m 
 
 •B* Semite «fngiisl) fes 
 
 POEMS 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
Class P"Rr; __ 
 
 Book .1S1- 
 
 CopightN _^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
£ tu*j Lit*} ZAi , foUyfr &urHt»ruj , 
 fyt. $9* tS , 
 
ifterrtU'fii <£ng;lts;{) Cejrts 
 
 POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 BY CORNELIA BEARE, INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, 
 ERASMUS HALL HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL CO, 
 
 44-60 East Twenty-third Street 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 JHerriiPa eufflisil) Cej:ts 
 
 This series of books will include in complete editions 
 those masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted 
 for the use of schools and colleges. The editors of the 
 several volumes will be chosen for their special qualifications 
 in connection with the texts to be issued under their indi- 
 vidual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs 
 of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will char- 
 acterize the editing of every book in the series. 
 
 In connection with each text, a critical and historical 
 introduction, including a sketch of the life of the author and 
 his relation to the thought of his time, critical opinions of 
 the work in question chosen from the great body of English 
 criticism, and, where possible, a portrait of the author, will 
 be given. Ample explanatory notes of such passages in the 
 text as call for special attention will be supplied, but irrele- 
 vant annotation and explanations of the obvious will be 
 rigidly excluded. 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 
 
 Copyright, 1909 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 
 
 ©CI, A 25 14 '.K 
 
h 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction: page 
 
 Life of Browning 5 
 
 Critical Opinions 12 
 
 Poems: 
 
 Cavalier Tunes 15 
 
 The Lost Leader 18 
 
 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
 
 Aix 20 
 
 Evelyn Hope 24 
 
 Home Thoughts, from Abroad 27 
 
 Home Thoughts, from the Sea 28 
 
 Incident of the French Camp 28 
 
 The Boy and the Angel 30 
 
 One Word More 34 
 
 Herve Riel 44 
 
 Pheidippides 52 
 
 My Last Duchess 61 
 
 Up at a Villa — Down in the City 64 
 
 The foregoing poems are mentioned for College Entrance Require- 
 ments in English for 1909-1915. 
 
 Saul 70 
 
 A Grammarian's Funeral 97 
 
 Song from Pippa Passes 103 
 
 An Epistle. Containing the Strange Medical Ex- 
 perience of Karshish, the Arab Physician . . 104 
 
 Meeting at Night 116 
 
 Parting at Morning 117 
 
 3 
 
4 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prospice 117 
 
 Epilogue to Asolando 118 
 
 My Star 120 
 
 Rabbi ben Ezra 120 
 
 Memorabilia 130 
 
 AbtVogler . . . 131 
 
 Andrea del Sarto 139 
 
 By the Fireside 151 
 
 Notes: 
 
