful jerk of her body, she — peace, thou scoffer! —

  Jostled the King’s right-hand stretched courteously help to proffer,

  And so disclosed a portent: all unaware the Prince eyed

  The Ring which bore the Name — turned outside now from inside!

  The truth-compelling Name! — and at once “I greet the Wise — Oh,

  Certainly welcome such to my court — with this proviso:

  The building must be my temple, my person stand forth the statue,

  The picture my portrait prove, and the poem my praise — you cat, you!”

  But Solomon nonplussed? Nay! “Be truthful in turn!” so bade he:

  “See the Name, obey its hest!” And at once subjoins the lady

  — “Provided the Good are the young, men strong and tall and proper,

  Such servants I straightway enlist, — which means . . . “ but the blushes stop her.

  “Ah, Soul,” the Monarch sighed, “that wouldst soar yet ever crawlest,

  How comes it thou canst discern the greatest yet choose the smallest,

  Unless because heaven is far, where wings find fit expansion,

  While creeping on all-fours suits, suffices the earthly mansion?

  “Aspire to the Best! But which? There are Bests and Bests so many,

  With a habitat each for each, earth’s Best as much Best as any!

  On Lebanon roots the cedar — soil lofty, yet stony and sandy —

  While hyssop, of worth in its way, on the wall grows low but handy.

  “Above may the Soul spread wing, spurn body and sense beneath her;

  Below she must condescend to plodding unbuoyed by æther.

  In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity;

  On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools — that’s Vanity.

  “It is nought, it will go, it can never presume above to trouble me;

  But here, — why, it toys and tickles and teases, howe’er I redouble me

  In a doggedest of endeavours to play the indifferent. Therefore,

  Suppose we resume discourse? Thou hast travelled thus far: but wherefore?

  “Solely for Solomon’s sake, to see whom earth styles Sagest?”

  Through her blushes laughed the Queen. “For the sake of a Sage? The gay jest!

  On high, be communion with Mind — there, Body concerns not Balkis:

  Down here, — do I make too bold? Sage Solomon, — one fool’s small kiss!”

  Cristina and Monaldeschi

  Ah, but how each loved each, Marquis!

  Here’s the gallery they trod

  Both together, he her god,

  She his idol, — lend your rod,

  Chamberlain! — ay, there they are — “Quis

  Separabit?” — plain those two

  Touching words come into view,

  Apposite for me and you!

  Since they witness to incessant

  Love like ours: King Francis, he —

  Diane the adored one, she —

  Prototypes of you and me.

  Everywhere is carved her Crescent

  With his Salamander-sign —

  Flame-fed creature: flame benign

  To itself or, if malign,

  Only to the meddling curious,

  — So, be warned, Sir! Where’s my head?

  How it wanders! What I said

  Merely meant — the creature, fed

  Thus on flame, was scarce injurious

  Save to fools who woke its ire,

  Thinking fit to play with fire.

  ’Tis the Crescent you admire?

  Then, be Diane! I’ll be Francis.

  Crescents change, — true! — wax and wane.

  Woman-like: male hearts retain

  Heat nor, once warm, cool again.

  So, we figure — such our chance is —

  I as man and you as . . . What?

  Take offence? My Love forgot

  He plays woman, I do not?

  I — the woman? See my habit.

  Ask my people! Anyhow,

  Be we what we may, one vow

  Binds us, male or female. Now, —

  Stand, Sir! Read! “Quis separabit?”

  Half a mile of pictured way

  Past these palace-walls to-day

  Traversed, this I came to say.

  You must needs begin to love me;

  First I hated, then, at best,

  — Have it so! — I acquiesced;

  Pure compassion did the rest.

  From below thus raised above me,

  Would you, step by step, descend,

  Pity me, become my friend,

  Like me, like less, loathe at end?

  That’s the ladder’s round you rose by!

  That — my own foot kicked away,

  Having raised you: let it stay,

  Serve you for retreating? Nay.

  Close to me you climbed: as close by,

  Keep your station, though the peak

  Reached proves somewhat bare and bleak!

  Woman’s strong if man is weak.

  Keep here, loving me forever!

  Love’s look, gesture, speech, I claim;

  Act love, lie love, all the same —

  Play as earnest were our game!

  Lonely I stood long: ‘twas clever

  When you climbed, before men’s eyes,

  Spurned the earth and scaled the skies,

  Gained my peak and grasped your prize.

  Here you stood, then, to men’s wonder;

  Here you tire of standing? Kneel!

  Cure what giddiness you feel,

  This way! Do your senses reel?

  Not unlikely! What rolls under?

  Yawning death in yon abyss

  Where the waters whirl and hiss

  Round more frightful peaks than this.

  Should my buffet dash you thither. . . .

  But be sage! No watery grave

  Needs await you: seeming brave

  Kneel on safe, dear timid slave!

  You surmised, when you climbed hither,

  Just as easy were retreat

  Should you tire, conceive unmeet

  Longer patience at my feet?

  Me as standing, you as stooping, —

  Who arranged for each the pose?

