Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

Propose to set aside a thing ordained?

  To pray means — substitute man’s will for God’s:

  Two best wills cannot be: by consequence,

  What is man bound to but — assent, say I?

  Rather to rapture of thanksgiving; since

  That which seems worst to man to God is best,

  So, because God ordains it, best to man.

  Yet man — the foolish, weak and wicked — prays!

  Urges ‘My best were better, didst Thou know’!”

  “List to a tale. A worthy householder

  Of Shiraz had three sons, beside a spouse

  Whom, cutting gourds, a serpent bit, whereon

  The offended limb swelled black from foot to fork.

  The husband called in aid a leech renowned

  World-wide, confessed the lord of surgery,

  And bade him dictate — who forthwith declared

  ‘Sole remedy is amputation.’ Straight

  The husband sighed ‘Thou knowest: be it so!’

  His three sons heard their mother sentenced: ‘Pause!’

  Outbroke the elder: ‘Be precipitate

  Nowise, I pray thee! Take some gentler way,

  Thou sage of much resource! I will not doubt

  But science still may save foot, leg and thigh!’

  The next in age snapped petulant: ‘Too rash!

  No reason for this maiming! What, Sir Leech,

  Our parent limps henceforward while we leap?

  Shame on thee! Save the limb thou must and shalt!’

  ‘Shame on yourselves, ye bold ones!’ followed up

  The brisk third brother, youngest, pertest too:

  ‘The leech knows all things, we are ignorant;

  What he proposes, gratefully accept!

  For me, had I some unguent bound to heal

  Hurts in a twinkling, hardly would I dare

  Essay its virtue and so cross the sage

  By cure his skill pronounces folly. Quick!

  No waiting longer! There the patient lies:

  Out then with implements and operate!’ “

  “Ah, the young devil!”

  “Why, his reason chimed

  Right with the Hakim’s.”

  “Hakim’s, ay — but chit’s?

  How? what the skilled eye saw and judged of weight

  To overbear a heavy consequence,

  That — shall a sciolist affect to see?

  All he saw — that is, all such oaf should see,

  Was just the mother’s suffering.”

  “In my tale,

  Be God the Hakim: in the husband’s case,

  Call ready acquiescence — aptitude

  Angelic, understanding swift and sure:

  Call the first son — a wise humanity,

  Slow to conceive but duteous to adopt:

  See in the second son — humanity,

  Wrong-headed yet right-hearted, rash but kind.

  Last comes the cackler of the brood, our chit

  Who, aping wisdom all beyond his years,

  Thinks to discard humanity itself:

  Fares like the beast which should affect to fly

  Because a bird with wings may spurn the ground,

  So, missing heaven and losing earth — drops how

  But hell-ward? No, be man and nothing more —

  Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,

  And craves and deprecates, and loves, and loathes,

  And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes

  And show God granted most, denying all.”

  Man I am and man would be, Love — merest man and nothing more.

  Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions — let them soar!

  I may put forth angel’s plumage, once unmanned, but not before.

  Now on earth, to stand suffices, — nay, if kneeling serves, to kneel:

  Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven that earth can feel:

  Sense looks straight, — not over, under, — perfect sees beyond appeal.

  Good you are and wise, full circle: what to me were more outside?

  Wiser wisdom, better goodness? Ah, such want the angel’s wide

  Sense to take and hold and keep them! Mine at least has never tried.

  THE SUN.

  “ And what might that bold man’s announcement be” —

  Ferishtah questioned — ”which so moved thine ire

  That thou didst curse, nay, cuff and kick — in short,

  Confute the announcer? Wipe those drops away

  Which start afresh upon thy face at mere

  Mention of such enormity: now, speak!”

  “He scrupled not to say — (thou warrantest,

  O patient Sir, that I unblamed repeat

  Abominable words which blister tongue?)

  God once assumed on earth a human shape:

  (Lo, I have spitten!) Dared I ask the grace,

  Fain would I hear, of thy subtility,

  From out what hole in man’s corrupted heart

  Creeps such a maggot: fancies verminous

  Breed in the clots there, but a monster born

  Of pride and folly like this pest — thyself

  Only canst trace to egg-shell it hath chipped.”

  The sun rode high. “During our ignorance” —

  Began Ferishtah — ”folk esteemed as God

  Yon orb: for argument, suppose him so, —

  Be it the symbol, not the symbolized,

  I and thou safelier take upon our lips.

  Accordingly, yon orb that we adore

  — What is he? Author of all light and life:

  Such one must needs be somewhere: this is he.

  Like what? If I may trust my human eyes,

  A ball composed of spirit-fire, whence springs

  — What, from this ball, my arms could circle round?

  All I enjoy on earth. By consequence,

  Inspiring me with — what? Why, love and praise.

