Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 61
Who both antedate our mission
In an unpreparèd season?
“Drop, leaf! be silent, song!
Cold things we come among:
We must warm them, we must warm them,
Ere we ever hope to charm them.
“Howbeit” (here his face
Lightened around the place,
So to mark the outward turning
Of its spirit’s inward burning)
“Something it is, to hold
In God’s worlds manifold,
First revealed to creature-duty,
Some new form of His mild Beauty.
“Whether that form respect
The sense or intellect,
Holy be, in mood or meadow,
The Chief Beauty’s sign and shadow!
“Holy, in me and thee,
Rose fallen from the tree, —
Though the world stand dumb around us,
All unable to expound us.
Though none us deign to bless,
Blessèd are we, natheless;
Blessèd still and consecrated
In that, rose, we were created.
“Oh, shame to poet’s lays
Sung for the dole of praise, —
Hoarsely sung upon the highway
With that obolum da mihi!
“Shame, shame to poet’s soul
Pining for such a dole,
When Heaven-chosen to inherit
The high throne of a chief spirit!
“Sit still upon your thrones,
O ye poetic ones!
And if, sooth, the world decry you,
Let it pass unchallenged by you.
“Ye to yourselves suffice,
Without its flatteries.
Self-contentedly approve you
Unto Him who sits above you, —
“In prayers, that upward mount
Like to a fair-sunned fount
Which, in gushing back upon you,
Hath an upper music won you, —
“In faith, that still perceives
No rose can shed her leaves,
Far less, poet fall from mission,
With an unfulfilled fruition, —
“In hope, that apprehends
An end beyond these ends,
And great uses rendered duly
By the meanest song sung truly, —
“In thanks, for all the good
By poets understood,
For the sound of seraphs moving
Down the hidden depths of loving, —
“For sights of things away
Through fissures of the clay,
Promised things which shall be given
And sung over, up in Heaven, —
“For life, so lovely-vain,
For death, which breaks the chain,
For this sense of present sweetness,
And this yearning to completeness!”
THE POET AND THE BIRD.
A FABLE.
I
Said a people to a poet— “Go out from among us straightway!
While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine:
There’s a little fair brown nightingale who, sitting in the gateway,
Makes fitter music to our ear than any song of thine!”
II
The poet went out weeping; the nightingale ceased chanting:
“Now, wherefore, O thou nightingale, is all thy sweetness done?”
— “I cannot sing my earthly things, the heavenly poet wanting,
Whose highest harmony includes the lowest under sun.”
III
The poet went out weeping, and died abroad, bereft there;
The bird flew to his grave and died amid a thousand wails:
And when I last came by the place, I swear the music left there
Was only of the poet’s song, and not the nightingale’s.
THE CRY OF THE HUMAN.
I
“ There is no God” the foolish saith,
But none “There is no sorrow,”
And nature oft the cry of faith
In bitter need will borrow:
Eyes, which the preacher could not school,
By wayside graves are raisèd,
And lips say “God be pitiful,”
Who ne’er said “God be praisèd.”
Be pitiful, O God!
II
The tempest stretches from the steep
The shadow of its coming,
The beasts grow tame and near us creep,
As help were in the human;
Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind,
We spirits tremble under —
The hills have echoes, but we find
No answer for the thunder.
Be pitiful, O God!
III
The battle hurtles on the plains,
Earth feels new scythes upon her;
We reap our brothers for the wains,
And call the harvest — honour:
Draw face to face, front line to line,
One image all inherit, —
Then kill, curse on, by that same sign,
Clay — clay, and spirit — spirit.
Be pitiful, O God!
IV
The plague runs festering through the town,
And never a bell is tolling,
And corpses, jostled ‘neath the moon,
Nod to the dead-cart’s rolling:
The young child calleth for the cup,
The strong man brings it weeping,
The mother from her babe looks up,
And shrieks away its sleeping.
Be pitiful, O God!
V
The plague of gold strikes far and near,
And deep and strong it enters;
This purple chimar which we wear
Makes madder than the centaur’s:
Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange,
We cheer the pale gold-diggers,
Each soul is worth so much on ‘Change,
And marked, like sheep, with figures.