 Cavalier Tunes 165 
 
 How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to 
 
 Aix 165 
 
 Home Thoughts from the Sea 166 
 
 Incident of the French Camp 166 
 
 The Boy and the Angel 166 
 
 One Word More 167 
 
 HerveRiel 167 
 
 Pheidippides 168 
 
 My Last Duchess 170 
 
 Up at a Villa — Down in the City 171 
 
 Saul 171 
 
 A Grammarian's Fimeral 174 
 
 Song from Pippa Passes 175 
 
 An Epistle 176 
 
 Meeting at Night 177 
 
 Prospice 178 
 
 Epilogue to Asolando 178 
 
 My Star 179 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra 179 
 
 Abt Vogler 179 
 
 Andrea del Sarto 180 
 
 By the Fireside 182 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 
 
 Robert Browning was born at Camberwell, a suburb 
 of London, May 7, 1812. From his earliest years he was 
 fond of writing verses, and, when twelve years of age, 
 had produced poems enough to form a volume. His 
 first published poem, Pauline, appeared in 1833, but his 
 real introduction to the public was through Paracelsus, 
 a drama, published in 1835. In 1837 the tragedy of 
 Strafford was unsuccessfully presented at Drury Lane 
 Theater. In 1840 the epic Sordello was published — 
 one of his most characteristic and most difficult works. 
 In 1841-46 appeared the series of Bells and Pomegranates, 
 in eight shilling parts, containing much of his finest 
 poetry, including the tragedy A Blot on the 'Scutcheon 
 and the graceful dramatic poem Pippa Passes. In 1846 
 he was married to the distinguished poetess, Elizabeth 
 Barrett, and soon after established his home in Italy. 
 Christmas Eve and Easter Day appeared in 1850, followed 
 by two volumes of short poems, Men and Women, 1855, 
 and Dramatis Persons, 1864. His greatest work, The 
 Ring and the Book, appeared in 1868-69, closely followed 
 by many other important poems, chief of which are 
 Fifine at the Fair, 1872; Red Cotton Night-cap Country, 
 1873; Aristophanes' Apology and The Inn Album, 1875. 
 Most important of his latest works are Dramatic Idyls, 
 1879-80; Jocoseria, 1883; Ferishtah's Fancies, 1885; 
 Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their 
 Day, 1887; and Asolando, 1889. He died at Venice, 
 May 12, 1889. 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The first and perhaps the final impression we receive 
 from the works of Robert Browning is that of a great 
 nature, an immense personality. The poet in him is 
 made up of many men. He is dramatist, humorist, 
 lyrist, painter, musician, philosopher, and scholar, each 
 in full measure, and he includes and dominates them all. 
 In richness of nature, in scope and penetration of mind 
 and vision, in all the potentialities of poetry, he is prob- 
 ably second among English poets to Shakespeare alone. 
 In art, in the power of the patience of working his native 
 ore, he is surpassed by many; but few have ever held so 
 rich a mine in fee. He has written more than any other 
 English poet with the exception of Shakespeare, and he 
 comes very near the gigantic total of Shakespeare. His 
 works are not a mere collection of poems, they are a lit- 
 erature. And his literature is the richest of modern times. 
 If " the best poetry is that which reproduces the most of 
 life," his place is among the great poets of the world. In 
 the vast extent of his work he has dealt witK or touched 
 on nearly every phase and feature of humanity, and his 
 scope is bounded only by the soul's limits and the last 
 reaches of life. There are for him but two realities and 
 but two subjects, Life and Thought. On these are ex- 
 pended all his imagination and all his intellect, more con- 
 sistently and in a higher degree than can be said of 
 any English poet since the age of Elizabeth. Life and 
 thought, the dramatic and the metaphysical, are not 
 considered apart, but woven into one seamless tissue; 
 and in regard to both he has one point of view and one 
 manner of treatment. It is this that causes the unity 
 which subsists throughout his works, and it is this, .too, 
 which distinguishes him among poets, and makes that 
 originality by virtue of which he has been described as 
 the most striking figure in our poetic literature. 
 
 Most poets endeavor to sink the individual in the 
 universal; it is the special distinction of Mr. Browning 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 that when he is most universal he is most individual. 
 As a thinker he conceives of humanity not as an aggregate, 
 but as a collection of units. Most thinkers write and 
 speak of man; Mr. Browning of men. With man as a 
 species, with man as a society, he does not concern him- 
 self, but with individual man and man. Every man is 
 for him an epitome of the universe, a center of creation. 
 Life exists for each as completely and separately as if he 
 were the only inhabitant of our planet. 
 
 Here it is that Mr. Browning parts company most 
 decisively with all other poets who concern themselves 
 exclusively with life — dramatic poets, as we call them ; 
 so that it seems almost necessary to invent some new 
 term to define precisely his special attitude. And hence 
 it is that in his drama thought plays comparatively so 
 large, and action comparatively so small, a part; hence, 
 that action is valued only in so far as it reveals thought 
 or motive, not for its own sake, as the crown and flower 
 of these. For his endeavor is not to set men in action 
 for the pleasure of seeing them move; but to see and 
 show, in their action and inaction alike, the real im- 
 pulses of their being: to see how each soul conceives of 
 itself. 
 
 The dramatic poet, in the ordinary sense, in the sense 
 in which we apply it to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, 
 aims at showing, by means of action, the development of 
 character as it manifests itself to the world in deeds. 
 His study is character, but it is character in action, 
 considered only in connection with a particular grouping 
 of events, and only so far as it produces or operates upon 
 these. The processes are concealed from us, we see the 
 result. We are told nothing, we care to know nothing, 
 of what is going on in the thought ; of the infinitely subtle 
 meshes of motive or emotion which will perhaps find no 
 direct outcome in speech, no direct manifestation in 
 action, but by which the soul's life in reality subsists. 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 But is there no other sense in which a poet may be 
 dramatic, besides this sense of the acting drama? no new 
 form possible, which 
 
 " perad venture may outgrow 
 The simulation of the painted scene, 
 Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, 
 And take for a noble stage the soul itself, 
 Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, 
 With all its grand orchestral silences, 
 To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds?" 1 
 
 This new form of drama is the drama as we see it in Mr. 
 Browning — a drama of the interior, a tragedy or comedy 
 of the soul. Instead of a grouping of characters which 
 shall act on one another to produce a certain result in 
 action, we have a grouping of events useful or important 
 only as they influence the character or the mind. In this 
 way, by making the soul the center of action, he is enabled 
 (thinking himself into it, as all dramatists must do) to 
 bring out its characteristics, to reveal its very nature. 
 
