Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series

by Robert Browning

  To the coarse blue-fly’s instinct — can perceive

  No better reason why she should exist —

  — God’s lily limbed and blush-rose-bosomed Eve —

  Than as a hot-bed for the sensualist

  To fly-blow with his fancies, make pure stuff

  Breed him back filth — this were not crime enough?

  But further — fly to style itself — nay, more —

  To steal among the sacred ones, crouch down

  Though but to where their garments sweep the floor —

  — Still catching some faint sparkle from the crown

  Crowning transcendent Michael, Leonard,

  Rafael, — to sit beside the feet of such,

  Unspurned because unnoticed, then reward

  Their toleration — mercy overmuch —

  By stealing from the throne-step to the fools

  Curious outside the gateway, all-agape

  To learn by what procedure, in the schools

  Of Art, a merest man in outward shape

  May learn to be Correggio! Old and young,

  These learners got their lesson: Art was just

  A safety-screen — (Art, which Correggio’s tongue

  Calls “Virtue”) — for a skulking vice: mere lust

  Inspired the artist when his Night and Morn

  Slept and awoke in marble on that edge

  Of heaven above our awestruck earth: lust-born

  His Eve low bending took the privilege

  Of life from what our eyes saw — God’s own palm

  That put the flame forth — to the love and thanks

  Of all creation save this recreant!

  IV.

  Calm

  Our phrase, Furini! Not the artist-ranks

  Claim riddance of an interloper: no —

  This Baldinucci did but grunt and sniff

  Outside Art’s pale — ay, grubbed, where pine-trees grow,

  For pignuts only.

  V.

  You the Sacred! If

  Indeed on you has been bestowed the dower

  Of Art in fulness, graced with head and hand,

  Head — to look up not downwards, hand — of power

  To make head’s gain the portion of a world

  Where else the uninstructed ones too sure

  Would take all outside beauty — film that’s furled

  About a star — for the star’s self, endure

  No guidance to the central glory, — nay,

  (Sadder) might apprehend the film was fog,

  Or (worst) wish all but vapour well away,

  And sky’s pure product thickened from earth’s bog —

  Since so, nor seldom, have your worthiest failed

  To trust their own soul’s insight — why? except

  For warning that the head of the adept

  May too much prize the hand, work unassailed

  By scruple of the better sense that finds

  An orb within each halo, bids gross flesh

  Free the fine spirit-pattern, nor enmesh

  More than is meet a marvel custom blinds

  Only the vulgar eye to. Now, less fear

  That you, the foremost of Art’s fellowship,

  Will oft — will ever so offend! But — hip

  And thigh — smite the Philistine! You — slunk here —

  Connived at, by too easy tolerance,

  Not to scrape palette simply or squeeze brush,

  But dub your very self an Artist? Tush —

  You, of the daubings, is it, dare advance

  This doctrine that the Artist-mind must needs

  Own to affinity with yours — confess

  Provocative acquaintance, more or less,

  With each impurely-peevish worm that breeds

  Inside your brain’s receptacle?

  VI.

  Enough.

  Who owns “I dare not look on diadems

  Without an itch to pick out, purloin gems

  Others contentedly leave sparkling” — gruff

  Answers the guard of the regalia: “Why —

  Consciously kleptomaniac — thrust yourself

  Where your illicit craving after pelf

  Is tempted most — in the King’s treasury?

  Go elsewhere! Sort with thieves, if thus you feel —

  When folk clean-handed simply recognize

  Treasure whereof the mere sight satisfies —

  But straight your fingers are on itch to steal!

  Hence with you!”

  Pray, Furini!

  VII.

  “Bounteous God,

  Deviser and Dispenser of all gifts

  To soul through sense, — in Art the soul uplifts

  Man’s best of thanks! What but Thy measuring-rod

  Meted forth heaven and earth? more intimate,

  Thy very hands were busied with the task

  Of making, in this human shape, a mask —

  A match for that divine. Shall love abate

  Man’s wonder? Nowise! True — true — all too true —

  No gift but, in the very plenitude

  Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued

  By wickedness or weakness: still, some few

  Have grace to see Thy purpose, strength to mar

  Thy work by no admixture of their own,

  — Limn truth not falsehood, bid us love alone

  The type untampered with, the naked star!”

  VIII.

  And, prayer done, painter — what if you should preach?

  Not as of old when playing pulpiteer

  To simple-witted country folk, but here

  In actual London try your powers of speech

  On us the cultured, therefore sceptical —

  What would you? For, suppose he has his word

  In faith’s behalf, no matter how absurd,

  This painter-theologian? One and all

  We lend an ear — nay, Science takes thereto —

  Encourages the meanest who has racked

  Nature until he gains from her some fact,

  To state what truth is from his point of view,

  Mere pin-point though it be: since many such

  Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend

  Come forward unabashed and haply lend

  His little life-experience to our much

  Of modern knowledge. Since she so insists,

  Up stands Furini.

