Possesses the fool then whose fancy conceits him
As happy? THE FATES.
Man happy? APOLLO.
If otherwise — solve
This doubt which besets me! What friend ever greets him
Except with “Live long as the seasons revolve,”
Not “Death to thee straightway”? Your doctrines absolve
Such hailing from hatred: yet Man should know best.
He talks it, and glibly, as life were a load
Man fain would be rid off: when put to the test,
He whines “Let it lie, leave me trudging the road
That is rugged so far, but methinks . . .” THE FATES.
Ay, ‘t is owed
To that glamour of thine, he bethinks him “Once past
The stony, some patch, nay, a smoothness of sward
Awaits my tired foot: life turns easy at last” —
Thy largess so lures him, he looks for reward
Of the labour and sorrow. APOLLO.
It seems, then — debarred
Of illusion — (I needs must acknowledge the plea)
Man desponds and despairs. Yet, — still further to draw
Due profit from counsel, — suppose there should be
Some power in himself, some compensative law
By virtue of which, independently . . .
THE FATES.
Faugh!
Strength hid in the weakling!
What bowl-shape hast there,
Thus laughingly proffered? A gift to our shrine?
Thanks — worsted in argument! Not so? Declare
Its purpose! APOLLO.
I proffer earth’s product, not mine.
Taste, try, and approve Man’s invention of — Wine !
THE FATES.
We feeding suck honeycombs. APOLLO.
Sustenance meagre!
Such fare breeds the fumes that show all things amiss.
Quaff wine, — how the spirits rise nimble and eager,
Unscale the dim eyes! To Man’s cup grant one kiss
Of your lip, then allow — no enchantment like this!
CLOTHO.
Unhook wings, unhood brows! Dost hearken?
LACHESIS.
I listen:
I see — smell the food these fond mortals prefer
To our feast, the bee’s bounty! ATROPOS.
The thing leaps! But — glisten
Its best, I withstand it — unless all concur
In adventure so novel. APOLLO.
Ye drink? THE FATES.
We demur.
APOLLO.
Sweet Trine, be indulgent nor scout the contrivance
Of Man — Bacchus-prompted! The juice, I uphold,
Illuminates gloom without sunny connivance,
Turns fear into hope and makes cowardice bold, —
Touching all that is leadlike in life turns it gold!
THE FATES.
Faith foolish as false! APOLLO.
But essay it, soft sisters!
Then mock as ye may. Lift the chalice to lip!
Good: thou next — and thou! Seems the web, to you twisters
Of life’s yarn, so worthless? CLOTHO.
Who guessed that one sip
Would impart such a lightness of limb? LACHESIS.
I could skip
In a trice from the pied to the plain in my woof!
What parts each from either? A hair’s breadth, no inch.
Once learn the right method of stepping aloof,
Though on black next foot falls, firm I fix it, nor flinch,
— Such my trust white succeeds!
ATROPOS.
One could live — at a pinch!
APOLLO.
What beldames? Earth’s yield, by Man’s skill, can effect
Such a cure of sick sense that ye spy the relation
Of evil to good? But drink deeper, correct
Blear sight more convincingly still! Take your station
Beside me, drain dregs! Now for edification!
Whose gift have ye gulped? Thank not me but my brother,
Blithe Bacchus, our youngest of godships. ‘T was he
Found all boons to all men, by one god or other
Already conceded, so judged there must be
New guerdon to grace the new advent, you see!
Else how would a claim to Man’s homage arise?
The plan lay arranged of his mixed woe and weal,
So disposed — such Zeus’ will — with design to make wise
The witless — that false things were mingled with real,
Good with bad: such the lot whereto law set the seal.
Now, human of instinct — since Semele’s son,
Yet minded divinely — since fathered by Zeus,
With nought Bacchus tampered, undid not things done,
Owned wisdom anterior, would spare wont and use,
Yet change — without shock to old rule — introduce.
Regard how your cavern from crag-tip to base
Frowns sheer, height and depth adamantine, one death!
I rouse with a beam the whole rampart, displace
No splinter — yet see how my flambeau, beneath
And above, bids this gem wink, that crystal unsheath!
Withdraw beam — disclosure once more Night forbids you
Of spangle and sparkle — Day’s chance-gift, surmised
Rock’s permanent birthright: my potency rids you
No longer of darkness, yet light — recognized —
Proves darkness a mask: day lives on though disguised.