  Lest men think us friends turned foes,

  Keep the attitude you chose!

  Men are used to this same grouping —

  I and you like statues seen.

  You and I, no third between,

  Kneel and stand! That makes the scene.

  Mar it — and one buffet . . . Pardon!

  Needless warmth — wise words in waste!

  ’Twas prostration that replaced

  Kneeling, then? A proof of taste.

  Crouch, not kneel, while I mount guard on

  Prostrate love — become no waif,

  No estray to waves that chafe

  Disappointed — love’s so safe!

  Waves that chafe? The idlest fancy!

  Peaks that scare? I think we know

  Walls enclose our sculpture: so

  Grouped, we pose in Fontainebleau.

  Up now! Wherefore hesitancy?

  Arm in arm and cheek by cheek,

  Laugh with me at waves and peak!

  Silent still? Why, pictures speak.

  See, where Juno strikes Ixion,

  Primatice speaks plainly! Pooh —

  Rather, Florentine Le Roux!

  I’ve lost head for who is who —

  So it swims a
nd wanders! Fie on

  What still proves me female! Here,

  By the staircase! — for we near

  That dark “Gallery of the Deer.”

  Look me in the eyes once! Steady!

  Are you faithful now as erst

  On that eve when we two first

  Vowed at Avon, blessed and cursed

  Faith and falsehood? Pale already?

  Forward! Must my hand compel

  Entrance — this way? Exit — well.

  Somehow, somewhere. Who can tell?

  What if to the self-same place in

  Rustic Avon, at the door

  Of the village church once more,

  Where a tombstone paves the floor

  By that holy-water basin

  You appealed to — “As, below,

  This stone hides its corpse, e’en so

  I your secrets hide”? What ho!

  Friends, my four! You, Priest, confess him!

  I have judged the culprit there:

  Execute my sentence! Care

  For no mail such cowards wear!

  Done, Priest? Then, absolve and bless him!

  Now — you three, stab thick and fast,

  Deep and deeper! Dead at last?

  Thanks, friends — Father, thanks! Aghast?

  What one word of his confession

  Would you tell me, though 1 lured

  With that royal crown abjured

  Just because its bars immured

  Love too much? Love burst compression,

  Fled free, finally confessed

  All its secrets to that breast

  Whence . . . let Avon tell the rest!

  Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli

  O but is it not hard, Dear?

  Mine are the nerves to quake at a mouse:

  If a spider drops I shrink with fear:

  I should die outright in a haunted house;

  While for you — did the danger dared bring help —

  From a lion’s den I could steal his whelp,

  With a serpent round me, stand stock-still,

  Go sleep in a churchyard, — so would will

  Give me the power to dare and do

  Valiantly — just for you!

  Much amiss in the head, Dear,

  I toil at a language, tax my brain

  Attempting to draw — the scratches here!

  I play, play, practise and all in vain:

  But for you — if my triumph brought you pride,

  I would grapple with Greek Plays till I died,

  Paint a portrait of you — who can tell?

  Work my fingers off for your “Pretty well:”

  Language and painting and music too,

  Easily done — for you!

  Strong and fierce in the heart, Dear,

  With — more than a will — what seems a power

  To pounce on my prey, love outbroke here

  In flame devouring and to devour.

  Such love has laboured its best and worst

  To win me a lover; yet, last as first,

  I have not quickened his pulse one beat,

  Fixed a moment’s fancy, bitter or sweet:

  Yet the strong fierce heart’s love’s labour’s due,

  Utterly lost, was — you!

  Adam, Lilith, and Eve

  One day, it thundered and lightened.

  Two women, fairly frightened,

  Sank to their knees, transformed, transfixed,

  At the feet of the man who sat betwixt;

  And “Mercy!” cried each — ”if I tell the truth

  Of a passage in my youth!”

  Said This: “Do you mind the morning

  I met your love with scorning?

  As the worst of the venom left my lips,

  I thought, ‘If, despite this lie, he strips

  The mask from my soul with a kiss — I crawl

  His slave, — soul, body, and all!’ “

  Said That: “We stood to be married;

  The priest, or someone, tarried;

  ‘If Paradise-door prove locked?’ smiled you;

  I thought, as I nodded, smiling too,

  ‘Did one, that’s away, arrive — nor late

  Nor soon should unlock Hell’s gate!’ “

  It ceased to lighten and thunder.

  Up started both in wonder,

  Looked round and saw that the sky was clear,

  Then laughed “Confess you believed us, Dear!”

  “I saw through the joke!” the man replied

  They re-seated themselves beside.

  Ixion

  High in the dome, suspended, of Hell, sad triumph, behold us!

  Here the revenge of a God, there the amends of a Man.

  Whirling forever in torment, flesh once mortal, immortal

  Made — for a purpose of hate — able to die and revive,

  Pays to the uttermost pang, then, newly for payment replenished,

  Doles out — old yet young — agonies ever afresh;

  Whence the result above me: torment is bridged by a rainbow, —

  Tears, sweat, blood, — each spasm, ghastly once, glorified now.