 This, then, is Mr. Browning's consistent mental atti- 
 tude, and his special method. But he has also a special 
 instrument — the monologue. The drama of action de- 
 mands a concurrence of several distinct personalities, 
 influencing one another rapidly by word or deed, so as 
 to bring about the catastrophe; hence the propriety of 
 the dialogue. But the introspective drama, in which 
 the design is to represent and reveal the individual, re- 
 quires a concentration of interests, a focusing of light 
 on one point, to the exclusion or subordination of sur- 
 roundings; hence the propriety of the monologue, in 
 which a single speaker or thinker can consciously or un- 
 consciously exhibit his own soul. Nearly all the lyrics, 
 
 1 Aurora Leigh, Book Fifth. 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 romances, idyls — nearly all the miscellaneous poems, 
 long and short — are monologues. 
 
 The characteristic of which I have been speaking — 
 the persistent care for the individual and personal, as 
 distinguished from the universal and general — while 
 it is the secret of his finest achievements, and rightly 
 his special charm, is of all things the most alien to the 
 ordinary conceptions of poetry, and the usual preferences 
 for it. Compare, altogether apart from the worth and 
 workmanship, one of Lord Tennyson's with one of Mr. 
 Browning's best lyrics. The perfection of the former 
 consists in the exquisite way in which it expresses feelings 
 common to all. The perfection of the latter consists in 
 the intensity of its expression of a single moment of 
 passion or emotion; one peculiar to a single personality, 
 and to that personality only at such a single moment. 
 To appreciate it we must enter keenly and instantaneously 
 into the imaginary character at its imagined crisis; and, 
 even when this is easiest to do, it is evident that there 
 must be more difficulty in doing it — for it requires a 
 certain exertion — than in merely letting the mind lie 
 at rest, accepting and absorbing. 
 
 Allied to Mr. Browning's originality in temper, topic, 
 manner of treatment, and special form, is his originality 
 in style. His style is vital ; his verse moves to the throb- 
 bing of an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a ma- 
 chine. He prefers, as indeed all true poets do, but more 
 exclusively than any other poet, sense to sound, thought 
 to expression. In his desire of condensation he employs 
 as few words as are consistent with the right expression 
 of his thought; he rejects superlative adjectives and all 
 stop-gap words. He refuses to use words for words' 
 sake ; he declines to interrupt conversation with a display 
 of fireworks; and, as a result, it will be found that his 
 finest effects of versification correspond with his highest 
 achievements in imagination and passion. As a dra- 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 matic poet he is obliged to modulate and moderate, 
 sometimes even to vulgarize, his style and diction for the 
 proper expression of some particular character, in whose 
 mouth exquisite turns of phrase and delicate felicities 
 of rhythm would be inappropriate. He will not let him- 
 self go in the way of easy floridity, as writers may whose 
 themes are more "ideal." And where many writers 
 would attempt merely to simplify and sweeten verse, 
 he endeavors to give it fuller expressiveness, to give it 
 strength and newness. It follows that Mr. Browning's 
 verse is not so uniformly melodious as that of many other 
 poets. But he is far, indeed, from paying no attention, 
 or little, to meter and versification. In one very im- 
 portant matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest 
 master in our language; in single and double, in simple 
 and grotesque alike, he succeeds in fitting rhyme to rhyme 
 with a perfection which I have never found in any other 
 poet of any age. His lyrical poems contain more struc- 
 tural varieties of form than those of any preceding Eng- 
 lish poet, not excepting Shelley. His blank verse at its 
 best is of higher quality — taking it for what it is, dra- 
 matic blank verse — than that of any other modern 
 poet. And both in rhymed and in blank verse he has 
 written passages which for almost every quality of verse 
 are hardly to be surpassed in the language. 
 
 That there is some excuse for the charge of "ob- 
 scurity" so often brought against Mr. Browning, no one 
 would or could deny. But it is only the excuse of a mis- 
 conception. Mr. Browning is a thinker of extraordinary 
 depth and subtlety; his themes are seldom superficial, 
 often very remote, and his thought is, moreover, as swift 
 as it is subtle. To a dull reader there is little difference 
 between cloudy and fiery thought ; the one is as much too 
 bright for him as the other is too dense. Of all thinkers 
 in poetry, Mr. Browning is the most swift and fiery. 
 Moreover, while a writer who deals with easy themes 
 
INTRODUCTION \\ 
 
 has no excuse if he is not pellucid to a glance, one who 
 employs his intellect and imagination on high and hard 
 questions has a right to demand a corresponding closeness 
 of attention. 
 