If Bacchus by wine’s aid avail so to fluster
Your sense, that life’s fact grows from adverse and thwart
To helpful and kindly by means of a cluster —
Mere hand-squeeze, earth’s nature sublimed by Man’s art —
Shall Bacchus claim thanks wherein Zeus has no part?
Zeus — wisdom anterior? No, maids, be admonished!
If morn’s touch at base worked such wonders, much more
Had noontide in absolute glory astonished
Your den, filled a-top to o’erflowing. I pour
No such mad confusion. ‘T is Man’s to explore
Up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason:
No torch, it suffices — held deftly and straight.
Eyes, purblind at first, feel their way in due season,
Accept good with bad, till unseemly debate
Turns concord — despair, acquiescence in fate.
Who works this but Zeus? Are not instinct and impulse,
Not concept and incept his work through Man’s soul
On Man’s sense? Just as wine ere it reach brain must brim pulse,
Zeus’ flash stings the mind that speeds body to goal,
Bids pause at no part but press on, reach the whole.
For petty and poor is the part ye envisage
When — (quaff away, cummers!) — ye view, last and first,
As evil Man’s earthly existence. Come! Is age,
Is infancy — manhood — so uninterspersed
With good — some faint sprinkle?
CLOTHO.
I’d speak if I durst.
APOLLO.
Draughts dregward loose tongue-tie. LACHESIS.
I’d see, did no web
Set eyes somehow winking. APOLLO.
Drains-deep lies their purge
— True collyrium! ATROPOS.
Words, surging at high-tide, soon ebb
From starved ears. APOLLO.
Drink but down to the source, they resurge.
Join hands! Yours and yours too! A dance or a dirge?
CHORUS.
Quashed be our quarrel! Sourly and smilingly,
Bare and gowned, bleached limbs and browned,
Drive we a dance, three and one, reconcilingly,
Thanks to the cup where dissension is drowned,
Defeat
proves triumphant and slavery crowned.
Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning!
Love once — e’en love’s disappointment endears!
A minute’s success pays the failure of years.
Manhood — the actual? Nay, praise the potential!
(Bound upon bound, foot it around!)
What is ? No, what may be — sing! that’s Man’s essential!
(Ramp, tramp, stamp and compound
Fancy with fact — the lost secret is found!)
Age? Why, fear ends there: the contest concluded,
Man did live his life, did escape from the fray:
Not scratchless but unscathed, he somehow eluded
Each blow fortune dealt him, and conquers to-day:
To-morrow — new chance and fresh strength, — might we say?
Laud then Man’s life — no defeat but a triumph!
[Explosion from the earth’s centre.
CLOTHO.
Ha, loose hands! LACHESIS.
I reel in a swound. ATROPOS.
Horror yawns under me, while from on high — humph!
Lightnings astound, thunders resound,
Vault-roof reverberates, groans the ground!
[Silence.
APOLLO.
I acknowledge. THE FATES.
Hence, trickster! Straight sobered are we!
The portent assures ‘t was our tongue spoke the truth,
Not thine. While the vapour encompassed us three
We conceived and bore knowledge — a bantling uncouth,
Old brains shudder back from: so — take it, rash youth!
Lick the lump into shape till a cry comes! APOLLO.
I hear. THE FATES.
Dumb music, dead eloquence! Say it, or sing!
What was quickened in us and thee also? APOLLO.
I fear. THE FATES.
Half female, half male — go, ambiguous thing!
While we speak — perchance sputter — pick up what we fling!
Known yet ignored, nor divined nor unguessed,
Such is Man’s law of life. Do we strive to declare
What is ill, what is good in our spinning? Worst, best,
Change hues of a sudden: now here and now there
Flits the sign which decides: all about yet nowhere.
‘T is willed so, — that Man’s life be lived, first to last,
Up and down, through and through, — not in portions, forsooth,
To pick and to choose from. Our shuttles fly fast,
Weave living, not life sole and whole: as age — youth,
So death completes living, shows life in its truth.
Man learningly lives: till death helps him — no lore!
It is doom and must be. Dost submit? APOLLO.
I assent —
Concede but Admetus! So much if no more
Of my prayer grant as peace-pledge! Be gracious though, blent,
Good and ill, love and hate streak your life-gift! THE FATES.
Content!
Such boon we accord in due measure. Life’s term
We lengthen should any be moved for love’s sake
To forego life’s fulfilment, renounce in the germ
Fruit mature — bliss or woe — either infinite. Take
Or leave thy friend’s lot: on his head be the stake!
APOLLO.
