s: Missverständnisses auf mich schieben, die Grossmut der Familie


s: adversaries, for example, "Es gab den Dolch in deine Hand," "Sie


s: küssten mich mit ihren falschen Lippen," and several following


s: A similar impression is made by the concluding numbers of the


s: Intermezzo, "Die alten, bösen Lieder." And here again the


s: comparison,--even if merely as to size,--of a coffin with the


s: umgegangen, wie mit einem völlig gleichen Spiesskameraden. Mit


s: vorgezwitschert worden ...? Ach, teurer Leser, wenn du über jene


s: A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.


s: And in contemplating the ruins of the Palatine Hill:


s: What are our petty griefs? Let me not number mine.


s: Here we have the essential difference between these two types of


s: Have I not seen what human things could do?


s: To the small whisper of the as paltry few--


s: with the first lines of Heine's ninth sonnet:


s: Ich möchte weinen, doch ich kann es nicht;


s: Ich möcht' mich rüstig in die Höhe heben,


s: Doch kann ich's nicht; am Boden muss ich kleben,


s: Umkrächzt, umzischt von eklem Wurmgezücht,


s: also in "Lebensfahrt," although this latter poem illustrates a


s: "Freiheitslieder" refers to his own personal liberty. For the


s: failings of his countrymen he is ever ready with scathing satire,


s: discover more than a negligible quantity of Weltschmerz directly


s: "My injuries came down on those who loved me--


s: Lumpigkeiten oft sogar lobenswert sind, wenn sie uns in den Stand


s: Weltschmerz would lead us to expect; and we frequently gain the


s: Plümacher maintains: "Der Weltschmerz ist entweder die absolute


s: Passivität, und die Klage seine einzige Aeusserung, oder aber er


s: verpufft seine Kräfte in rein subjectivistischen, eudämonischen


s: Anstrengungen,"--a characterization which certainly holds good in


s: Breitinger, H. Neues über den alten Weltschmerz. "Studien und


s: Lenzi, Annita. Il problema del dolore in alcune figure della


s: Lombroso, C. Der geniale Mensch. Hamburg, 1900.


s: Hölderlins gesammelte Dichtungen. Neu durchgesehene und vermehrte


s: Arnold, R. F. Der deutsche Philhellenismus. Euphorion, 1896, II


s: Teuffel, W. S. Studien und Charakteristiken zur griechischen u.


s: Berdrow, Otto. Frauenbilder aus der neueren deutschen


s: Kerner, Theobald. Das Kernerhaus und seine Gäste. Deutsche


s: Klein-Hattingen, Oscar. See under Hölderlin.


s: Martensen, U. Aus meinem Leben. Berlin, 1891.


s: Saly-Stern, J. La vie d'un Poète. Essai sur Lenau. Paris, 1902.


s: Witt, A. Lenau's Leben und Charakter. Marburg, 1893.


s: herausgegeben von Gustav Karpeles. Berlin, 1887.


s: Betz, Dr. Louis P. Heine in Frankreich. Eine litterarhistorische


s: Karpeles, Gustav. H. Heine. Aus seinem Leben und aus seiner Zeit.


s: Selden, Camille. Les derniers Jours de H. Heine. Paris, 1884.


s: Strodtmann, Adolf. Immortellen Heinrich Heine's. Berlin, 1871.


s: Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house


s: Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;


s: The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,


s: In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;


s: The children were nestled all snug in their beds,


s: While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;


s: And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,


s: Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap--


s: When out on the lawn there rose such a clatter,


s: I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter,


s: Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.


s: The moon, on the breast of the new-fallen snow,


s: Gave a lustre of mid-day to objects below;


s: When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,


s: But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,


s: With a little old driver, so lively and quick,


s: More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,


s: And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;


s: "Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!


s: To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall!


s: Now, dash away, dash away, dash away all!"


s: As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,


s: When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,


s: So, up to the house-top the coursers they flew,


s: With a sleigh full of toys--and St. Nicholas too.


s: And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof,


s: The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.


s: As I drew in my head, and was turning around,


s: Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.


s: He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,


s: And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;


s: A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,


s: And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack;


s: His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!


s: His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;


s: His droll little month was drawn up like a bow,


s: And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;


s: The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,


s: And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath.


s: He had a broad face, and a little round belly


s: That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.


s: He was chubby and plump--a right jolly old elf;


s: And I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself.


s: A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,


s: Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.


s: He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,


s: And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,


s: And laying his finger aside of his nose,


s: And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.


s: He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,


s: And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;


s: But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,


s: "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"


s: The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church


s: simpler pieces of a lyric or epic cast--such rhymed presentations


s: Bust"--from their more complex companions, which were almost


s: work they found unnoticeable and later work they declared


s: their contour and color. As soon as this underlying uniformity of


s: belonging to any sort of poetic material, whether ordinarily


s: accounted dramatic material or not, which is imaginatively


s: externalized and made concrete. This peculiarity of make Browning


s: work has given the clew to his self-judgments.


s: Not only events, deeds, and characters--the usual subject-matter


s: mobile, are transfused with the enlivening light of his creative


s: energy in his shorter poems. Perhaps the very path struck out


s: through them by the poet in his re-division may be traced between


s: pursuing some sudden rapt whirl of flight in Heaven's face at


s: fancy's bidding. They are certainly not less original than those


s: other solider, earth-fast poems, but they are less unique. Being


s: motived in transient fancy, they are more akin to poems by other


s: quality. The other longer poems in blank verse, graver and more


s: dignified, yet even more vivid, and far more life-encompassing,


s: modelled and distinctively colored exemplars of his peculiar


s: In his next following collection, under the similar descriptive


s: title of "Dramatis Personae," he added to this class of work,


s: while Abt Vogler, the creative musician, Rabbi ben Ezra, the


s: intuitional philosopher, and the chastened adept in loving, James


s: betray itself.  Other poets writing on the poet, Emerson for


s: example, and Tennyson, place the outright plain name of their


s: thought at the head of their verses, without any attempt to make


s: involution of life itself, and, as ever in Browning's monologues,


s: livingly the face of the poet portraying him. And this one--the


s: admonishing poet--is set there with his "sudden rose," as if to


s: indicate with that symbol of poetic magic what kind of spell was


s: another?  What poet could have composed it but one who himself


s: employed the dramatic method of causing the abstract to be


s: although his poem is but a shapeless mist.


s: Not directly, then, but indirectly, as the dramatic poet ever


s: poets of this poem, prepossessing the reader of the verity and


s: beauty of the theory of poetic art therein exemplified.  Such an


s: however, by means of his own poetic way of seeing, but of the


s: prosaic way in which he is seen by a contemporary, the whole, of


s: course, being poetically seen and presented by the


s: over-poet. Browning himself, and in such a manifold way that the


s: reader is enabled to conceive as vividly of the talker and his


s: impression is conveyed of the dramatic mode of poetic expression


s: "Artemis Prologizes" seems to have been selected to close this


s: were a poet's exercise in blank verse. Its smooth and spacious


s: rhythm, flawless and serene as the distant Greek myth of the hero


s: rougher, but brighter and more humanly colloquial blank verse of


s: Browning, perhaps, linked his next poem, "The Strange Medical


s: Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician," with the calm


s: prologizing of the Hellenic goddess, by association of the "wise


s: pharmacies" of AEsculapius, with the inquisitive sagacity of


s: nature which is still mystically alluring the curiosity of


s: unearthly light, and their abstracted eyes are hypnotized by the


s: effulgence of their own haloes.  Yet the poet never fails to


s: painting-brother of the monasteries is made clear, but also the


s: alert-witted Florentine guards, ready to appreciate all the good


s: chooses to turn the light of its gaze. So, also, in "Andrea del


s: Sarto," the easy cleverness of the unaspiring craftsman is not


s: contributing toward the individualizing of each artist are so


s: portraiture and assisting in the better appreciation of the poem,


s: This sort of dramatic synthesis of a salient, historical epoch is


s: baths and horses and brown Greek manuscripts and mistresses, the


s: seeds of human decay planted in the plot of Time, known as the


s: Central Renaissance, by the same lingering fleshliness and


s: self-destroying self-indulgence as was at home in pagan days, are


s: hankering for the pleasure of estimation above his fellows?


s: self-glorification beyond his fellows, is a parable of the more


s: profitable life to be found in following the famous injunction of


s: So, as vivid a picture of the materialism and monopolizing of the


s: genuineness in character and earnestness in aim, is portrayed


s: picture of the Bishop of Saint Praxed's.