 When Mr. Browning was a mere boy, it is recorded that 
 he debated within himself whether he should not become 
 a painter or a musician as well as a poet. Finally, though 
 not, I believe, for a good many years, he decided in the 
 negative. But the latent qualities of painter and musi- 
 cian have developed themselves in his poetry, and much 
 of his finest and very much of his most original verse is- 
 that which speaks the language of painter and musician 
 as it had never before been spoken. No English poet 
 before him has ever excelled his utterances on music, 
 none has so much as rivaled his utterances on art. In 
 his poems on the sister arts of painting and sculpture — 
 not in themselves more perfect in sympathy, though far 
 greater in number, than those on music — he is simply 
 the first to write of these arts as an artist might, if he 
 could express his soul in words or rhythm. 
 
 It is only natural that a poet with the instincts of a 
 painter should be capable of superb landscape painting 
 in verse; and we find in Mr. Browning this power. It is 
 further evident that such a poet — a man who has chosen 
 poetry instead of painting — must consider the latter art 
 subordinate to the former, and it is only natural that we 
 should find Mr. Browning subordinating the pictorial 
 to the poetic capacity, and this more carefully than most 
 other poets. His best landscapes are as brief as they are 
 brilliant. They are as saber-strokes, swift, sudden, flash- 
 ing the light from their sweep, and striking straight to 
 the heart. And they are never pushed into prominence 
 for an effect of ideal beauty, nor strewn about in the way 
 of thoughtful or passionate utterance, like roses in a 
 runner's path. They are subordinated always to the 
 human interest; blended, fused with it, so that a landscape 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in a poem of Mr. Browning's is literally a part of the 
 emotion. 
 
 Of all poets Mr. Browning is the healthiest and man- 
 liest. His genius is robust with vigorous blood, and his 
 tone has the cheeriness of intellectual health. The most 
 subtle of minds, his is the least sickly. The wind that 
 blows in his pages is no hot or languorous breeze, laden 
 with scents and sweets, but a fresh salt wind blowing in 
 from the sea. The keynote of his philosophy is: 
 
 "God's in his heaven, 
 All's right with the world!" 
 
 He has such a hopefulness of belief in human nature that 
 he shrinks from no man, however clothed and cloaked in 
 evil, however miry with stumblings and fallings. This 
 vivid hope and trust in man is bound up with a strong 
 and strenuous faith in God. Mr. Browning's Christianity 
 is wider than our creeds, and is all the more vitally 
 Christian in that it never sinks into pietism. He is never 
 didactic, but his faith is the root of his art, and transforms 
 and transfigures it. Yet as a dramatic poet he is so im- 
 partial, and can express all creeds with so easy an inter- 
 pretative accent, that it is possible to prove him (as 
 Shakespeare has been proved) a believer in everything 
 and a disbeliever in anything. 
 
 Condensed from " Introduction to Study of Browning " by 
 Arthur Symons. 
 
 CRITICAL OPINIONS 
 
 I can have little doubt that my writing has been in 
 the main too hard for many I should have been pleased 
 to communicate with; but I never designedly tried to 
 puzzle people, as some of my critics have supposed. On 
 the other hand, I never pretended to offer such literature 
 as should be a substitute for a cigar or a game at dominoes 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 to an idle man. So, perhaps, on the whole I get my 
 deserts and something over — not a crowd, but a few I 
 value more. — Robert Browning to W. G. Kingsland. 
 
 Browning, when, in poem or drama, he puts forth his 
 peculiar power, when he writes with the motive which 
 gives his work its singular value, is always dramatic. 
 Whether he is so of purpose I shall not venture to say: 
 but the seeming of his poetry is that it takes its shape 
 from a necessity of his moral nature, not from deliberate 
 intellectual preference. He never seems to be telling 
 us what he thinks or feels; but he puts before us some 
 man, — male or female, — whose individuality soon be- 
 comes as clear and as absolute as our own; and that man 
 pours his heart and soul out before us in words which 
 are a part of him, utterly careless of what we think of 
 the life whose hidden motives are thus laid bare to cen- 
 sure. The poet does not appear; indeed so wholly is he 
 merged in the creature of his own will that, as we hear 
 that creature speak, his creator is, for the time, quite 
 forgotten. This is the perfection of dramatic power. 
 It has been shown with this high absoluteness in English 
 poetry by but two men, one of whom is Browning. — 
 Richard Grant White. 
 