  IX.

  “Evolutionists!

  At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights,

  Our stations for discovery opposites, —

  How should ensue agreement? I explain:

  ‘T is the tip-top of things to which you strain

  Your vision, until atoms, protoplasm,

  And what and whence and how may be the spasm

  Which sets all going, stop you: down perforce

  Needs must your observation take its course,

  Since there’s no moving upwards: link by link

  You drop to where the atoms somehow think,

  Feel, know themselves to be: the world’s begun,

  Such as we recognize it. Have you done

  Descending? Here’s ourself, — Man, known to-day,

  Duly evolved at last, — so far, you say,

  The sum and seal of being’s progress. Good!

  Thus much at least is clearly understood —

  Of power does Man possess no particle:

  Of knowledge — just so much as shows that still

  It ends in ignorance on every side:

  But righteousness — ah, Man is deified

  Thereby, for compensation! Make survey

  Of Man’s surroundings, try creation — nay,

  Try emulation of the minimized

  Minuteness fancy may conceive! Surprised

  Reason becomes by two defeats for one —

  Not only power at each phenomenon

  Baffled, but knowledge als
o in default —

  Asking what is minuteness — yonder vault

  Speckled with suns, or this the millionth — thing,

  How shall I call? — that on some insect’s wing

  Helps to make out in dyes the mimic star?

  Weak, ignorant, accordingly we are:

  What then? The worse for Nature! Where began

  Righteousness, moral sense except in Man?

  True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:

  Had the initiator-spasm seen fit

  Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse

  And much the better were the universe.

  What does Man see or feel or apprehend

  Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,

  Omissions to supply, — one wide disease

  Of things that are, which Man at once would ease

  Had will but power and knowledge? failing both —

  Things must take will for deed — Man, nowise loth,

  Accepts pre-eminency: mere blind force —

  Mere knowledge undirected in its course

  By any care for what is made or marred

  In either’s operation — these award

  The crown to? Rather let it deck thy brows,

  Man, whom alone a righteousness endows

  Would cure the wide world’s ailing! Who disputes

  Thy claim thereto? Had Spasm more attributes

  Than power and knowledge in its gift, before

  Man came to pass? The higher that we soar,

  The less of moral sense like Man’s we find:

  No sign of such before, — what comes behind,

  Who guesses? But until there crown our sight

  The quite new — not the old mere infinite

  Of changings, — some fresh kind of sun and moon, —

  Then, not before, shall I expect a boon

  Of intuition just as strange, which turns

  Evil to good, and wrong to right, unlearns

  All Man’s experience learned since Man was he.

  Accept in Man, advanced to this degree,

  The Prime Mind, therefore! neither wise nor strong —

  Whose fault? but were he both, then right, not wrong

  As now, throughout the world were paramount

  According to his will, — which I account

  The qualifying faculty. He stands

  Confessed supreme — the monarch whose commands

  Could he enforce, how bettered were the world!

  He’s at the height this moment — to be hurled

  Next moment to the bottom by rebound

  Of his own peal of laughter. All around

  Ignorance wraps him, — whence and how and why

  Things are, — yet cloud breaks and lets blink the sky

  Just overhead, not elsewhere! What assures

  His optics that the very blue which lures

  Comes not of black outside it, doubly dense?

  Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,

  Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,

  So much and no more than lets through perhaps

  The murmured knowledge — ’Ignorance exists.’

  X.

  “I at the bottom, Evolutionists,

  Advise beginning, rather. I profess

  To know just one fact — my self-consciousness, —

  ‘T wixt ignorance and ignorance enisled, —

  Knowledge: before me was my Cause — that’s styled

  God: after, in due course succeeds the rest, —

  All that my knowledge comprehends — at best —

  At worst, conceives about in mild despair.

  Light needs must touch on either darkness: where?

  Knowledge so far impinges on the Cause

  Before me, that I know — by certain laws

  Wholly unknown, whate’er I apprehend

  Within, without me, had its rise: thus blend

  I, and all things perceived, in one Effect.

  How far can knowledge any ray project

  On what comes after me — the universe?

