Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 261
I sought long and painfully
To wound thee, and not prick
The skin, but pierce to the quick —
Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight
By thy bride — how the painter Lutwyche can hate!
JULIS interposes.
Lutwyche! who else? But all of them, no doubt,
Hated me: they at Venice — presently
Their turn, however! You I shall not meet:
If I dreamed saying this would wake me!
Keep
What’s here, this gold — we cannot meet again,
Consider — and the money was but meant
For two years’ travel, which is over now,
All chance, or hope, or care, or need of it!
This — and what comes from selling these, my casts
And books, and medals, except . . . let them go
Together, so the produce keeps you safe,
Out of Natalia’s clutches! — If by chance
(For all’s chance here) I should survive the gang
At Venice, root out all fifteen of them,
We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide,
[From without is heard the voice of PIPPA, singing —
Give her but a least excuse to love me!
When — where
How — can this arm establish her above me,
If fortune fired her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
(‘Hist’ — said Kate the queen;
But ‘Oh’ — cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
‘Tis only a page that carols unseen
Crumbling your hounds their messes!’
Is she wronged? — To the rescue of her honour,
My heart
Is she poor? — What costs it to be styled a donor?
Merely an earth’s to cleave, a sea’s to part!
But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!
(‘Nay, list,’-bade Kate the queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
‘‘Tis only a page that carols unseen
Fitting your hawks their jesses!’)
[PIPPA passes.
JULES resumes —
What name was that the little girl sang forth?
Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced
The crown of Cyprus to be lady here
At Asolo, where still the peasants keep
Her memory; and songs tell how many a page
Pined for the grace of one so far above
His power of doing good to, as a queen —
‘She never could be wronged, be poor,’ he sighed,
‘For him to help her!’
Yes, a bitter thing
To see our lady above all need of us;
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,
But the world looks so. If whoever loves
Must he, in some sort, god or worshipper,
The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page’s part?
Here is a woman with utter need of me, —
I find myself queen here, it seems!
How strange!
Look at the woman here with the new soul,
Like my own Psyche’s, — fresh upon her lips
Alit, the visionary butterfly,
Waiting my word to enter and make bright,
Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.
This body had no soul before, but slept
Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free
From taint or foul with stain, as outward things
Fastened their image on its passiveness:
Now, it will wake, feel, live — or die again!
Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff
Be Art — and, further, to evoke a soul
From form, be nothing? This new soul is mine!
Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do? — save
A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death
Without me, from their laughter! Oh, to hear
God’s voice plain as I heard it first, before
They broke in with that laughter! I heard them
Henceforth, not God.
To Ancona — Greece — some isle!
I wanted silence only: there is clay
Everywhere. One may do whate’er one likes
In Art: the only thing is, to make sure
That one does like it — which takes pains to know.
Scatter all this, my Phene — this mad dream!
Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia’s friends,
What the whole world except our love — my own,
Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,
Ere night we travel for your land — some isle
With the sea’s silence on it? Stand aside —
I do but break these paltry models up
To begin Art afresh. Shall I meet Lutwyche,
And save him from my statue’s meeting him?
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Like a god going through his world there stands
One mountain for a moment in the dusk,
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow;
And you are ever by me while I gaze
— Are in my arms as now — as now — as now
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!
Talk by the way, while PIPPA is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with BLUPHOCKS, an English vagabond just in view of the Turret.
Bluphocks. So, that is your Pippa, the, little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop’s Intendant’s money shall be honestly earned: — now, don’t make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop’s name into the business — we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors — we know that he is a saint and all that a Bishop should be, who is a great man besides. Oh! were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to, was the Armenian — for I have travelled, do yet: see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there’s a sort of bleak hungry sun there,) you might remark over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity, — ’twas the Grand Rabbi’s abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac — (these are vowels, you dogs, — follow my stick’s end in the mud — Celarent, Darii, Ferio!) and one morning presented myself spelling-book in hand, a, b, c, — I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the Past, you’ll say — ’How Moses hocus-pocust Egypt’s land with fly and locust,’ — or, ‘How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish,’ — or, ‘How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam — ’ In no wise! ‘Shackabrach — Boach — somebody or other — Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of — Stolen Goods!’ So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge — mean to live so — and die — As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon’s wherry — With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate’s supper, And never an obolus . . . (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant — I possess a burning pocketfull of zwanzigers) . . . To pay the Stygian ferry!