s: In Cleon, the man of composite art and culture, the last ripe


s: fruitage of Greek development, is personified and brought into


s: The aesthetic and religious or philosophical interests vitally


s: characteristic of the Provencal life of the twelfth century,


s: As these poetic creations now stand, they all seem, upon


s: specific social environment, and fulfilling the possibilities for


s: In one important particular the re-arrangement of the "Men and


s: Women" group of poems made its title inappropriate.  The graceful


s: what does it matter that the advantage gained by nicely selecting


s: artistic modelling, was won at the cost of making the reference


s: inaccurate, in the opening lines of "One Word More," to "my fifty


s: calling attention to the fact that the creator of Pompilia,


s: Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?


s: 'Tis you speak, that's your error.  Song's our art:


s: Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts


s: Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.


s: --True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!


s: But why such long prolusion and display,


s: Such turning and adjustment of the harp,


s: And taking it upon your breast, at length,


s: Only to speak dry words across its strings?


s: Stark-naked thought is in request enough:


s: Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears!


s: The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,


s: Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp--


s: Exchange our harp for that--who hinders you?


s: But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;


s: Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse.


s: Men must have reason--so, you aim at men.


s: Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth,'tis true;


s: If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!


s: Until it happed, a-walking in the fields,


s: He noticed all at once that plants could speak,


s: Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.


s: Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes!


s: We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.


s: But by the time youth slips a stage or two


s: While reading prose in that tough book he wrote


s: And settling on the sense most to our mind)


s: We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.


s: Then, who  helps more, pray, to repair our loss--


s: And subtler meanings of what roses say--


s: Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt,


s: John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?


s: He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes,


s: And in there breaks the sudden rose herself,


s: Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs


s: And musty  volumes, Boehme's book and all--


s: Buries us with a glory, young once more,


s: Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.


s: So come, the harp back to your heart again!


s: You are a poem, though your poem's naught.


s: The best of all you showed before, believe,


s: Was your own  boy-face o'er the finer chords


s: That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.


s: seeks to transcend (or penetrate beyond) phenomena, by divesting


s: discover the unincarnate absolute essence of things. The maturer


s: mind craves the vitalizing method of the artist who, like the


s: magician of Halberstadt, recreates things bodily in all their


s: beautiful vivid wholeness.  Yet the poet who sincerely holds so


s: fragmentary a conception of art is himself a poem to the poet who


s: Fieldes to a Greene before Neys-Gate at Gorlitz and viewing the


s: Herbes and Grass of the Fielde, in his inward light he saw into


s: same power over organic life that the philosopher's stone of the


s: And this, or something like it, was his way.


s: A man of mark, to know next time you saw.


s: Was courtly once and conscientious still,


s: And many might have worn it, though none did:


s: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,


s: Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.


s: He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,


s: An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.


s: They turned up, now, the alley by the church,


s: That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves


s: On the main promenade just at the wrong time:


s: Making a peaked shade blacker than itself


s: Against the single window spared some house


s: Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work--


s: Or else surprise the ferret of his stick


s: Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.


s: He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,


s: The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys


s: That volunteer to help him turn its winch.


s: He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,


s: And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,


s: And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.


s: He took such cognizance of men and things,


s: Yet stared at nobody--you stared at him,


s: And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,


s: He seemed to know you and expect as much.


s: So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed,


s: It marked the shameful and notorious fact,


s: The town's true master if the town but knew


s: While this man walked about and took account


s: Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,


s: Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,


s: And reads them in his bedroom of a night.


s: Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,


s: A tang of . . . well, it was not wholly ease


s: As back into your mind the man's look came.


s: His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint


s: Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw,


s: And young C. got his mistress, was't our friend,


s: His letter to the King, that did it all?


s: What paid the Woodless man for so much pains?


s: Our Lord the King has favorites manifold,


s: And shifts his ministry some once a month;


s: But never word or sign, that I could hear,


s: The King's approval of those letters conned


s: The last thing duly at the dead of night.


s: Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,


s: Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not!


s: I set the watch--how should the people know?


s: Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!"


s: Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?


s: I found no truth in one report at least--


s: That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes


s: Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,


s: And twenty naked girls to change his plate!


s: In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,


s: Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!


s: The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,


s: Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,


s: (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese


s: And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,


s: Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.


s: My father, like the man of sense he was,


s: Would point him out to me a dozen times;


s: Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,


s: Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,


s: Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,


s: I'd like now, yet had happy been afraid,


s: To have just looked, when this man came to die,


s: And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides


s: And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,


s: With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.


s: Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,


s: Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,


s: Doing the King's work all the dim day long,


s: Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,


s: And, now the day was won, relieved at once!


s: No further show or need for that old coat,


s: You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while


s: How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!


s: Well, I could never write a verse--could you?


s: Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.


s: "How it Strikes a Contemporary" is a portrait of the Poet as the


s: unpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him.  It is humorously


s: colored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects


s: withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted


s: And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed


s: By none whose temples whiten this the world.


s: Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;


s: I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;


s: On earth I, caring for the creatures, guard


s: And every feathered mother's callow brood,


s: And all that love green haunts and loneliness.


s: Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns


s: Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,


s: And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,


s: Was dearest to me.  He, my buskined step


s: To follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,


s: And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts


s: Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,


s: Of tapers lulled, in jealousy despatched


s: A noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings,


s: Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself


s: The son of Theseus her great absent spouse.


s: Against the fury of the Queen, she judged


s: Life insupportable; and, pricked at heart


s: An Amazonian stranger's race should dare


s: To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:


s: Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll


s: The fame of him her swerving made not swerve.


s: And Theseus, read, returning, and believed,


s: And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,


s: The man without a crime who, last as first,


s: Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth,


s: That of his wishes should be granted three,


s: May ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"


s: Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince


s: Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car


s: That give the feet a stay against the strength


s: His body flung the rein, and urged their speed


s: Along the rocks and shingles at the shore,


s: When from the gaping wave a monster flung


s: These, mad  with terror, as the sea-bull sprawled


s: Wallowing  about their feet, lost care of him


s: That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole


s: Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed,


s: Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,


s: Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein


s: Which either hand directed; nor they quenched


s: The frenzy of their flight before each trace,


s: Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car,


s: Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,


s: Huge fish-bone wrecked and  wreathed amid the sands


s: On that detested beach, was bright with blood


s: And morsels of his flesh; then fell the steeds


s: Head foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts,


s: Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.


s: But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced


s: That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,


s: By  deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth.


s: And  worthily; but ere the death-veils hid


s: His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed


s: To his rash sire.  Whereat Athenai wails.


s: Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake


s: Should tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;


s: Lest at my fane the priests disconsolate


s: Should dress my image with some faded poor


s: Few crowns, made favors of, nor dare object


s: Such slackness to my worshippers who turn


s: Elsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,


s: Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne--


s: (While round the funeral pyre the populace


s: Stood with fierce light on their black robes which bound


s: Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped


s: O'er the dead body of their withered prince,


s: On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab


s: 'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief--


s: As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed


s: Sending a crowd of sparkles through the night,


s: Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jars


s: Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,


s: And this white-bearded sage who squeezes now


s: The berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,


s: Asclepios, whom my  radiant brother taught


s: The doctrine of each herb and flower and root,


s: To know  their secret'st virtue and express


s: The saving soul of all: who so has soothed


s: With layers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,


s: Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,


s: And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,


s: And laid the strips and lagged ends of flesh


s: Even once more, and slacked the sinew's knot


s: Of every tortured limb--that now he lies


s: As if mere sleep possessed him underneath


s: These interwoven oaks and pines.  Oh cheer,


s: Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,


s: Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!


s: Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!


s: And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,


s: Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leaves


s: That strew the turf around the twain! While I


s: "Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the


s: Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,


s: (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,


s: Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,


s: To coop up and keep down on earth a space


s: That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul)


s: Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,


s: Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks


s: Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,


s: Back and rejoin its source before the term--


s: Sends greeting (health and  knowledge, fame with peace)


s: Three samples of true snakestone--rarer still,


s: One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,


s: (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)


s: I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone


s: Some say Vespasian comes, some, his son.


s: A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;


s: Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:


s: I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.


s: Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,


s: Since this poor covert where I pass the night,


s: This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence


s: A man with plague-sores at the third degree


s: Runs till he drops down dead.  Thou laughest here!


s: 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,


s: And  falling-sickness hath a happier cure


s: Than our school wots of: there's a spider here


s: Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,


s: Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;


s: Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,


s: Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.


s: Gather what most deserves, and give thee all--


s: Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,


s: Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,


s: In fine exceeds our produce.  Scalp-disease


s: Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy--


s: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar--


s: But zeal outruns discretion.  Here I end.


s: Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,


s: Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?


s: I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,


s: An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!


s: For, be it this town's barrenness--or else


s: The Man had  something in the look of him--


s: His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.


s: The care and pains this somehow stole from me)


s: I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,


s: Almost in sight--for, wilt thou have the truth?