On mine, griesly gammers! Admetus, I know thee!
Thou prizest the right these unwittingly give
Thy subjects to rush, pay obedience they owe thee!
Importunate one with another they strive
For the glory to die that their king may survive.
Friends rush: and who first in all Pheræ appears
But thy father to serve as thy substitute? CLOTHO.
Bah! APOLLO.
Ye wince? Then his mother, well-stricken in years,
Advances her claim — or his wife — LACHESIS.
Tra-la-la! APOLLO.
But he spurns the exchange, rather dies! ATROPOS.
Ha, ha, ha!
[Apollo ascends. Darkness.
WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE.
I.
Ay , this same midnight, by this chair of mine,
Come and review thy counsels: art thou still
Staunch to their teaching? — not as fools opine
Its purport might be, but as subtler skill
Could, through turbidity, the loaded line
Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till
It touched a quietude and reached a shrine
And recognized harmoniously combine
Evil with good, and hailed truth’s triumph — thine,
Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville!
II.
Only, ‘t is no fresh knowledge that I crave,
Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave;
Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn
To what account Man may Man’s portion, learn
Man’s proper play with truth in part, before
Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more
Than smiling witness that I do my best
With doubtful doctrine: afterward the rest!
So, silent face me while I think and speak!
A full disclosure? Such would outrage law.
Law deals the same with soul and body: seek
Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw
A new-born weakling, starts up strong — not weak —
Man every whit, absolved from earning awe,
Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak
Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw,
As mind bids muscle — mind which long has striven,
Painfully urging body’s impotence
To effort whereby — once law’s barrier riven,
Life’s rule abolished — body might dispense
With infancy’s probation, straight be given
— Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven,
Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven —
To stand full-statured in magnificence.
III.
No: as with body so deals law with soul
That’s stung to strength through weakness, strives for good
Through evil, — earth its race-ground, heaven its goal,
Presumably: so far I understood
Thy teaching long ago. But what means this
— Objected by a mouth which yesterday
Was magisterial in antithesis
To half the truths we hold, or trust we may,
Though tremblingly the while? “No sign” — groaned he —
“No stirring of God’s finger to denote
He wills that right should have supremacy
On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
But one poor instance when he interposed
Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
Between oppression and its victim, closed
Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves!
So might we safely mock at what unnerves
Faith now, be spared the sapping fear’s increase
That haply evil’s strife with good shall cease
Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace
Born out of life-long battle? Man’s lip curves
With scorn: there, also, what if justice swerves
From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke
Right fettered here by wrong, but leaves life’s yoke —
Death should loose man from — fresh laid, past release?”
IV.
Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me
This parlous friend who captured or set free
Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw
Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw
Thy gold-rimmed amber-headed cane had whisked
Out of his pathway if the object risked
Encounter, ‘scaped thy kick from buckled shoe!
As when folk heard thee in old days pooh-pooh
Addison’s tye-wig preachment, grant this friend —
(Whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end
Disposing of mock-melancholy) — grant
His bilious mood one potion, ministrant
Of homely wisdom, healthy wit! For, hear!
“With power and will, let preference appear
By intervention ever and aye, help good
When evil’s mastery is understood
In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong
Tramples weak right to nothingness: nay, long
Ere such sad consummation brings despair
To right’s adherents, ah, what help it were
If wrong lay strangled in the birth — each head
Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, instead
Of spared to gather venom! We require
No great experience that the inch-long worm,
Free of our heel, would grow to vomit fire,
And one day plague the world in dragon form.
So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet
Wrong’s due quietus, leave our world’s way safe
For honest walking.”
V.
Sage, once more repeat
Instruction! ‘T is a sore to soothe not chafe.
Ah, Fabulist, what luck, could I contrive
To coax from thee another “Grumbling Hive”!
My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet:
Ask him — ”Suppose the Gardener of Man’s ground
Plants for a purpose, side by side with good,
Evil — (and that he does so — look around!
What does the field show?) — were it understood
That purposely the noxious plant was found
Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food,
If, at first stealing-forth of life in stalk
And leaflet-promise, quick his spud should baulk
Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit?
Such timely treatment of the offending root
Might strike the simple as wise husbandry,
But swift sure extirpation scarce would suit
Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives: why
Frustrate its product, miss the quality
Which sower binds himself to count upon?
Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone
Unhindered up to harvest — what know I
But proof were gained that every growth of good
Sprang consequent on evil’s neighbourhood?”
So said your shrewdness: true — so did not say
That other sort of theorists who held
Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series Page 219