First Policeman. There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. (To the rest) I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!
Second Policeman. Old Luca Gaddi’s, that owns th
e silk-mills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts: never molest such a household, they mean well.
Bluphocks. Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name — Pippa — that is, short for Felippa — rhyming to Panurge consults Hertrippa — Believ’st thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name.
Second Policeman. Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a zwanziger! Leave this fooling, and look out: the afternoon’s over or nearly so.
Third Policeman. Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? what’s there beside a simple signature? (That English fool’s busy watching.)
Second Policeman. Flourish all round — ’Put all possible obstacles in his way;’ oblong dot at the end — ’Detain him till further advices reach you;’ scratch at bottom — ’Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;’ ink-spirt on right-hand side, (which is the case here) — ’Arrest him at once.’ Why and wherefore, I don’t concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna, well and good — the passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-night — there has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently, Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.
III. — EVENING.
Inside the Turret. LUIGI and his MOTHER entering.
Mother. If there blew wind, you’d hear a long sigh, easing
The utmost heaviness of music’s heart.
Luigi. Here in the archway?
Mother. Oh no, no — in farther,
Where the echo is made, on the ridge.
Luigi. Here surely, then.
How plain the tap of my heel as I leaped up!
Hark — ’Lucius Junius!’ The very ghost of a voice,
Whose body is caught and kept by . . . what are those?
Mere withered wallflowers, waving overhead?
They seem an elvish group with thin bleached hair
Who lean out of their topmost fortress — looking
And listening, mountain men, to what we say,
Hands under chin of each grave earthy face:
Up and show faces all of you! — ’All of you!’
That’s the king’s dwarf with the scarlet comb; now hark —
Come down and meet your fate! Hark — ’Meet your fate!’
Mother. Let him not meet it, my Luigi — do not
Go to his City! putting crime aside,
Half of these ills of Italy are feigned:
Your Pellicos and writers for effect,
Write for effect.
Luigi. Hush! say A. writes, and B.
Mother. These A.’s and B’s write for effect, I say.
Then, evil is in its nature loud, while good!
Is silent; you hear each petty injury,
None of his daily virtues; he is old,
Quiet, and kind, and densely stupid. Why
Do A. and B. not kill him themselves?
Luigi. They teach
Others to kill him — me — and, if I fail,
Others to succeed; now, if A. tried and failed,
I could not teach that: mine’s the lesser task.
Mother, they visit night by night . . .
Mother. — You, Luigi?
Ah, will you let me tell you what you are?
Luigi. Why net? Oh, the one thing you fear to hint,
You may assure yourself I say and say
Ever to myself; at times — nay, even as now
We sit, I think my mind is touched — suspect
All is not sound: but is not knowing that,
What constitutes one sane or otherwise?
I know I am thus — so all is right again!
I laugh at myself as through the town I walk,
And see men merry as if no Italy
Were suffering; then I ponder — ’I am rich,
Young, healthy; why should this fact trouble me,
More than it troubles these?’ But it does trouble!
No — trouble’s a bad word — for as I walk
There’s springing and melody and giddiness,
And old quaint turns and passages of my youth —
Dreams long forgotten, little in themselves —
Return to me — whatever may amuse me,
And earth seems in a truce with me, and heaven
Accords with me, all things suspend their strife,
The very cicale laugh ‘There goes he, and there!
Feast him, the time is short; he is on his way
For the world’s sake: feast him this once, our friend!’
And in return for all this, I can trip
Cheerfully up the scaffold-steps. I go
This evening, mother!
Mother. But mistrust yourself —
Mistrust the judgment you pronounce on him.