s: Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.


s: Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!


s: Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:


s: Unknown to me and which 't were well to know,


s: Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,


s: But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide,


s: Making a clear house of it too suddenly,


s: The first conceit that entered might inscribe


s: (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent


s: The just-returned and new-established soul


s: That henceforth she will read or these or none.


s: And first--the  man's own firm conviction rests


s: That he was dead (in fact they buried him)


s: --That he was dead and then restored to life


s: --'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise.


s: "Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.


s: Not so this figment!--not, that such a fume,


s: Instead of giving way to time and health,


s: Should eat itself into the life of life,


s: As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!


s: For see, how he takes up the after-life.


s: Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,


s: As much, indeed, beyond the common health


s: And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,


s: And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!


s: Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?


s: This grown man eyes the world now like a child.


s: Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,


s: Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,


s: To bear my inquisition.  While they spoke,


s: Now sharply, now with sorrow, told the case,


s: But folded his two hands and let them talk,


s: Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.


s: And that's a sample how his years must go.


s: Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,


s: Should find a treasure, can he use the same


s: With straitened habits and with tastes starved small,


s: And take at once to his impoverished brain


s: That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand


s: And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?


s: Is he not such an one as moves to mirth--


s: The golden mean, is lost on such an one:


s: The man's fantastic will is the man's law.


s: So here--we  call the treasure knowledge, say,


s: Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,


s: Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:


s: The man is witless of the size, the sum,


s: Discourse to him of prodigious armaments


s: And of the passing of a mule with gourds--


s: 'T is one! Then take it on the other side,


s: Speak of some trifling fact, he will gaze rapt


s: He caught prodigious import, whole results;


s: In ever the same stupor (note this point)


s: That we too see not with his opened eyes.


s: Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,


s: Should his child sicken unto death, why, look


s: For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,


s: While a word, gesture, glance from that same child


s: At play or in the school or laid asleep,


s: The reason why--"'t is but a word," object--


s: "A gesture"--he regards thee as our lord


s: Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,


s: Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,


s: Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst


s: All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.


s: Thou and the child have each a veil alike


s: Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both


s: Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match


s: He holds on firmly to some thread of life--


s: Which runs across some vast distracting orb


s: Of glory on either side that meagre thread,


s: Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet--


s: The spiritual life around the earthly life:


s: The law of that is known to him as this,


s: His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.


s: Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,


s: Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,


s: And not along, this black thread through the blaze--


s: "It should be" balked by "here it cannot be."


s: And oft the man's soul springs into his face


s: His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.


s: Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within


s: And studiously the humbler for that pride,


s: God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.


s: Is prone submission to the heavenly will--


s: 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last


s: For that same death which must restore his being


s: Divorced even now by premature full growth:


s: He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live


s: So long as God please, and just how God please.


s: (Which  meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.


s: Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach


s: The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,


s: How can he give his neighbor the real ground,


s: Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old


s: I probed the sore as thy disciple should:


s: "How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness


s: Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march


s: To stamp out like a little spark thy town,


s: He merely looked with his large eyes on me.


s: Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,


s: And birds--how say I? flowers of the field--


s: In a master's workshop, loving what they make.


s: An indignation which is promptly curbed:


s: As when in certain travel I have feigned


s: And happed to hear the land's practitioners


s: Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,


s: Its cause and cure--and I must hold my peace!


s: Thou wilt object--Why have I not ere this


s: Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene


s: Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,


s: Conferring with the frankness that befits?


s: Accused--our learning's fate--of wizardry,


s: And creed prodigious as described to me.


s: His death, which happened when the earthquake fell


s: (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss


s: To  occult learning in our lord the sage


s: Was wrought by the mad people--that's their wont!


s: To his tried virtue, for miraculous help--


s: How could he stop the earthquake?  That's their way!


s: But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,


s: In mere respect for any good man's fame.


s: Is stark mad; should we count on what he says?


s: Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech


s: 'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)


s: This man so cured regards the curer, then,


s: As--God forgive me! who but God himself,


s: That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!


s: --'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,


s: Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house;


s: Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,


s: And yet was  .  . . what I said nor choose repeat,


s: And must have so avouched himself, in fact,


s: Who saith--but why all this of what he saith?


s: Why write of trivial matters, things of price


s: Aboundeth, very nitrous.  It is strange!


s: Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,


s: Which, now that I review it, needs must seem


s: And awe indeed this man has touched me with.


s: Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness


s: Had wrought upon me first.  I met him thus:


s: I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills


s: Like an old lion's cheek teeth.  Out there came


s: A moon made like a face with certain spots


s: The man and I.  I send thee what is writ.


s: Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.


s: For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;


s: Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!


s: The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?


s: So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--


s: So, through the thunder comes a human voice


s: Saying, "0 heart I made, a heart beats here!


s: Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!


s: Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,


s: But love I gave thee, with myself to love,


s: And thou must love me who have died for thee!"


s: The madman saith He said so: it is strange.


s: "An Epistle" gives the observations and opinions of Karshish, the


s: Lazarus after he has been raised from the dead.  Well versed in


s: Eastern medical lore, he tries to explain the extraordinary


s: phenomenon according to his knowledge.  He attributes Lazarus'


s: version of the miracle to mania induced by trance, and the means


s: used by the Nazarene physician to awaken him, and strengthens his


s: charcoal, and some of vegetable substances.


s: described point very clearly to some one of the Wandering group,


s: which stalk their prey in the open field or in divers


s: hang upon their webs and capture their prey by means of silken


s: snares.  The next line is not determinative of the species, for


s: there is a great number of spiders any one of which might be


s: administered it internally or applied it externally as a cure for


s: spiders as an excellent cure for wounds."  (Dr. H. C. McCook in


s: against the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 A. D.


s: Therefore an anachronism in this poem.  Liquid fire was, however,


s: deemed this plant one of the four "cordial flowers," for cheering


s: There's heaven above, and night by night


s: The heavens, God thought on me his child;


s: The draught to blossoming gladness fast:


s: While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt,


s: And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,


s: Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white


s: "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" presents the doctrine of


s: predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose


s: conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a


s: divine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing to


s: I could have painted pictures like that youth's


s: Ye praise so.  How my soul springs up! No bar


s: Stayed me--ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!


s: --Never  did fate forbid me, star by star,


s: To outburst on your night with all my gift


s: Of fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunk


s: From seconding my soul, with eyes uplift


s: And wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunk


s: The license and the limit, space and bound,


s: And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,


s: Over the canvas could my hand have flung,


s: Each face obedient to its passion's law,


s: Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;


s: Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,


s: Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her brood


s: Pull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;


s: Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,


s: And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved--


s: What did ye give me that I have not saved?


s: Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)


s: Of going--I, in each new picture--forth,


s: As, making new  hearts beat and bosoms swell,


s: Bound for the calmly-satisfied great State,


s: Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,


s: Through old streets named afresh from the event,


s: Till it reached home, where learned age should greet


s: My face, and youth, the star not yet distinct


s: Above his hair, lie learning at my feet!--


s: Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linked


s: With love about, and praise, till life should end,


s: And then not go to heaven, but linger here,


s: Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend--


s: The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear!


s: But a voice changed it.  Glimpses of such sights


s: Have scared me, like the revels through a door


s: Of some strange house of idols at its rites!


s: This world seemed not the world it was before:


s: Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped


s: . . . Who  summoned those cold faces that begun


s: To press on me and judge me?  Though I stooped


s: They drew me forth, and spite of me . . . enough!


s: These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,


s: Count them for garniture and household-stuff,


s: And where they live needs must our pictures live


s: And see their faces, listen to their prate,


s: Discussed of--"This I love, or this I hate,


s: This likes me more, and this affects me less!"


s: Wherefore I chose my portion.  If at whiles


s: These endless cloisters and eternal aisles


s: With the same series.  Virgin, Babe and Saint,


s: With the same cold calm beautiful regard--


s: At least no merchant traffics in my heart;


s: The sanctuary's gloom at least shall ward


s: Vain tongues from where my pictures stand apart;


s: Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrine


s: While, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,


s: They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,


s: 'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.


s: So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!


s: O youth, men praise so--holds their praise its worth?


s: Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?


s: Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?


s: You need not clap your torches to my face.


s: Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!


s: What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,


s: Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?


s: Do--harry out, if you must show your zeal,


s: Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,


s: And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,


s: Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take


s: Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat,


s: And please to know me likewise.  Who am I?


s: Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend


s: Three streets off--he's a certain . . . how d'ye call?


s: I' the house that caps the corner.  Boh! you were best!


s: Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,


s: But you, sir, it concerns you that your knaves


s: Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streets


s: And count fair prize what comes into their net?


s: Just such a face!  Why, sir, you make amends.