 Man here on earth, according to the central and con- 
 trolling thought of Mr. Browning, man here in a state 
 of preparation for other lives, and surrounded by won- 
 drous spiritual influences, is too great for the sphere 
 that contains him, while, at the same time, he can exist 
 only by submitting for the present to the conditions it 
 imposes; never without fatal loss becoming content with 
 submission, or regarding his present state as perfect or 
 final. Our nature here is unfinished, imperfect, but its 
 glory, its peculiarity, that which makes us men — not 
 God, and not brutes — lies precisely in this character 
 of imperfection, giving scope as it does for indefinite 
 growth and progress. 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 " Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, not God's, 
 and not the beasts'; God is, they are, man partly is, and 
 wholly hopes to be." . . . 
 
 With Mr. Browning the moments are most glorious in 
 which the obscure tendency of many years has been re- 
 vealed by the lightning of sudden passion, or in which a 
 resolution that changes the current of life has been taken 
 in reliance upon that insight which vivid emotion bestows; 
 and those periods of our history are charged most fully 
 with moral purpose which take their direction from 
 moments such as these. — Edward Dowden. 
 
 If there is any great quality more perceptible than 
 another in Mr. Browning's intellect, it is his decisive and 
 incisive faculty of thought, his sureness and intensity of 
 perception, his rapid and trenchant resolution of aim. 
 To charge him with obscurity is about as accurate as to 
 call Lynceus purblind, or complain of the sluggish action 
 of the telegraphic wire. He is something too much the 
 reverse of obscure; he is too brilliant and subtle for the 
 ready reader of a ready writer to follow with any certainty 
 the track of intelligence which moves with such incessant 
 rapidity. . . . The very essence of Mr. Browning's aim 
 and method, as exhibited in the ripest fruits of his intelli- 
 gence, is such as implies above all other things the posses- 
 sion of a quality the very reverse of obscurity — a faculty 
 of spiritual illumination rapid and intense and subtle 
 as lightning, which brings to bear upon its central object 
 by way of direct and vivid illustration every symbol and 
 detail on which its light is flashed in passing. — A . C. 
 Swinburne. 
 
CAVALIER TUNES 
 
 r 
 
 I 
 
 CAVALIER TUNES 1 
 
 i 
 Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 
 Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing: 
 And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 
 And see the rogues nourish and honest folk droop, 
 Marched them along, fifty-score strong, 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 ii 
 God for King Charles! Pym 2 and such carles 3 
 To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous 
 
 paries ! 4 
 Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup, 
 Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup, 
 Till you're — 
 
 (Chorus) Marching along, fifty -score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 15 
 
16 CAVALIER TUNES 
 
 III 
 
 Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell 
 Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well! 
 England, good cheer! Rupert is near! 
 Kentish and loyalist, keep we not here, 
 (Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
 
 IV 
 
 Then, God for King Charles ! Pym and his snarls 
 To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles! 
 Hold by the right, you double your might; 
 So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, 
 (Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong, 
 
 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song! 
 
 II 
 GIVE A ROUSE 1 
 
 King Charles, and who'll do him right now? 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
 Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now, 
 King Charles! 
 
CAVALIER TUNES 17 
 
 II 
 
 Who gave me the goods that went since? 
 Who raised me the house that sank once? 
 Who helped me to gold I spent since? 
 Who found me in wine you drank once? 
 (Chorus) King Charles, and who 1 11 do him right now f 
 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now f 
 
 Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now, 
 
 King Charles! 
 
 in 
 To whom used my boy George quaff else, 
 By the old fool's side that begot him? 
 For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 
 While Noll's * damned troopers shot him? 
 (Chorus) King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
 
 King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now ? 
 
 Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now, 
 
 King Charles! 
 
 Ill 
 BOOT AND SADDLE 
 
 i 
 Boot, saddle, to horse, and away! 
 Rescue my castle before the hot day 
 Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, 
 
 (Chorus) " Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 
 
18 THE LOST LEADER 
 
 II 
 
 Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say; 
 
 Many's the friend there, will listen and pray 
 
 " God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay — 
 
 (Chorus) "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 
 
 in 
 Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, 
 Flouts * Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array : 
 Who laughs, " Good fellows ere this, by my fay, 2 
 
 (Chorus) "Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 
 
 IV 
 
 Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay, 
 Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay! 
 I've better counselors; what counsel they? 
 
 (Chorus) u Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!" 
 