  I eat a palatable fig — there’s love

  In little: who first planted what I pluck,

  Obtains my little praise, too: more of both

  Keeps due proportion with more cause for each:

  So, more and ever more, till most of all

  Completes experience, and the orb, descried

  Ultimate giver of all good, perforce

  Gathers unto himself all love, all praise,

  Is worshipped — which means loved and praised at height.

  Back to the first good: ‘t was the gardener gave

  Occasion to my palate’s pleasure: grace,

  Plain on his part, demanded thanks on mine.

  Go up above this giver, — step by step,

  Gain a conception of what — (how and why,

  Matters not now) — occasioned him to give,

  Appointed him the gardener of the ground, —

  I mount by just progression slow and sure

  To some prime giver — here assumed yon orb —

  Who takes my worship. Whom have I in mind,

  Thus worshipping, unless a man, my like

  Howe’er above me? Man, I say — how else,

  I being man who worship? Here’s my hand

  Lifts first a mustard-seed, then weight on weight

  Greater and ever greater, till at last

  It lifts a melon, I suppose, then stops —

  Hand-strength expended wholly: so, my love

  First lauds the gardener for the fig his gift,

  Then, looking higher, loves and lauds still more,

  Who hires the ground, who owns the ground, Sheikh, Shah,

  On and away, away and ever on,

  Till, at the last, it loves and lauds the orb

  Ultimate cause of all to laud and love.

  Where is the break, the change of quality

  In hand’s power, soul’s impulsion? Gift was grace,

  The greatest as the smallest. Had I stopped

  Anyw
here in the scale, stayed love and praise

  As so far only fit to follow gift,

  Saying ‘I thanked the gardener for his fig,

  But now that, lo, the Shah has filled my purse

  With tomans which avail to purchase me

  A fig-tree forest, shall I pay the same

  With love and praise, the gardener’s proper fee?’

  Justly would whoso bears a brain object

  ‘Giving is giving, gift claims gift’s return,

  Do thou thine own part, therefore: let the Shah

  Ask more from who has more to pay.’ Perchance

  He gave me from his treasure less by much

  Than the soil’s servant: let that be! My part

  Is plain — to meet and match the gift and gift

  With love and love, with praise and praise, till both

  Cry ‘All of us is thine, we can no more!’

  So shall I do man’s utmost — man to man:

  For as our liege the Shah’s sublime estate

  Merely enhaloes, leaves him man the same,

  So must I count that orb I call a fire

  (Keep to the language of our ignorance)

  Something that’s fire and more beside. Mere fire

  — Is it a force which, giving, knows it gives,

  And wherefore, so may look for love and praise

  From me, fire’s like so far, however less

  In all beside? Prime cause this fire shall be,

  Uncaused, all-causing: hence begin the gifts,

  Thither must go my love and praise — to what?

  Fire? Symbol fitly serves the symbolized

  Herein, — that this same object of my thanks,

  While to my mind nowise conceivable

  Except as mind no less than fire, refutes

  Next moment mind’s conception: fire is fire —

  While what I needs must thank, must needs include

  Purpose with power, — humanity like mine,

  Imagined, for the dear necessity,

  One moment in an object which the next

  Confesses unimaginable. Power!

  — What need of will, then? nought opposes power:

  Why, purpose? any change must be for worse:

  And what occasion for beneficence

  When all that is, so is and so must be?

  Best being best now, change were for the worse.

  Accordingly discard these qualities

  Proper to imperfection, take for type

  Mere fire, eject the man, retain the orb, —

  The perfect and, so, inconceivable, —

  And what remains to love and praise? A stone

  Fair-coloured proves a solace to my eye,

  Rolled by my tongue brings moisture curing drouth,

  And struck by steel emits a useful spark:

  Shall I return it thanks, the insentient thing?

  No, — man once, man for ever — man in soul

  As man in body: just as this can use

  Its proper senses only, see and hear,

  Taste, like or loathe according to its law

  And not another creature’s, — even so

  Man’s soul is moved by what, if it in turn

  Must move, is kindred soul: receiving good

  — Man’s way — must make man’s due acknowledgment,

  No other, even while he reasons out

  Plainly enough that, were the man unmanned,

  Made angel of, angelic every way,

  The love and praise that rightly seek and find

  Their man-like object now, — instructed more,

  Would go forth idly, air to emptiness.

  Our human flower, sun-ripened, proffers scent

  Though reason prove the sun lacks nose to feed

  On what himself made grateful: flower and man,

  Let each assume that scent and love alike

  Being once born, must needs have use! Man’s part

  Is plain — to send love forth, — astray, perhaps:

  No matter, he has done his part.”

  “Wherefrom

  What is to follow — if I take thy sense —

  But that the sun — the inconceivable

  Confessed by man — comprises, all the same,

  Man’s every-day conception of himself —

  No less remaining unconceived!”

  “Agreed”!