s: Lord, I'm not angry!  Bid your hangdogs go


s: Drink out this quarter-florin to the health


s: (And many more beside, lads! more beside!)


s: And all's come square again.  I'd like his face--


s: His, elbowing on his comrade in the door


s: With the pike and lantern--for the slave that holds


s: John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair


s: With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)


s: And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!


s: It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,


s: A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!


s: Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.


s: What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,


s: You know them and they take you? like enough!


s: 'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.


s: Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.


s: Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bands


s: And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,


s: A-painting for the great man, saints and saints


s: And saints again.  I could not paint all night--


s: Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.


s: There came a hurry of feet and little feet,


s: A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song--


s: Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!


s: I let Lisa go, and what good is life since?


s: Flower o' the thyme>--and so on.  Round they went.


s: Like the skipping of rabbits by moonlight--three slim shapes,


s: And a face that looked up . . . zooks, sir, flesh and blood,


s: That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,


s: Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,


s: Hard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met--


s: If I've been merry, what matter who knows?>


s: On Jerome knocking at his poor old breast


s: With  his great round stone to subdue the flesh,


s: Though  your eye twinkles still, you shake your head--


s: Mine's shaved--a   monk, you  say--the sting's in that!


s: Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!


s: And father died and left me in the street.


s: I starved there.  God knows how, a year or two


s: On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,


s: Refuse and rubbish.  One fine frosty day,


s: Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,


s: By the straight cut to the convent.  Six words there,


s: While I stood munching my first bread that month:


s: "So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat father


s: Wiping his own mouth, 't was refection-time--


s: Will you renounce" . . . "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;


s: By no means!  Brief, they made a monk of me;


s: Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,


s: Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici


s: Have given their hearts to--all at eight years old.


s: Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,


s: 'T  was not for nothing--the good bellyful,


s: The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,


s: "Let's see what the urchin's fit for"--that came next,


s: Such a to-do!  They tried me with their books:


s: Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste!


s: All the Latin I construe is, "amo" I love!>


s: But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets


s: Eight years together, as my fortune was,


s: Watching folk's faces to know who will fling


s: The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,


s: And who will curse or kick him for his pains,


s: Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch


s: Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,


s: How say I?--nay, which dog bites?, which lets drop


s: His bone from the heap of offal in the street--


s: Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,


s: He learns the look of things, and none the less


s: Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.


s: Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,


s: Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,


s: Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,


s: And made a string of pictures of the world


s: Betwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,


s: On the wall, the bench, the door.  The monks looked black.


s: "Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say?


s: In no wise.  Lose a crow and catch a lark.


s: What if at last we get our man of parts,


s: And Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine


s: And put the front on it that ought to be!"


s: Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,


s: First, every sort of monk, the black and white,


s: I drew them, fat and lean : then, folk at church,


s: From good old gossips waiting to confess


s: Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends--


s: To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,


s: Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there


s: With the little children round him in a row


s: Of admiration, half for his beard and half


s: For that white anger of his victim's son


s: Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,


s: Signing himself with the other because of Christ


s: (Whose  sad face on the cross sees only this


s: Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,


s: (Which  the intense eyes looked through) came at eve


s: On tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,


s: Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers


s: (The  brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone,


s: I painted all, then cried "'T is ask and have;


s: Choose, for more's ready!"--laid the ladder flat,


s: And showed  my covered bit of cloister-wall.


s: The monks closed in a circle and praised loud


s: Till checked, taught what to see and not to see,


s: Being simple bodies--"That's the very man!


s: Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!


s: That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes


s: To care about his asthma: it's the life!"


s: But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;


s: Their betters took their turn to see and say:


s: And stopped all that in no time.  "How? what's here?


s: Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!


s: Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the true


s: As much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game!


s: Your business is not to catch men with show,


s: Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.


s: Your business is to paint the souls of men--


s: Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . .


s: It's vapor done up like a new-born babe--


s: (In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)


s: It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul!


s: Give us no more of body than shows soul!


s: Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,


s: That sets us praising--why not stop with him?


s: Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head


s: With wonder at lines, colors, and what not?


s: Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!


s: Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,


s: She's just my niece . . . Herodias, I would say--


s: Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!


s: Have it all out!  "Now,  is this sense, I ask?


s: A fine way to paint soul, by painting body


s: So ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further


s: And can't fare worse!  Thus, yellow does for white


s: When what you put for yellow's simply black,


s: When all beside itself means and looks naught.


s: Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,


s: Left foot and right foot, go a double step,


s: Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,


s: Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,


s: The Prior's niece . . . patron-saint--is it so pretty


s: You  can't discover if it means hope, fear,


s: Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?


s: Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,


s: Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,


s: And then add soul and heighten them three-fold?


s: Or say there's beauty with no soul at all--


s: (I never saw it--put the case the same--)


s: If you get simple beauty and naught else,


s: You get about the best thing God invents:


s: That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,


s: Within yourself, when you return him thanks.


s: "Rub all out!  "Well, well, there's my life, in short,


s: And so the thing has gone on ever since.


s: I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds:


s: You should not take a fellow eight years old


s: And make him swear to never kiss the girls.


s: I'm my own master, paint now as I please--


s: Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!


s: Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front--


s: Those great rings serve more purposes than just


s: And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyes


s: The heads shake still--"It's art's decline, my son!


s: You're not of the true painters, great and old;


s: Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find;


s: You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I'll stick to mine!>


s: I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!


s: Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,


s: They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,


s: Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paint


s: To please them--sometimes do and sometimes don't;


s: For, doing most, there's pretty sure to come


s: A turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints--


s: A laugh, a cry, the business of the world--


s: Death for us all, and his own life for each!)>


s: And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,


s: The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,


s: And I do these wild things in sheer despite,


s: In pure rage!  The old mill-horse, out at grass


s: After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,


s: Although the miller does not preach to him


s: The only good of grass is to make chaff.


s: What would men have?  Do they like grass or no--


s: May they or may n't they? all I want's the thing


s: You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:


s: You don't like what you only like too much,


s: You do like what, if given you at your word,


s: For me, I think I speak as I was taught;


s: A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,


s: As that the morning-star's about to shine,


s: What will hap some day.  We've a youngster here


s: Comes  to our convent, studies what I do,


s: Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:


s: His name is Guidi--he'll not mind the monks--


s: They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk--


s: He picks my practice up--he'll paint apace,


s: I know what's sure to follow.  You be judge!


s: However, you're my  man, you've seen the world


s: --The  beauty and the wonder and the power,


s: The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,


s: Changes, surprises,--and God made it all!


s: --For what?  Do you feel thankful, ay or no,


s: For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,


s: The mountain round it and the sky above,


s: Much more the figures of man, woman, child,


s: These are the frame to? What's it all about?


s: To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,


s: Wondered at? oh, this last of course!--you say.


s: But why not do as well as say--paint these


s: Just as they are, careless what comes of it?


s: God's works--paint any one, and count it crime


s: To let a truth slip.  Don't object, "His works


s: Suppose you reproduce her (which  you can't)


s: There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."


s: For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love


s: First when we see them painted, things we have passed


s: Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;


s: And so they are better, painted--better to us,


s: Which is the same thing.  Art was given for that;


s: Lending our minds out.  Have you noticed, now,


s: Your cullion's hanging face?  A bit of chalk,


s: And trust me but you should, though! How much more,


s: If I drew higher things with the same truth!


s: That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,


s: It makes me mad to see what men shall do


s: And we in our graves!  This world's no blot for us,


s: Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:


s: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.


s: "Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"


s: Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plain


s: It does not say to folk--remember matins,


s: Or, mind you fast next Friday!  "Why, for this


s: What need of art at all?  A skull and bones,


s: Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,


s: A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.


s: I painted a Saint Laurence six months since


s: At Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:


s: " How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"


s: "Already not one phiz of your three slaves


s: Who turn the Deacon off his toasted side,


s: But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,


s: The pious people have so eased their own


s: With coming  to say prayers there in a rage:


s: We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.


s: For pity and religion grow i' the crowd--


s: Your painting serves its purpose!  Hang the fools!


s: --That is--you'll not mistake an idle word


s: Spoke in a huff by a poor monk.  God wot,


s: Tasting the air this spicy night which turns


s: The unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!


s: Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!


s: Should have his apt word to excuse himself:


s: I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece


s: . . . There's for you!  Give  me six months, then go, see


s: Something in Sant' Ambrogio's!  Bless the nuns!


s: They want a cast o' my office. I shall paint


s: God in the midst.  Madonna and her babe,


s: Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet


s: When ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.


s: And then i' the front, of course a saint or two--


s: Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,


s: Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and white


s: The convent's friends and gives them a long day,


s: And Job, I must have him there past mistake,


s: Painters who need his patience).  Well, all these


s: Secured at their devotion, up shall come


s: As one by a dark stair into a great light,


s: Mazed, motionless and moonstruck--I'm the man!