 THE LOST LEADER 
 
 The Lost Leader was originally written in reference to 
 Wordsworth's abandonment of the Liberal cause, with per- 
 haps a thought of Southey, but it is applicable to any popular 
 apostasy. This is one of those songs that do the work of 
 swords. It shows how easily Browning, had he so chosen, 
 could have stirred the national feeling with his lyrics. 
 
 Just for a handful of silver he left us, 
 Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
 
THE LOST LEADER 19 
 
 Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 
 
 Lost all the others, she lets us devote; 
 They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 
 
 So much was theirs who so little allowed : 
 How all our copper had gone for his service! 
 
 Rags — were they purple, his heart had been 
 proud ! 
 We that had loved him so, followed him, honored 
 him, 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
 Learned his great language,' caught his clear ac- 
 cents, 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die! 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from 
 their graves! 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves! 
 
 We shall march prospering, — not through his 
 presence ; 
 Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre; 
 Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quies- 
 cence, 
 Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire: 
 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 
 
20 HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 
 
 One task more declined, one more footpath un- 
 trod, 
 One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, 
 
 One wrong more to man, one more insult to God! 
 Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 
 
 There would be doubt, hesitation and pain, 
 Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twi- 
 light, 
 Never glad confident morning again ! 
 Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike 
 gallantly, 
 Menace our heart ere we master his own; 
 Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, 
 Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! 
 
 "HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 
 FROM GHENT TO AIX" 
 
 The "good news" of this stirring ballad is intended for 
 that of the Pacification of Ghent, a treaty of union entered 
 into by Holland, Zealand, and the southern Netherlands 
 against the tyrannical Philip II., in 1576. The incident of 
 the poem is not historical. "I wrote it," says Browning, 
 "under the bulwark of a vessel off the African coast, after 
 I had been at sea long enough to appreciate even the fancy 
 of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse ' York ' then 
 in my stable at home." 
 
 I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; 
 
 I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 
 
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 21 
 
 "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts 
 
 undrew; 
 " Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; 
 Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 
 And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 
 
 Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace 
 Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our 
 
 place; 
 I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 
 Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique ! 
 
 right, 
 Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, 
 Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 
 
 'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near 
 Lokeren, 2 the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear; 
 At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see; 
 At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be; 
 And from Mecheln 3 church-steeple we heard the 
 
 half chime, 
 So Joris broke silence with, " Yet there is time!" 
 
 At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 
 
 And against him the cattle stood black every one, 
 
 To stare through the mist at us galloping past, 
 
22 HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 
 
 And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 
 
 With resolute shoulders, each butting away 
 
 The haze, as some bluff river headlands its spray: 
 
 And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent 
 
 back 
 For my voice, and the other pricked out on his 
 
 track ; 
 And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that 
 
 glance 
 O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! 
 And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and 
 
 anon 
 His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 
 
 By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay 
 
 spur!" 
 Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
 We'll remember at Aix" — for one heard the quick 
 
 wheeze 
 Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering- 
 knees, 
 And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 
 As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 
 
 So we were left galloping, Joris and I, 
 
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS 23 
 
 Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; 
 The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like 
 
 'chaff ; 
 Till over by Dalhem l a dome-spire sprang white, 
 And " Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!" 
 
 "How they'll greet us!" — and all in a moment his 
 
 roan 
 Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; 
 And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
 Of the news which alone could save Aix from her 
 
 fate, 2 
 With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 
 And circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 
 
 Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, 
 Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 
 Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 
 Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without 
 
 peer; 
 Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, 
 
 bad or good, 
 Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 
 
 And all I remember is, friends flocking round 
 
24 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the 
 
 ground ; 
 And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 
 As I poured down his throat. our last measure of 
 
 wine, 
 Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) 
 Was no more than his due who brought good news 
 
 from Ghent. 
 
 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
 That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 
 
 She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
 Beginning to die too, in the glass; 
 
 Little has yet been changed, I think; 
 The shutters are shut, no light may pass 
 
 Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. 
 
 Sixteen years old when she died ! 
 
 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; 
 It was not her time to love; beside, 
 
 Her life had many a hope and aim, 
 Duties enough, and little cares, 
 
 And now was quiet, now astir, 
 
EVELYN HOPE 25 
 
 Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 
 And the sweet white brow is all of her. 
 
 Is it too late, then, Evelyn Hope? 
 
 What, your soul was pure and true, 
 The good stars met in your horoscope, 
 
 Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 
 And, just because I was thrice as old 
 
 And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
 Each was naught to each, must I be told? 
 
 We were fellow mortals, naught beside? 
 
 No, indeed! for God above 
 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
 And creates the love to reward the love : 
 
 I claim you still, for my own love's sake! 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: 
 Much is to learn, much to forget, 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you. 
 