Luigi. Oh, there I feel — am sure that I am right!
Mother. Mistrust your judgment, then, of the mere means
Of this wild enterprise: say, you are right, —
How should one in your state e’er bring to pass
What would require a cool head, a cold heart,
And a calm hand? You never will escape.
Luigi. Escape — to even wish that, would spoil all!
The dying is best part of it. Too much
Have I enjoyed these fifteen years of mine,
To leave myself excuse for longer life —
Was not life pressed down, running o’er with joy,
That I might finish with it ere my fellows
Who, sparelier feasted, make a longer stay?
I was put at the board-head, helped to all
At first; I rise up happy and content.
God must be glad one loves His world so much!
I can give news of earth to all the dead
Who ask me: — last year’s sunsets, and great stars
That had a right to come first and see ebb
The crimson wave that drifts the sun away —
Those crescent moons with notched and burning rims
That strengthened into sharp fire, and there stood,
Impatient of the azure — and that day
In March, a double rainbow stopped the storm —
May’s warm, slow, yellow moonlit summer nights —
Gone are they, but I have them in my soul
Mother. (He will not go!)
Luigi. You smile at me! ‘Tis true, —
Voluptuousness, grotesqueness, ghastliness,
Environ my devotedness as quaintly
As round about some antique altar wreathe
The rose festoons, goats’ horns, and oxen’s skulls.
Mother. See now: you reach the city, you must cross
His threshold — how?
Luigi. Oh, that’s if we conspired!
Then would come pains in plenty, as you guess —
But guess not how the qualities most fit
For such an office, qualities I have,
Would little stead me otherwise employed,
Yet prove of rarest merit here, here only.
Every one knows for what his excellence
Will serve, but no one ever will consider
For what his worst defect might serve; and yet
Have you not seen me range our coppice yonder
In search of a distorted ash? — it happens
The wry spoilt branch’s a natural perfect bow!
Fancy the thrice-sage, thrice-precautioned man
No, no! I have a handsome dress packed up —
White satin here, to set off my black hair.
In I shall march — for you may watch your life out
Behind thick walls, make friends there to betray you;
More than one man spoils everything. March straight —
Only, no clumsy knife to fumble for.
Take the great gate, and walk (not saunter) on
Thro’ guards and guards — I have rehearsed it all
Inside the Turret here a hundred times!
Don’t ask the way of whom you meet, observe!
But where they cluster thickliest is the door
Of doors; they’ll let you pass — they’ll never blab
Each to the other, he knows not the favourite,
Whence he is bound and what’s his business now.
Walk in — straight up to him; you have no knife:
Be prompt, how should he scream? Then, out with you!
Italy, Italy, my Italy!
You’re free, you’re free! Oh mother, I could dream
They got about me — Andrea from his exile,
Pier from his dungeon, Gualtier from his grave!
Mother. Well, you shall go. Yet seems this patriotism
The easiest virtue for a selfish man
To acquire! He loves himself — and next, the world —
If he must love beyond, — but nought between:
As a short-sighted man sees nought midway
His body and the sun above. But you
Are my adored Luigi — ever obedient
To my least wish, and running o’er with love —
I could not call you cruel or unkind.
Once more, your ground for killing him? — then go!
Luigi. Now do you ask me, or make sport of me?
How first the Austrians got these provinces . . .
(If that is all, I’ll satisfy you soon)
— Never by conquest, but by cunning, for
That treaty whereby . . .
Mother. Well?
Luigi. (Sure he’s arrived
The tell-tale cuckoo: spring’s his confidant,
And he lets out her April purposes!)
Or . . . better go at once to modern times.
He has . . . they have . . . in fact, I understand
But can’t restate the matter; that’s my boast:
Others could reason it out to you, and prove
Things they have made me feel.
Mother. Why go to-night?
Morn’s for adventure. Jupiter is now
A morning-star. I cannot hear you, Luigi!
Luigi. ‘I am the bright and morning-star,’ God saith —