Be pitiful, O God!
VI
The curse of gold upon the land
The lack of bread enforces;
The rail-cars snort from strand to strand,
Like more of Death’s White Horses:
The rich preach “rights” and “future days,”
And hear no angel scoffing,
The poor die mute, with starving gaze
On corn-ships in the offing.
Be pitiful, O God!
VII
We meet together at the feast,
To private mirth betake us;
We stare down in the winecup, lest
Some vacant chair should shake us:
We name delight, and pledge it round —
“It shall be ours to-morrow!”
God’s seraphs, do your voices sound
As sad, in naming sorrow?
Be pitiful, O God!
VIII
We sit together, with the skies,
The steadfast skies, above us,
We look into each other’s eyes,
“And how long will you love us?”
The eyes grow dim with prophecy,
The voices, low and breathless, —
“Till death us part!” — O words, to be
Our best , for love the deathless!
Be pitiful, O God!
IX
We tremble by the harmless bed
Of one loved and departed:
Our tears drop on the lips that said
Last night “Be stronger-hearted!”
O God — to clasp those fingers close,
And yet to feel so lonely!
To see a light upon such brows,
Which is the daylight only!
Be pitiful, O God!
X
The happy children come to us
And look up in our faces;
They ask us “Was it thus, and thus,
When we were in their places?”
We cannot speak; — we see anew
The hills we used to live in,
And feel our mother’s smile press through
The kisses she is giving.
Be pitiful, O God!
XI
We pray together at the kirk
For mercy, mercy solely:
Hands weary with the evil work,
We lift them to the Holy.
The corpse is calm below our knee,
Its spirit, bright before Thee:
Between them, worse than either, we —
Without the rest or glory.
Be pitiful, O God!
XII
We leave the communing of men,
The murmur of the passions,
And live alone, to live again
With endless generations:
Are we so brave? The sea and sky
In silence lift their mirrors,
And, glassed therein, our spirits high
Recoil from their own terrors.
Be pitiful, O God!
XIII
We sit on hills our childhood wist,
Woods, hamlets, streams, beholding
The sun strikes through the farthest mist
The city’s spire to golden:
The city’s golden spire it was,
When hope and health were strongest,
But now it is the churchyard grass
We look upon the longest.
Be pitiful, O God!
XIV
And soon all vision waxeth dull;
Men whisper “He is dying;”
We cry no more “Be pitiful!”
We have no strength for crying:
No strength, no need. Then, soul of mine,
Look up and triumph rather!
Lo, in the depth of God’s Divine,
The Son adjures the Father,
Be pitiful, O God!
A PORTRAIT.
“One name is Elizabeth.”
— Ben Jonson.
I will paint her as I see her.
Ten times have the lilies blown
Since she looked upon the sun.
And her face is lily-clear,
Lily-shaped, and dropped in duty
To the law of its own beauty.
Oval cheeks encoloured faintly,
Which a trail of golden hair
Keeps from fading off to air:
And a forehead fair and saintly,
Which two blue eyes undershine,
Like meek prayers before a shrine.
Face and figure of a child, —
Though too calm, you think, and tender,
For the childhood you would lend her.
Yet child-simple, undefiled,
Frank, obedient, waiting still
On the turnings of your will.
Moving light, as all young things,
As young birds, or early wheat
When the wind blows over it.
Only, free from flutterings
Of loud mirth that scorneth measure —
Taking love for her chief pleasure.
Choosing pleasures, for the rest,
Which come softly — just as she,
When she nestles at your knee.
Quiet talk she liketh best,
In a bower of gentle looks, —
Watering flowers, or reading books.
And her voice, it murmurs lowly,
As a silver stream may run,
Which yet feels (you feel) the sun.
And her smile it seems half holy,
As if drawn from thoughts more far
Than our common jestings are.
And if any poet knew her,
He would sing of her with falls
Used in lovely madrigals.
And if any painter drew her,
He would paint her unaware
With a halo round the hair.