  “Yet thou, insisting on the right of man

  To feel as man, not otherwise, — man, bound

  By man’s conditions neither less nor more,

  Obliged to estimate as fair or foul,

  Right, wrong, good, evil, what man’s faculty

  Adjudges such, — how canst thou, — plainly bound

  To take man’s truth for truth and only truth, —

  Dare to accept, in just one case, as truth

  Falsehood confessed? Flesh simulating fire —

  Our fellow-man whom we his fellows know

  For dust — instinct with fire unknowable!

  Where’s thy man-needed truth — its proof, nay print

  Of faintest passage on the tablets traced

  By man, termed knowledge? ‘T is conceded thee,

  We lack such fancied union — fire with flesh:

  But even so, to lack is not to gain

  Our lack’s suppliance: where’s the trace of such

  Recorded?”

  “What if such a tracing were?

  If some strange story stood, — whate’er its worth, —

  That the immensely yearned-for, once befell,

  — The sun was flesh once? — (keep the figure!)”

  “How?

  An union inconceivable was fact?”

  “Son, if the stranger have convinced himself

  Fancy is fact — the sun, besides a fire,

  Holds earthly substance somehow fire pervades

  And yet consumes not, — earth, he understands,

  With essence he remains a stranger to, —

  Fitlier thou saidst ‘I stand appalled before

  Conception unattainable by me

  Who need it most’ — than this — ’What? boast he holds

  Conviction where I see conviction’s need,

  Alas, — and nothing else? then what remains

  But that I straightway curse, cuff, kick the fool!’ “

  Fire is in the flint: true, once a spark escapes,

  Fire forgets the kinship, soars till fancy shapes

  Some befitting cradle where the babe had birth —

  Wholly heaven’s the product, unallied to earth.

  Splendours recognized as perfect in the star!-

  In our flint their home was, housed as now they are.

  MIHRAB SHAH.

  Quoth an inquirer, “Praise the Merciful!

  My thumb which yesterday a scorpion nipped —

  (It swelled and blackened) — lo, is sound again!

  By application of a virtuous root

  The burning has abated: that is well:

  But now methinks I have a mind to ask, —

  Since this discomfort came of culling herbs

  Nor meaning harm, — why needs a scorpion be?

  Yea, there began, from when my thumb last throbbed,

  Advance in question framing, till I asked

  Wherefore should any evil hap to man —

  From ache of flesh to agony of soul —

  Since God’s All-mercy mates All-potency?

  Nay, why permits He evil to Himself —

  Man’s sin, accounted such? Suppose a world

  Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant —

  Man pure of evil in thought, word and deed —

  Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?

  Too good result? But He is wholly good!

  Hard to effect? Ay, were He impotent!

  Teach me, Ferishtah!”

  Said the Dervish: “Friend,

  My chance, escaped to-day, was worse tha
n thine:

  I, as I woke this morning, raised my head,

  Which never tumbled but stuck fast on neck.

  Was not I glad and thankful!”

  “How could head

  Tumble from neck, unchopped — inform me first!

  Unless we take Firdausi’s tale for truth,

  Who ever heard the like?”

  “The like might hap

  By natural law: I let my staff fall thus —

  It goes to ground, I know not why. Suppose,

  Whene’er my hold was loosed, it skyward sprang

  As certainly, and all experience proved

  That, just as staves when unsupported sink,

  So, unconfined, they soar?”

  “Let such be law —

  Why, a new chapter of sad accidents

  Were added to humanity’s mischance,

  No doubt at all, and as a man’s false step

  Now lays him prone on earth, contrariwise,

  Removal from his shoulder of a weight

  Might start him upwards to perdition. Ay!

  But, since such law exists in just thy brain,

  I shall not hesitate to doft my cap

  For fear my head take flight.”

  “Nor feel relief

  Finding it firm on shoulder. Tell me, now!

  What were the bond ‘twixt man and man, dost judge,

  Pain once abolished? Come, be true! Our Shah —

  How stands he in thy favour? Why that shrug?

  Is not he lord and ruler?”

  “Easily!

  His mother bore him, first of those four wives

  Provided by his father, such his luck:

  Since when his business simply was to breathe

  And take each day’s new bounty. There he stands —

  Where else had I stood, were his birth-star mine?

  No, to respect men’s power, I needs must see

  Men’s bare hands seek, find, grasp and wield the sword

  Nobody else can brandish! Bless his heart,

  ‘T is said, he scarcely counts his fingers right!”

  “Well, then — his princely doles! from every feast

  Off go the feasted with the dish they ate

  And cup they drank from, — nay, a change besides

  Of garments” . . .

  “Sir, put case, for service done, —

  Or best, for love’s sake, — such and such a slave

  Sold his allowance of sour lentil soup

  To therewith purchase me a pipe-stick, — nay,

  If he, by but one hour, cut short his sleep

  To clout my shoe, — that were a sacrifice!”

  “All praise his gracious bearing.”

  “All praise mine —

  Or would praise did they never make approach

  Except on all-fours, crawling till I bade

  ‘Now that with eyelids thou hast touched the earth,

  Come close and have no fear, poor nothingness!’