s: Back I shrink--what is this I see and hear?


s: I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,


s: My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,


s: Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?


s: Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing


s: Forward, puts out a soft palm--"Not so fast!"


s: --Addresses the celestial presence, "nay--


s: Though he's none of you!  Could Saint John there draw--


s: His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?


s: I shuffle sideways with my blushing face


s: Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay


s: And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,


s: The hothead husband!  Thus I scuttle off


s: To some safe bench behind, not letting go


s: That spoke the good word for me in the nick,


s: Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say.


s: And so all's saved for me, and for the church


s: A pretty picture gained.  Go, six months hence!


s: Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!


s: The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,


s: Don't fear me!  There's the gray beginning.  Zooks!


s: containing the address to the flower, of five syllables.  The


s: Tuscany versions of two of the songs used by Browning are as


s: difficulty till his eighth year, when, being no longer able to


s: support the burden, she placed him in the Convent of the


s: (1401-1429).  [Vasari makes him Lippo's predecessor.  Browning


s: followed the best knowledge of his time in making him, instead,


s: Lippo's pupil.  Vasari is now thought to be right.]


s: Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.


s: You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?


s: I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,


s: Treat his own subject after his own way,


s: Fix his own time, accept too his own price,


s: When next it takes mine.  Will it? tenderly?


s: Oh, I'll content him--but to-morrow.  Love!


s: This evening more than usual, and it seems


s: As if--forgive now--should you let me sit


s: Here by the window with your hand in mine


s: Both of one mind, as married people use,


s: Cheerful and fresh as ever.  Let us try.


s: To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!


s: And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.


s: Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve


s: For each of the five pictures we require:


s: It saves a model.  So! keep looking so--


s: My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!


s: --How could you ever prick those perfect ears,


s: Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet--


s: And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,


s: While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.


s: You smile? why, there's my picture ready made,


s: There's what we painters call our harmony!


s: --You, at the point of your first pride in me


s: (That's gone you know)--but I, at every point;


s: My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down


s: There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;


s: That length of convent-wall across the way


s: Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;


s: The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,


s: Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape--


s: A twilight-piece.  Love, we are in God's hand.


s: How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;


s: So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!


s: This chamber for example--turn your head--


s: All that's behind us!  You don't understand


s: But you can hear at least when people speak:


s: And that cartoon, the second from the door


s: --It is the thing.  Love! so such things should be--


s: I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,


s: Who listened to the Legate's talk last week,


s: And just as much they used to say in France.


s: No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:


s: I do what many dream of, all their lives,


s: --Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,


s: And fail in doing.  I could count twenty such


s: On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,


s: Who strive--you  don't know how  the others strive


s: To paint a little thing like that you smeared


s: Carelessly passing with your robes afloat--


s: Yet do much less, so much less.  Someone says,


s: (I know  his name, no matter)--so much less!


s: Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.


s: There burns a truer light of God in them,


s: In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,


s: Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt


s: This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.


s: Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,


s: Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,


s: Enter and take their place there sure enough,


s: Though they come back and cannot tell the world.


s: My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.


s: The sudden blood of these men! at a word--


s: Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.


s: Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame


s: Or their praise either.  Somebody remarks


s: Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,


s: His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,


s: Sightly traced and well ordered; what of that?


s: Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?


s: Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,


s: Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray


s: Placid, and perfect with my art: the worse!


s: I know both what I want and what might gain,


s: Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.


s: Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth


s: ('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)


s: Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,


s: Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,


s: Above and through his art--for it gives way;


s: That arm is wrongly put--and there again--


s: A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,


s: Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,


s: He means right--that, a child may understand.


s: Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:


s: But all the play, the insight and the stretch--


s: Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?


s: Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,


s: We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!


s: Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think--


s: But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,


s: And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,


s: And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird


s: The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare--


s: Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!


s: Some women do so.  Had the mouth there urged


s: "God and the glory! never care for gain.


s: The present by the future, what is that?


s: Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!


s: Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"


s: I might have done it for you.  So it seems:


s: Beside, incentives come from the soul's self;


s: In this world, who can do a thing, will not;


s: And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:


s: Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--


s: And thus we half-men struggle.  At the end,


s: 'T is safer for me, if the award be strict,


s: Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.


s: I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,


s: For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.


s: The best is when they pass and look aside;


s: But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.


s: Well may they speak!  That Francis, that first time,


s: And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!


s: I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,


s: In that humane great monarch's golden look--


s: Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,


s: One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,


s: I painting proudly with his breath on me,


s: All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,


s: Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls


s: Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts--


s: And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,


s: This in the background, waiting on my work,


s: A good time, was it not, my kingly days?


s: And had you not grown restless . . . but I know--


s: 'T is done and past; 't was right, my instinct said,


s: Too live the life grew, golden and not gray,


s: And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt


s: Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.


s: You called me, and I came home to your heart.


s: The triumph was--to reach and stay there; since


s: I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?


s: Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,


s: The Roman's is the better when you pray,


s: But still the other's Virgin was his wife--"


s: Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows


s: For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,


s: To Rafael's . . . I have known it all these years . . .


s: (When the young man  was flaming out his thoughts


s: "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub


s: Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,


s: As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,


s: Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"


s: To Rafael's!--And indeed the arm is wrong.


s: I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see,


s: Give the chalk here--quick, thus the line should go!


s: Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!


s: Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,


s: Do you forget already words like those?)


s: If really there was such a chance, so lost--


s: Is, whether you're--not grateful--but more pleased.


s: Well, let me think so.  And you smile indeed!


s: This hour has been an hour!  Another smile?


s: I should work better, do you comprehend?


s: I mean that I should earn more, give you more.


s: See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;


s: Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,


s: The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.


s: Come from the window, love--come in, at last,


s: We built to be so gay with.  God is just.


s: King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights


s: When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,


s: The walls become illumined, brick from brick


s: Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,


s: That gold of his I did cement them with!


s: Let us but love each other.  Must you go?


s: That Cousin here again? he waits outside?


s: Must see you--you, and not with me?  Those loans?


s: More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?


s: Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?


s: While hand and eye and something of a heart


s: Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?


s: How I could paint, were I but back in France,


s: One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face,


s: Not yours this time!  I want you at my side


s: Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.


s: Will you?  To-morrow, satisfy your friend.


s: Finish the portrait out of hand--there, there,


s: If he demurs; the whole should prove enough


s: To pay for this same Cousin's freak.  Beside,


s: What's better and what's all I care about,


s: Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!


s: Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,


s: The Cousin! what does he to please you more?


s: I am grown  peaceful as old age to-night.


s: I regret little, I would change still less.


s: Since there my past life lies, why alter it?


s: I took his coin, was tempted and complied,


s: And built this house and sinned, and all is said.


s: How one gets rich!  Let each one bear his lot.


s: They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:


s: And not been paid profusely.  Some good son


s: Paint my two hundred pictures--let him try!


s: No doubt, there's something strikes a balance.  Yes,


s: You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.


s: This must suffice me here. What would one have?


s: In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance--


s: To cover--the  three first without a wife,


s: While I have mine!  So--still they overcome


s: Because there's still Lucrezia--as I choose.


s: Again the Cousin's whistle!  Go, my Love.


s: craftsmanship joined with a flaccid spirit.  --Mr. John Kenyon,


s: Mrs. Browning's cousin, asked Browning to get him a copy of the


s: honors, until, says Vasari, "came to him certain letters from


s: purchase of pictures and statues, . . . he set off . . .  having


s: sworn on the Gospels to return in a few months.  Arrived in


s: Florence, he lived joyously with his wife for some time, making


s: presents to her father and sisters, but doing nothing for his own


s: Bocchi, "Bellezze di Firenze"; "There is a bit of a manikin in


s: predominant sound of oo or ow naming the species.  This Italian


s: architect, and engineer, who, together with Rafael and Agnolo,


s: Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?


s: Nephews--sons mine . . . ah God, I know not!  Well--


s: She, men would have to be your mother once,


s: What's done is done, and she is dead beside,


s: And as she died so must we die ourselves,


s: And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.


s: Life, how and what is it?  As here I lie


s: In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,


s: Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask


s: "Do I live, am I dead?"  Peace, peace seems all.


s: Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;


s: And so, about this tomb of mine.  I fought


s: With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:


s: --Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;


s: Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South


s: He graced his carrion with.  God curse the same!


s: Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence


s: One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,


s: And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,


s: The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;


s: And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,


s: With those nine columns round me, two and two,


s: The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:


s: Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe


s: As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.


s: --Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,


s: Put me where I may look at him!  True peach,


s: Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!


s: Draw close: that conflagration of my church


s: --What then?  So much was saved if aught were missed!


s: My sons, ye would not be my death?  Go dig


s: The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,


s: Drop water gently till the surface sink,


s: And if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .


s: Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,


s: Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .


s: Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,


s: That brave Frascati villa with its bath,


s: So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,


s: Like God the Father's globe on both his hands


s: For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!


s: Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:


s: Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?


s: Did I say basalt for my slab, sons?  Black--


s: 'T  was ever antique-black I meant!  How else


s: Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?


s: The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,


s: Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance


s: Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,


s: Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,


s: And Moses with the tables . . . but I know


s: Ye mark me not!  What do they whisper thee,


s: Child of my bowels, Anselm?  Ah, ye hope


s: Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine


s: Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!


s: Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then!


s: 'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.


s: My bath must needs be left behind, alas!


s: One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,


s: There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world--


s: And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray


s: Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,


s: And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?


s: Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,


s: No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line--


s: Tully, my masters?  Ulpian serves his need!


s: And then how I shall lie through centuries,


s: And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,


s: And see God made and eaten all day long,


s: And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste


s: Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!


s: For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,


s: Dying in state and by such slow degrees,


s: I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,


s: And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,


s: And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop


s: Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:


s: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts


s: Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,


s: About the life before I lived this life,


s: And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,


s: Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,


s: Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,


s: And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,


s: And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,


s: All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope


s: Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,


s: They glitter like your mother's for my soul,


s: Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,


s: Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase


s: With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,


s: That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,


s: "Do I live, am I dead?"  There, leave me, there!


s: To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone--


s: Gritstone, a-crumble!  Clammy squares which sweat


s: As if the corpse they keep were oozing through--


s: Well go!  I bless ye.  Fewer tapers there,


s: But in a row: and, going, turn your backs


s: And leave me in my  church, the church for peace,


s: That I may  watch at leisure if he leers--


s: Old Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,


s: "The Bishop orders his Tomb" This half-delirious pleading of the


s: fleshly appetites, and selfish monopolizings which hampered its


s: development.-- "It is nearly all that I said of the Central


s: Renaissance--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy,


s: Apollo sat to prophesy, an emblem of the Delphic oracle.


s: No more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.


s: A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!


s: We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.


s: Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!


s: I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,


s: Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everywhere;


s: It's just like breathing in a lime-kiln: eh?


s: Cost us a little--oh, they pay the price,


s: You take me--amply pay it!  Now, we'll talk.


s: Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,


s: I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,


s: We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps


s: Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done,


s: And body gets its sop and holds its noise


s: And leaves soul free a little.  Now's the time:


s: Truth's break of day!  You do despise me then.


s: (<Status, entourage>, worldly circumstance)


s: In pride at being seated here for once--


s: When somebody, through years and years to come,


s: Hints of the bishop--names me--that's enough:


s: "Blougram?  I knew him"--(into it you slide)


s: "Dined with him once, a Corpus Christi Day,


s: And after dinner--why, the wine you know--


s: Oh, there was wine, and good!--what with the wine . . .


s: 'Faith, we began upon all sorts of talk!


s: He's no bad fellow, Blougram; he had seen


s: Something of mine he relished, some review:


s: He's quite above their humbug in his heart,


s: Half-said as much, indeed--the  thing's his trade.


s: I warrant, Blougram 's sceptical at times:


s: How otherwise?  I liked him, I confess!"


s: Don't you protest now! It's fair give and take;


s: You have had your turn and spoken your home-truths:


s: The hand's mine now, and here you follow suit.


s: Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays--


s: Is not the bishop's: you would not be I.


s: You would like better to be Goethe, now,


s: Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still,


s: Count D'Orsay--so you did what you preferred,


s: Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help,


s: Believed or disbelieved, no matter what,


s: So long as on that point, whate'er it was,


s: You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself.


s: Never be based! for say they make me Pope--


s: (They can't--suppose it for our argument!)


s: Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached


s: My height, and not a height which pleases you:


s: It's like those eerie stories nurses tell,


s: Of how some actor on a stage played Death,


s: With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart,


s: And called himself the monarch of the world;


s: Because the play was done, to shift himself,


s: By Death himself.  Thus God might touch a Pope


s: And whose part he presumed to play just now.


s: Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!


s: You weigh and find, whatever more or less


s: I am much, you are nothing; you would be all,


s: I would be merely much: you beat me there.


s: No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why!


s: The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,


s: Provided it could be--but, finding first


s: What may be, then find how to make it fair


s: Up to our means: a very different thing!


s: Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,


s: But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,


s: May lead within a world which (by your leave)


s: We mortals cross the ocean of this world


s: The best's not big, the worst yields elbow-room.


s: Now for our six months' voyage--how prepare?


s: You come on shipboard with a landsman's list


s: Of things he calls convenient: so they are!


s: And little Greek books, with the funny type


s: They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:


s: Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!


s: And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!


s: 'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow


s: Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,


s: Since he more than the others brings with him


s: Italy's self--the marvellous Modenese!--


s: Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.


s: --Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is 't the name?


s: You see him screw his face up; what's his cry


s: Ere you set foot on shipboard?  "Six feet square!"


s: If you won't understand what six feet mean,


s: Compute and purchase stores accordingly--


s: Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board


s: Bare--why, you cut a figure at the first


s: Not afterward, when long ere half seas over,


s: You peep up from your utterly naked boards


s: Into some snug and well-appointed berth,


s: Like mine for instance (try the cooler jug--


s: Put back the other, but don't jog the ice!)


s: And mortified you mutter "Well and good;


s: 'Tis stout and proper, and there's store of it;


s: Though I've the better notion, all agree,


s: Of fitting rooms up.  Hang the carpenter,


s: Neat ship-shape fixings and contrivances--


s: I would have brought my Jerome, frame and all!"


s: And meantime you bring nothing: never mind--


s: You've proved your artist-nature: what you don't


s: You might bring, so despise me, as I say.


s: Now  come, let's backward to the starting-place.


s: See my way: we're two college friends, suppose.


s: Each note and check the other in his work--


s: Here's mine, a bishop's outfit; criticise!


s: What's wrong?  why won't you be a bishop too?


s: Why first, you don't believe, you don't and can't,


s: No dogmas nail your faith; and what remains


s: But say so, like the honest man you are?


s: Nay, I too, not a fool, you please to think,


s: Now wait, my friend: well, I do not believe--


s: If you'll accept no faith that is not fixed,


s: You're wrong--I mean  to prove it in due time.


s: Meanwhile, I know where difficulties lie


s: I could not, cannot solve, nor ever shall,


s: (To you, and over the wine).  Our dogmas then


s: With both of us, though in unlike degree,


s: Missing full credence--overboard with them!


s: Good, there go mine in company with yours!


s: You'll guarantee me that?  Not so, I think!


s: In no wise! all we've gained is, that belief,


s: Confounds us like its predecessor.  Where's


s: The gain? how can we guard our unbelief,


s: Make it bear fruit to us?--the problem here.


s: Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,


s: A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,


s: And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears


s: As old and new at once as nature's self,


s: Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,


s: Round the ancient idol, on his base again--


s: The grand Perhaps!  We look on helplessly.


s: There the old misgivings, crooked questions are--


s: This good God--what he could do, if he would,


s: Would, if he could--then must have done long since:


s: If so, when, where and how? some way must be--


s: Once feel about, and soon or late you hit


s: Some sense, in which it might be, after all.


s: Why not, "The Way, the Truth, the Life?"


s: Over the mountain, which who stands upon


s: Is apt to doubt if it be meant for a road;


s: While, if he views it from the waste itself,


s: Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,


s: Not vague, mistakable! what's a break or two


s: Seen from the unbroken desert either side?


s: What if the breaks themselves should prove at last


s: To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?


s: Is a life of doubt diversified by faith,


s: We called the chess-board white--we call it black.


s: "Well," you rejoin, "the end's no worse, at least;


s: We've reason for both colors on the board:


s: Why not confess then, where I drop the faith


s: And you the doubt, that I'm as right as you?"


s: Because, friend, in the next place, this being so,


s: And both things even--faith and unbelief


s: Left to a man's choice--we'll proceed a step,


s: A man's choice, yes--but a cabin-passenger's--


s: The man made for the special life o' the world--


s: Consult our ship's conditions and you find


s: Going to the ground.  Belief or unbelief


s: Bears upon life, determines its whole course,


s: Not so you'll take it--though you get naught else.


s: Brings out the best of me and bears me fruit


s: In power, peace, pleasantness and length of days.


s: --For you, it does, however?--that, we'll try!


s: 'T is clear, I cannot lead my life, at least,


s: Without declaring at the outset, "Friends,


s: Believe!"--I say, faith is my waking life:


s: One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,


s: We know, but waking's the main point with us,


s: And my provision's for life's waking part.