And if reader read the poem,
He would whisper “You have done a
Consecrated little Una.”
And a dreamer (did you show him
That same picture) would exclaim,
“‘Tis my angel, with a name!”
And a stranger, when he sees her
In the street even, smileth stilly,
Just as you would at a lily.
And all voices that address her,
Soften, sleeken every word,
As if speaking to a bird.
And all fancies yearn to cover
The hard earth, whereon she passes,
With the thymy-scented grasses.
And all hearts do pray “God love her!”
Ay and always, in good sooth,
We may all be sure He doth .
CONFESSIONS.
I
Face to face in my chamber, my silent chamber, I saw her:
God and she and I only, there I sat down to draw her
Soul through the clefts of confession: “Speak, I am holding thee fast,
As the angel of resurrection shall do it at the last!”
“My cup is blood-red
With my sin,” she said,
“And I pour it out to the bitter lees,
As if the angels of judgment stood over me strong at the last,
Or as thou wert as these.”
II
When God smote His hands together, and struck out thy soul as a spark
Into the organised glory of things, from deeps of the dark, —
Say, didst thou shine, didst thou burn, didst thou honour the power in the form,
As the star does at night, or the fire-fly, or even the little ground-worm?
“I have sinned,” she said,
“For my seed-light shed
Has smouldered away from His first decrees.
The cypress praiseth the fire-fly, the ground-leaf praiseth the worm;
I am viler than these.”
III
When God on that sin had pity, and did not trample thee straight
With His wild rains beating and drenching thy light found inadequate;
When He only sent thee the north-wind, a little searching and chill,
To quicken thy flame — didst thou kindle and flash to the heights of His will?
“I have sinned,” she said,
“Unquickened, unspread,
My fire dropt down, and I wept on my knees:
I only said of His winds of the north as I shrank from their chill,
What delight is in these?”
IV
When God on that sin had pity, and did not meet it as such,
But tempered the wind to thy uses, and softened the world to thy touch,
At least thou wast moved in thy soul, though unable to prove it afar,
Thou couldst carry thy light like a jewel, not giving it out like a star?
“I have sinned,” she said,
“And not merited
The gift He gives, by the grace He sees!
The mine-cave praiseth the jewel, the hillside praiseth the star;
I am viler than these.”
V
Then I cried aloud in my passion, — Unthankful and impotent creature,
To throw up thy scorn unto God through the rents in thy beggarly nature!
If He, the all-giving and loving, is served so unduly, what then
Hast thou done to the weak and the false and the changing, — thy fellows of men?
“I have loved ,” she said,
(Words bowing her head
As the wind the wet acacia-trees)
“I saw God sitting above me, but I . . . I sat among men,
And I have loved these.”
VI
Again with a lifted voice, like a choral trumpet that takes
The lowest note of a viol that trembles, and triumphing breaks
On the air with it solemn and clear,— “Behold! I have sinned not in this!
Where I loved, I have loved much and well, — I have verily loved not amiss.
Let the living,” she said,
“Inquire of the dead,
In the house of the pale-fronted images.
My own true dead will answer for me, that I have not loved amiss
In my love for all these.
VII
“The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and by night;
Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me, if ever so light;
Their least gift, which they left to my childhood, far off in the long-ago years,
Is now turned from a toy to a relic, and seen through the crystals of tears.
Dig the snow,” she said,
“For my churchyard bed,
Yet I, as I sleep, shall not fear to freeze,
If one only of these my beloveds shall love me with heart-warm tears,
As I have loved these!
VIII
“If I angered any among them, from thenceforth my own life was sore;
If I fell by chance from their presence, I clung to their memory more:
Their tender I often felt holy, their bitter I sometimes called sweet;
And whenever their heart has refused me, I fell down straight at their feet.
I have loved,” she said, —
“Man is weak, God is dread,
Yet the weak man dies with his spirit at ease,
Having poured such an unguent of love but once on the Saviour’s feet
As I lavished for these.”
IX
Go, I cried, thou hast chosen the Human, and left the Divine!
Then, at least, have the Human shared with thee their wild-berry wine?