 But the time will come, — at last it will, 
 
 When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
 
 In the lower earth, in the years long still, 
 That body and soul so pure and gay? 
 
 Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, 
 
26 EVELYN HOPE 
 
 And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 
 And what you would do with me, in fine, 
 In the new life come in the old one's stead. 
 
 I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 
 
 Given up myself so many times, 
 Gained me the gains of various men, 
 
 Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; 
 Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 
 
 Either I missed or itself missed me : 
 And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! 
 
 What is the issue? let us see! 
 
 I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! 
 
 My heart seemed full as it could hold; 
 There was place and to spare for the frank young 
 smile, 
 
 And the red young mouth, and the hair's young 
 gold. 
 So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 
 
 See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! 
 There, that is our secret: go to sleep! 
 
 You will wake, and remember, and understand. 
 
HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 27 
 
 HOME THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD 
 
 Oh, to be in England now that April's there, 
 
 And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, 
 
 unaware, 
 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
 Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
 While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
 In England — now ! 
 And after April, when May follows, 
 And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows! 
 Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 
 Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 
 Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's 
 
 edge — 
 That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice 
 
 over 
 Lest you should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture! 
 And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 
 And will be gay when noontide wakes anew 
 The buttercups, the little children's dower 
 — Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 
 
28 INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 
 
 HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 1 
 
 Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest 
 died away; 
 
 Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into 
 Cadiz Bay; 
 
 Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafal- 
 gar lay; 
 
 In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gib- 
 raltar grand and gray; 
 
 "Here and here did England help me: how can I 
 
 help England?" — say, 
 Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to 
 
 praise and pray 
 While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. 
 
 INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 
 
 You know, we French stormed Ratisbon : 2 
 
 A mile or so away 
 On a little mound, Napoleon 
 
 Stood on our storming-day; 
 With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 
 
 Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
 As if to balance the prone brow 
 
 Oppressive with its mind. 
 
INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 29 
 
 Just as perhaps he mused " My plans 
 
 That soar, to earth may fall, 
 Let once my army -leader Lannes l 
 
 Waver at yonder wall," — 
 Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 
 
 A rider, bound on bound 
 Full-galloping; nor bridle drew 
 
 Until he reached the mound. 
 
 Then off there flung in smiling joy 
 
 And held himself erect 
 By just his horse's mane, a boy: 
 
 You hardly could suspect — 
 (So tight he kept his lips compressed, 
 
 Scarce any blood came through) 
 You looked twice ere you saw his breast 
 
 Was all but shot in two. 
 
 "Well," cried he, " Emperor, by God's grace 
 
 WVve got you Ratisbon! 
 The Marshal's in the market-place, 
 
 And you'll be there anon 
 To see your flag-bird flap his vans -2 
 
 Where I, to heart's desire, 
 Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans 
 
 Soared up again like fire. 
 
30 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 The chief's eye flashed; but presently 
 
 Softened itself, as sheathes 
 A film the mother-eagle's eye 
 
 When her bruised eaglet breathes; 
 " You're wounded ! " "Nay," the soldier's pride 
 
 Touched to the quick, he said : 
 "I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside, 
 
 Smiling the boy fell dead. 
 
 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 Morning, evening, noon and night, 
 "Praise God!" sang Theocrite. 
 
 Then to his poor trade he turned, 
 Whereby the daily meal was earned. 
 
 Hard he labored, long and well ; 
 O'er his work the boy's curls fell: 
 
 But ever, at each period, 
 
 He stopped and sang, " Praise God ! " 
 
 Then back again his curls he threw, 
 And cheerful turned to work anew. 
 
 Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done; 
 I doubt not thou art heard, my son : 
 
THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 31 
 
 " As well as if thy voice to-day 
 
 Were praising God the Pope's great way. 
 
 "This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 
 Praises God from Peter's dome." 
 
 Said Theocrite, "Would God that I 
 
 Might praise him, that great way, and die!" 
 
 Night passed, day shone, 
 And Theocrite was gone. 
 
 With God a day endures alway, 
 A thousand years are but a day. 
 
 God said in heaven, " Nor day nor night 
 Now brings the voice of my delight." 
 
 Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, 
 Spread his wings and sank to earth ; 
 
 Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, 
 
 Lived there, and played the craftsman well; 
 
 And morning, evening, noon and night, 
 Praised God in place of Theocrite. 
 
 And from a boy to youth he grew : 
 The man put off the stripling's hue: 
 
32 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 The man matured and fell away 
 Into the season of decay: 
 
 And ever o'er the trade he bent, 
 And ever lived on earth content. 
 