s: All day, I build, scheme, study, and make friends;


s: And when night overtakes me, down I lie,


s: Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it,


s: What's midnight's doubt before the dayspring's faith?


s: That recognize the night, give dreams their weight--


s: To be consistent you should keep your bed,


s: Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man,


s: For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares!


s: And certainly at night you'll sleep and dream,


s: Live through the day and bustle as you please.


s: Well, and the common sense o' the world calls you


s: Bed-ridden--and its good things come to me.


s: Its estimation, which is half the fight,


s: That's the first-cabin comfort I secure:


s: The next . . . but you perceive with half an eye!


s: Come, come, it's best believing, if we may;


s: If once we choose belief, on all accounts


s: To suit the world which gives us the good things.


s: In every man's career are certain points


s: The world detects him clearly, if he dare,


s: As baffled at the game, and losing life.


s: For riches, honor, pleasure, work, repose,


s: Since various theories of life and life's


s: Because his fellow would choose otherwise;


s: So long as he's consistent with his choice.


s: But certain points, left wholly to himself,


s: We say he must succeed there or go hang.


s: Thus, he should wed the woman he loves most


s: Or needs most, whatsoe'er the love or need--


s: For he can't wed twice.  Then, he must avouch,


s: The form of faith his conscience holds the best,


s: On such a point, the man himself being judge:


s: He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul.


s: Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith


s: I happened to be born in--which to teach


s: Was given me as I grew up, on all hands,


s: As best and readiest means of living by;


s: The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise


s: And absolute form of faith in the whole world--


s: For working on the world.  Observe, my  friend!


s: In these hard latter days which hamper one,


s: --Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread;


s: Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's,


s: And make my life an ease and joy and pride;


s: It does so--which for me 's a great point gained,


s: There's power in me and will to dominate


s: Which I must exercise, they hurt me else:


s: Obedience, and the love that's born of fear:


s: While at the same time, there's a taste I have,


s: The naked life is gross till clothed upon:


s: I must take what men offer, with a grace


s: As though I would not, could I help it, take


s: Something imposed on me, no choice of mine;


s: No fancy-dress worn for pure fancy's sake


s: And despicable therefore! now folk kneel


s: And kiss my hand--of course the Church's hand.


s: Thus I am made, thus life is best for me,


s: And thus that it should be I have procured;


s: So far my choice, no doubt, is a success;


s: With nobler instincts, purer tastes, like you,


s: I hardly would account the thing success


s: We speak of what is; not of what might be,


s: And how 'twere better if 'twere otherwise.


s: Grant I'm a beast, why, beasts must lead beasts' lives!


s: Suppose I own at once to tail and claws;


s: The tailless man exceeds me: but being tailed


s: I'll lash out lion fashion, and leave apes


s: To dock their stump and dress their haunches up.


s: But make the absolute best of what God made.


s: Or--our first simile--though you prove me doomed


s: To a viler berth still, to the steerage-hole,


s: The sheep-pen or the pig-stye, I should strive


s: That hutch should rustle with sufficient straw.


s: But, friend, I don't acknowledge quite so fast


s: I fail of all your manhood's lofty tastes


s: On the mere ground that you forsooth can find


s: In this particular life I choose to lead


s: No fit provision for them.  Can you not?


s: To grosser estimators than should judge?


s: And that's no way of holding up the soul,


s: Which, nobler, needs men's praise perhaps, yet knows


s: One wise man's verdict outweighs all the fools'--


s: Would like the two, but, forced to choose, takes that.


s: (You think) aware some dozen men of sense


s: And am a knave--approve in neither case,


s: Withhold their voices though I look their way:


s: Like Verdi when, at his worst opera's end


s: (The thing they gave at Florence--what's its name?)


s: While the mad houseful's plaudits near outbang


s: His orchestra of salt-box, tongs and bones,


s: He looks through all the roaring and the wreaths


s: Where sits Rossini patient in his stall.


s: Nay, friend, I meet you with an answer here--


s: That even your prime men who appraise their kind


s: Are men still, catch a wheel within a wheel,


s: See more in a truth than the truth's simple self,


s: Confuse themselves.  You see lads walk the street


s: Sixty the minute; what's to note in that?


s: You see one lad o'erstride a chimney-stack;


s: Him you must watch--he's sure to fall, yet stands!


s: Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.


s: That loves and saves her soul in new French books--


s: We watch while these in equilibrium keep


s: They're classed and done with.  I, then, keep the line


s: Before your sages--just the men to shrink


s: From the gross weights, coarse scales and labels broad


s: You offer their refinement.  Fool or knave?


s: When there's a thousand diamond weights between?


s: So, I enlist them.  Your picked twelve, you'll find,


s: Profess themselves indignant, scandalized


s: May not believe as well: that's Schelling's way!


s: It's through my coming in the tail of time,


s: They'd say, "What's strange?  Blougram of course believes;"


s: And, seventy years since, "disbelieves of course."


s: But now, "He may believe; and yet, and yet


s: How can he?"  All eyes turn with interest.


s: Whereas, step off the line on either side--


s: The rough and ready man who write apace,


s: Read somewhat seldomer, think perhaps even less--


s: You disbelieve!  Who wonders and who cares?


s: Lord So-and-so--his coat bedropped with wax,


s: All Peter's chains about his waist, his back


s: Brave with the needlework of Noodledom--


s: Believes!  Again, who wonders and who cares?


s: But I, the man of sense and learning too,


s: The able to think yet act, the this, the that,


s: Enough; you see, I need not fear contempt.


s: --Except it's yours! Admire me as these may,


s: You don't.  But whom at least do you admire?


s: Present your own perfection, your ideal,


s: Your pattern man for a minute--oh, make haste,


s: Concede the means; allow his head and hand,


s: Of unbelief (we can't believe, you know--


s: We're still at that admission, recollect!)


s: Where do you find--apart from, towering o'er


s: Which satisfy the gross taste you despise--


s: God knows through what or in what? it's alive


s: And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.


s: Have we aught in our sober night shall point


s: Such ends as his were, and direct the means


s: Of working out our purpose straight as his,


s: Why, the man's mad, friend, take his light away!


s: What's the vague good o' the world, for which you dare


s: With comfort to yourself blow millions up?


s: The blown-up millions--spatter of their brains


s: And writhing of their bowels and so forth,


s: Can I mistake for some clear word of God


s: (Which were my ample warrant for it all)


s: "The State, that's I," quack-nonsense about crowns,


s: And (when one beats the man to his last hold)


s: A vague idea of setting things to rights,


s: More to their profit, most of all to his own;


s: The whole to end that dismallest of ends


s: By an Austrian marriage, cant to us the Church,


s: Would I, who hope to live a dozen years,


s: Fight Austerlitz for reasons such and such?


s: No: for, concede me but the merest chance


s: Doubt may be wrong--there's judgment, life to come


s: With just that chance, I dare not.  Doubt proves right?


s: That wedding an archduchess, wearing lace,


s: And getting called by divers new-coined names,


s: Will drive off ugly thoughts and let me dine,


s: Sleep, read and chat in quiet as I like!


s: What say you to the poets? shall we write


s: Hamlet, Othello--make the world our own,


s: I can't!--to put the strongest reason first.


s: "But try," you urge, "the trying shall suffice;


s: The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life:


s: Try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!"


s: Spare my self-knowledge--there's no fooling me!


s: I say so not in self-dispraise but praise.


s: If I'm a Shakespeare, let the well alone;


s: If I'm no Shakespeare, as too probable--


s: His power and consciousness and self-delight


s: And all we want in common, shall I find--


s: Trying forever? while on points of taste


s: Are dowered alike--I'll ask you, I or he,


s: Let him say, "In the face of my soul's works


s: Your world is worthless and I touch it not


s: Lest I should wrong them"--I'll withdraw my plea.


s: Himself, who only can, gives judgment there.


s: He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces


s: To build the trimmest house in Stratford town;


s: Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things,


s: Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute;


s: Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too,


s: And none more, had he seen its entry once,


s: Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal."


s: Why then should I who play that personage,


s: The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made,


s: Be told that had the poet chanced to start


s: From where I stand now (some degree like mine


s: Being just the goal he ran his race to reach)


s: He would have run the whole race back, forsooth,


s: And left being Pandulph, to begin write plays?


s: Ah, the earth's best can be but the earth's best!


s: Did Shakespeare live, he could but sit at home


s: Greek busts, Venetian paintings, Roman walls,


s: And English books, none equal to his own,


s: Which I read, bound in gold (he never did).


s: --Terni's fall, Naples' bay and Gothard's top--


s: Eh, friend?  I could not fancy one of these;


s: But, as I pour this claret, there they are:


s: I've gained them--crossed St. Gothard last July


s: With ten mules to the carriage and a bed


s: Slung inside; is my hap the worse for that?