  Well, my attempt to make the cloud disperse

  Begins — not from above but underneath:

  I climb, you soar, — who soars soon loses breath

  And sinks, who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact

  Ere hazarding the next step: soul’s first act

  (Call consciousness the soul — some name we need)

  Getting itself aware, through stuff decreed

  Thereto (so call the body) — who has stept

  So far, there let him stand, become adept

  In body ere he shift his station thence

  One single hair’s breadth. Do I make pretence

  To teach, myself unskilled in learning? Lo,

  My life’s work! Let my pictures prove I know

  Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours

  Or is or should be, how the soul empowers

  The body to reveal its every mood

  Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude

  Of passion. If my hand attained to give

  Thus permanence to truth else fugitive,

  Did not I also fix each fleeting grace

  Of form and feature — save the beauteous face —

  Arrest decay in transitory might

  Of bone and muscle — cause the world to bless

  For ever each transcendent nakedness

  Of man and woman? Were such feats achieved

  By sloth, or strenuous labour unrelieved,

  — Yet lavished vainly? Ask that underground

  (So may I speak) of all on surface found

  Of flesh-perfection! Depths on depths to probe

  Of all-inventive artifice, disrobe

  Marvel at hiding under marvel, pluck

  Veil after veil from Nature — were the luck

  Ours to surprise the secret men so name,

  That still eludes the searcher — all the same,

  Repays his search with still fresh proof — ’Externe,

  Not inmost, is the Cause, fool! Look and learn!’

  Thus teach my hundred pictures: firm and fast

  There did I plant my first foot. And the next?

  Nowhere! ‘T was put forth and withdrawn, perplexed

  At touch of what seemed stable and proved stuff

  Such as the coloured clouds are: plain enough

  There lay the outside universe: try Man —

  My most immediate! and the dip began

  From safe and solid into that profound

  Of ignorance I tell you surges round

  My rock-spit of self-knowledge. Well and ill,

  Evil and good irreconcilable

  Above, beneath, about my every side, —

  How did this wild confusion far and wide

  Tally with my experience when my stamp —

  So far from stirring — struck out, each a lamp,

  Spark after spark of truth from where I stood —

  Pedestalled triumph? Evil there was good,

  Want was the promise of supply, defect

  Ensured completion, — where and when and how?

  Leave that to the First Cause! Enough that now,

  Here where I stand, this moment’s me and mine,

  Shows me what is, permits me to divine

  What shall be. Wherefore? Nay, how otherwise?

  Look at my pictures! What so glorifies

  The body that the permeating soul

  Finds there no particle elude control

  Direct, or fail of duty, — most obscure

  When most subservient? Did that Cause ensure

  The soul such raptures as its fancy stings

  Body to furnish when, uplift by wings

  Of passion, here and now, it leaves the earth,

  Loses itself above, where bliss has birth —

  (Heaven, be the phrase) — did that same Cause contrive

  Such solace for the body, soul must dive />
  At drop of fancy’s pinion, condescend

  To bury both alike on earth, our friend

  And fellow, where minutely exquisite

  Low lie the pleasures, now and here — no herb

  But hides its marvel, peace no doubts perturb

  In each small mystery of insect life —

  — Shall the soul’s Cause thus gift the soul, yet strife

  Continue still of fears with hopes, — for why?

  What if the Cause, whereof we now descry

  So far the wonder-working, lack at last

  Will, power, benevolence — a protoplast,

  No consummator, sealing up the sum

  Of all things, — past and present and to come

  Perfection? No, I have no doubt at all!

  There’s my amount of knowledge — great or small,

  Sufficient for my needs: for see! advance

  Its light now on that depth of ignorance

  I shrank before from — yonder where the world

  Lies wreck-strewn, — evil towering, prone good — hurled

  From pride of place, on every side. For me

  (Patience, beseech you!) knowledge can but be

  Of good by knowledge of good’s opposite —

  Evil, — since, to distinguish wrong from right,

  Both must be known in each extreme, beside —

  (Or what means knowledge — to aspire or bide

  Content with half-attaining? Hardly so!)

  Made to know on, know ever, I must know

  All to be known at any halting-stage

  Of my soul’s progress, such as earth, where wage

  War, just for soul’s instruction, pain with joy,

  Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy

  With all that quiets and contents, — in brief,

  Good strives with evil.

  Now then for relief,

  Friends, of your patience kindly curbed so long.

  ‘What?’ snarl you, ‘Is the fool’s conceit thus strong —

  Must the whole outside world in soul and sense

  Suffer, that he grow sage at its expense?’

  By no means! ‘T is by merest touch of toe

  I try — not trench on — ignorance, just know —

  And so keep steady footing: how you fare,

  Caught in the whirlpool — that’s the Cause’s care,

  Strong, wise, good, — this I know at any rate

  In my own self, — but how may operate

  With you — strength, wisdom, goodness — no least blink

  Of knowledge breaks the darkness round me. Think!

  Could I see plain, be somehow certified

  All was illusion, — evil far and wide

  Was good disguised, — why, out with one huge wipe

  Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:

  As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good

  Needs evil: how were pity understood

  Unless by pain? Make evident that pain