  Wrung, by the rush of the wheel ordained my place of reposing,

  Off in a sparklike spray, — flesh become vapour thro’ pain, — 10

  Flies the bestowment of Zeus, soul’s vaunted bodily vesture,

  Made that his feats observed gain the approval of Man, —

  Flesh that he fashioned with sense of the earth and the sky and the ocean,

  Framed should pierce to the star, fitted to pore on the plant, —

  All, for a purpose of hate, re-framed, re-fashioned, refitted

  Till, consummate at length, — lo, the employment of sense!

  Pain’s mere minister now to the soul, once pledged to her pleasure —

  Soul, if untrammeled by flesh, unapprehensive of pain!

  Body, professed soul’s slave, which serving beguiled and betrayed her,

  Made things false seem true, cheated thro’ eye and thro’ ear, 20

  Lured thus heart and brain to believe in the lying reported, —

  Spurn but the traitrous slave, uttermost atom, away,

  What should obstruct soul’s rush on the real, the only apparent?

  Say I have erred, — how else? Was I Ixion or Zeus?

  Foiled by my senses I dreamed; I doubtless awaken in wonder:

  This proves shine, that — shade? Good was the evil that seemed?

  Shall I, with sight thus gained, by torture be taught I was blind once?

  Sisuphos, teaches thy stone — Tantalos, teaches thy thirst

  Aught which unaided sense, purged pure, less plainly demonstrates?

  No, for the past was dream: now that the dreamers awake, 30

  Sisuphos scouts low fraud, and to Tantalos treason is folly.

  Ask of myself, whose form melts on the murderous wheel,

  What is the sin which throe and throe prove sin to the sinner!

  Say the false charge was true, — thus do I expiate, say,

  Arrogant thought, word, deed, — mere man who conceited me godlike,

  Sat beside Zeus, my friend — knelt before Heré, my love!

  What were the need but of pitying power to touch and disperse it,

  Film-work — eye’s and ear’s — all the distraction of sense?

  How should the soul not see, not hear, — perceive and as plainly

  Render, in thought, word, deed, back again truth — not a lie? 40

  “Ay, but the pain is to punish thee!” Zeus, once more, for a pastime,

  Play the familiar, the frank! Speak and have speech in return!

  I was of Thessaly king, there ruled and a people obeyed me:

  Mine to establish the law, theirs to obey it or die:

  Wherefore? Because of the good to the people, because of the honour

  Thence accruing to me, king, the king’s law was supreme.

  What of the weakling,
the ignorant criminal? Not who, excuseless,

  Breaking my law braved death, knowing his deed and its due —

  Nay, but the feeble and foolish, the poor transgressor, of purpose

  No whit more than a tree, born to erectness of bole, 50

  Palm or plane or pine, we laud if lofty, columnar —

  Loathe if athwart, askew, — leave to the axe and the flame!

  Where is the vision may penetrate earth and beholding acknowledge

  Just one pebble at root ruined the straightness of stem?

  Whose fine vigilance follows the sapling, accounts for the failure,

  — Here blew wind, so it bent: there the snow lodged, so it broke?

  Also the tooth of the beast, bird’s bill, mere bite of the insect

  Gnawed, gnarled, warped their worst: passive it lay to offence.

  King — I was man, no more: what I recognized faulty I punished.

  Laying it prone: be sure, more than a man had I proved, 60

  Watch and ward o’er the sapling at birthtime had saved it, nor simply

  Owned the distortion’s excuse, — hindered it wholly: nay, more —

  Even a man, as I sat in my place to do judgment, and pallid

  Criminals passing to doom shuddered away at my foot,

  Could I have probed thro’ the face to the heart, read plain a repentance,

  Crime confessed fools’ play, virtue ascribed to the wise,

  Had I not stayed the consignment to doom, not dealt the renewed ones

  Life to retraverse the past, light to retrieve the misdeed?

  Thus had I done, and thus to have done much more it behoves thee,

  Zeus who madest man — flawless or faulty, thy work! 70

  What if the charge were true, as thou mouthest, — Ixion the cherished

  Minion of Zeus grew vain, vied with the godships and fell,

  Forfeit thro’ arrogance? Stranger! I clothed, with the grace of our human,

  Inhumanity — gods, natures I likened to ours.

  Man among men I had borne me till gods forsooth must regard me]

  — Nay, must approve, applaud, claim as a comrade at last.

  Summoned to enter their circle, I sat — their equal, how other?

  Love should be absolute love, faith is in fulness or nought.

  “I am thy friend, be mine!” smiled Zeus: “If Heré attract thee,”

  Blushed the imperial cheek, “then — as thy heart may suggest!” 80

  Faith in me sprang to the faith, my love hailed love as its fellow,

  ”Zeus, we are friends — how fast! Heré, my heart for thy heart!”

  Then broke smile into fury of frown, and the thunder of “Hence, fool!”

  Then thro’ the kiss laughed scorn “Limbs or a cloud was to clasp?”

  Then from Olumpos to Erebos, then from the rapture to torment,