s: We want the same things, Shakespeare and myself,


s: And what I want, I have: he, gifted more,


s: Could fancy he too had them when he liked,


s: But not so thoroughly that, if fate allowed,


s: He would not have them ...also in my sense.


s: Scarce five go o'er the wall so wide and high


s: Which sends them back to me: I wish and get.


s: He struck balls higher and with better skill,


s: But at a poor fence level with his head,


s: And hit--his Stratford house, a coat of arms,


s: Successful dealings in his grain and wool--


s: While I receive heaven's incense in my nose


s: And style myself the cousin of Queen Bess.


s: Ask him, if this life's all, who wins the game?


s: Believe--and our whole argument breaks up.


s: Only, we can't command it; fire and life


s: Are all, dead matter's nothing, we agree:


s: And be it a mad dream or God's very breath,


s: The fact's the same--belief's fire, once in us,


s: Makes of all else mere stuff to show itself;


s: As fire lends wood and iron--this turns steel,


s: That burns to ash--all's one, fire proves its power


s: For good or ill, since men call flare success.


s: But paint a fire, it will not therefore burn.


s: Light one in me, I'll find it food enough!


s: Why, to be Luther--that's   a life to lead,


s: He comes, reclaims God's earth for God, he says,


s: Sets up God's rule again by simple means,


s: He flared out in the flaring of mankind;


s: Such Luther's luck was: how shall such be mine?


s: Strauss is the next advance.  All Strauss should be


s: Ice makes no conflagration.  State the facts,


s: Read the text right, emancipate the world--


s: With scarce a thank-you: Blougram told it first


s: More than Saint Paul! 't would press its pay, you think?


s: Then add there's still that plaguy hundredth chance


s: Strauss may be wrong.  And so a risk is run--


s: For what gain? not for Luther's, who secured


s: A real heaven in his heart throughout his life,


s: Supposing death a little altered things.


s: "Ay, but since really you lack faith," you cry,


s: "You run the same risk really on all sides,


s: As well be Strauss as swing 'twixt Paul and him.


s: It's not worth having, such imperfect faith,


s: Than unbelief like mine.  Whole faith, or none!"


s: Softly, my friend!  I must dispute that point.


s: Once own the use of faith, I'll find you faith.


s: We're back on Christian ground.  You call for faith;


s: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.


s: The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say,


s: If faith o'ercomes doubt.  How I know it does?


s: By life and man's free will.  God gave for that!


s: To mould life as we choose it, shows our choice:


s: That's our one act, the previous work's his own.


s: You criticise the soul? it reared this tree--


s: This broad life and whatever fruit it bears!


s: What matter though I doubt at every pore,


s: Head-doubts, heart-doubts, doubts at my fingers' ends,


s: Doubts in the trivial work of every day,


s: In the grand moments when she probes herself--


s: The thing I did, brought out in evidence


s: Against the thing done to me underground


s: By hell and all its brood, for aught I know?


s: I say, whence sprang this? shows it faith or doubt?


s: All's doubt in me; where's break of faith in this?


s: It is the idea, the feeling and the love,


s: God means mankind  should strive for and show forth


s: And not historic knowledge, logic sound,


s: "What think ye of Christ," friend? when all's done and said,


s: It may be false, but will you wish it true?


s: That will break silence and enjoin you love


s: And all in vain, with bidding you despise?


s: If you desire faith--then you've faith enough:


s: What else seeks God--nay, what else seek ourselves?


s: "But still" (you add) "there was no such good man,


s: One proves, for instance, he was born in Rome,


s: This Blougram; yet throughout the tales of him


s: Subjoining--"Still, what matter though they be?


s: Blougram concerns me naught, born here or there."


s: Pure faith indeed--you know not what you ask!


s: The sense of conscious creatures to be borne.


s: It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.


s: Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth:


s: I say it's meant to hide him all it can,


s: And that's what all the blessed evil's for.


s: Our breath, our drop of dew, with shield enough


s: Against that sight till we can bear its stress.


s: Than mind, confronted with the truth of him.


s: But time and earth case-harden us to live;


s: The feeblest sense is trusted most; the child


s: Feels God a  moment, ichors o'er the place,


s: Kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot


s: Who stands calm just because he feels it writhe.


s: Or, if that's too ambitious--here's my box--


s: Threatening the torpor of the inside-nose


s: Nigh on the imminent sneeze that never comes.


s: "Leave it in peace" advise the simple folk:


s: Say I--let doubt occasion still more faith!


s: You 'll say, once all believed, man, woman, child,


s: In that dear middle-age these noodles praise.


s: (Greek endings, each the little passing-bell


s: That signifies some faith's about to die)


s: When such a traveller told you his last news,


s: But did not climb there since 'twas getting dusk


s: And robber-bands infest the mountain's foot!


s: How should you feel, I ask, in such an age,


s: With soul more blank than this decanter's knob,


s: Believe--and  yet lie, kill, rob, fornicate


s: Full in belief's face, like the beast you'd be!


s: No, when the fight begins within himself,


s: A man's worth something.  God stoops o'er his head,


s: Satan looks up between his feet--both tug--


s: He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul wakes


s: And grows.  Prolong that battle through his life!


s: Never leave growing till the life to come!


s: Here, we've got callous to the Virgin's winks


s: Men have outgrown the shame of being fools.


s: What are the laws of nature, not to bend


s: If the Church bid them?--brother Newman asks.


s: Up with the Immaculate Conception, then--


s: On to the rack with faith!--is my advice.


s: Knocking our breasts, "It can't be--yet it shall!


s: Who am I, the worm, to argue with my Pope?


s: Low things confound the high things!" and so forth.


s: That's better than acquitting God with grace


s: As some folk do.  He's tried--no case is proved,


s: You'll say, the old system's not so obsolete


s: But men believe still: ay, but who and where?


s: But even of these, what ragamuffin-saint


s: As he believes in fire that it will burn,


s: Or rain that it will drench him?  Break fire's law,


s: Be just a singe or soaking?  "No," he smiles;


s: "Those laws are laws that can enforce themselves."


s: The sum  of all is--yes, my doubt is great,


s: My faith's still greater, then my faith's enough.


s: I have read much, thought much, experienced much,


s: And leaving what I can--such points as this.


s: I won't--that  is, I can't throw one away.


s: Supposing there's no truth in what I hold


s: Clearing off one excrescence to see two,


s: There's ever a next in size, now grown as big,


s: That meets the knife: I cut and cut again!


s: First cut the Liquefaction, what comes last


s: I trust nor hand nor eye nor heart nor brain


s: To stop betimes: they all get drunk alike.


s: The first step, I am master not to take.


s: You'd find the cutting-process to your taste


s: As much as leaving growths of lies unpruned,


s: Your taste's worth mine; but my taste proves more wise


s: When we consider that the steadfast hold


s: On the extreme end of the chain of faith


s: Gives all the advantage, makes the difference


s: With the rough purblind mass we seek to rule:


s: We are their lords, or they are free of us,


s: To the first problem--which, if solved my way


s: And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--


s: How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.


s: Of course you are remarking all this time


s: Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule


s: "The  cabin," in our old phrase.  Well, I do.


s: I act for, talk for, live for this world now,


s: As this world prizes action, life and talk:


s: No prejudice to what next world may prove,


s: Whose new laws and requirements, my best pledge


s: To observe then, is that I observe these now,


s: Next life relieves the soul of body, yields


s: Pure spiritual enjoyment: well, my friend,


s: Why lose this life i' the meantime, since its use


s: May be to make the next life more intense?


s: (Work it up in your next month's article)


s: Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still


s: Through ever trying to be and ever being--


s: In the evolution of successive spheres--


s: Before its actual sphere and place of life,


s: Halfway into the next, which having reached,


s: Halfway into the next still, on and off!


s: As when a traveller, bound from North to South,


s: Scouts far in Russia: what's its use in France?


s: In France spurns flannel: where's its need in Spain?


s: In Spain drops cloth, too cumbrous for Algiers!


s: Linen goes next, and last the skin itself,


s: When, through his journey, was the fool at ease?


s: I'm at ease now, friend; worldly in this world,


s: I take and like its way of life; I think


s: Live better for my comfort--that's good too;


s: And God, if he pronounce upon such life,


s: Approves my service, which is better still.


s: Or that brute beast pulled-up in to-day's "Times,"


s: What odds is 't, save to ourselves, what life we lead?


s: You meet me at this issue: you declare--


s: All special-pleading done with--truth is truth,


s: You don't fear but it's better, if we doubt,


s: To say so, act up to our truth perceived


s: 'T  is there I'm on the watch for you.  How one acts