 (He did God's will; to him, all one 
 If on the earth or in the sun.) 
 
 God said, " A praise is in mine ear ; 
 There is no doubt in it, no fear: 
 
 " So sing old worlds, and so 
 
 New worlds that from my footstool go. 
 
 " Clearer loves sound other ways: 
 I miss my little human praise." 
 
 Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
 The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 
 
 'Twas Easter Day: he flew to Rome, 
 And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 
 
 In the tiring-room ! close by 
 The great outer gallery, 
 
 With his holy vestments dight, 
 Stood the new Pope, Theocrite : 
 
THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 33 
 
 And all his past career 
 Came back upon him clear, 
 
 Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 
 Till on his life the sickness weighed : 
 
 And in his cell, when death drew near, 
 An angel in a dream brought cheer : 
 
 And rising from the sickness drear, 
 He grew a priest, and now stood here. 
 
 To the East with praise he turned, 
 And on his sight the angel burned. 
 
 " I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
 And set thee here; I did not well. 
 
 " Vainly I left my angel-sphere, 
 Vain was thy dream of many a year. 
 
 " Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it dropped — 
 Creation's chorus stopped! 
 
 " Go back and praise again 
 The early way, while I remain. 
 
 " With that weak voice of our disdain, 
 Take up creation's pausing strain. 
 
34 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 " Back to the cell and poor employ : 
 Resume the craftsman and the boy!" 
 
 Theocrite grew old at home; 
 
 A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 
 
 One vanished as the other died : 
 They sought God side by side. 
 
 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 i 
 There they are, my fifty men and women 
 Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 
 Take them, Love, the book and me together: 
 Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 
 
 ii 
 Rafael made a century of sonnets, 
 Made and wrote them in a certain volume 
 Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil 
 Else he only used to draw Madonnas: 
 These, the world might view — but one, the volume. 
 Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. 
 Did she live and love it all her lifetime? 
 Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, 
 Die, and let it drop beside her pillow 
 
ONE WORD MORE 35 
 
 Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 
 Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving — 
 Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 
 Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's? 
 
 in 
 You and I would rather read that volume, 
 (Taken to his beating bosom by it) 
 Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 
 Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas — 
 Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 
 Her, that visits Florence in a vision, 
 Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre i — 
 Seen by us and all the world in circle. 2 
 
 IV 
 
 You and I will never read that volume. 
 Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple 
 Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 
 Guido Reni 3 dying, all Bologna 
 Cried, and the world too, "Ours, the treasure!" 
 Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 
 
 Dante once prepared to paint an angel : 
 Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice." 4 
 
36 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 While he mused and traced and retraced it, 
 (Peradventure with a pen corroded 
 Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, 
 When, his left hand i' the hair o' the wicked, 
 Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 
 Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, 
 Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 
 Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 
 Dante, who loved well because he hated, 
 Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 
 Dante standing, studying his angel, — 
 In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 
 Says he — " Certain people of importance" 
 (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 
 " Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." 
 Says the poet — "Then I stopped my painting." 
 
 VI 
 
 You and I would rather see that angel, 
 Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
 Would we not? — than read a fresh Inferno. 
 
 VII 
 
 You and I will never see that picture. 
 While he mused on love and Beatrice, 
 While he softened o'er his outlined angel, 
 
ONE WORD MORE 37 
 
 In they broke, those " people of importance": 
 We and Bice l bear the loss forever. 
 
 VIII 
 
 What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture? 
 
 This : no artist lives and loves, that longs not 
 
 Once, and only once, and for one only 
 
 (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language 
 
 Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — ■ 
 
 Using nature that's an art to others, 
 
 Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 
 
 Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 
 
 None but would forego his proper dowry, — 
 
 Does he paint? he fain would write a poem, — 
 
 Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, 
 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 
 
 Once, and only once, and for one only, 
 
 So to be the man and leave the artist, 
 
 Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 
 
 IX 
 
 Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement! 
 He who smites the rock and spreads the water, 2 
 Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, 
 Even he, the minute makes immortal, 
 Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, 
 
38 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 
 
 While he smites, how can he but remember, 
 
 So he smote before, in such a peril, 
 
 When they stood and mocked — " Shall smiting 
 help us?" 
 
 When they drank and sneered — "A stroke is 
 easy!" 
 
 When they wiped their mouths and went their 
 journey, 
 
 Throwing him for thanks — " But drought was 
 pleasant." 
 
 Thus old memories mar the actual triumph ; 
 
 Thus the doing savors of disrelish; 
 
 Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; 
 
 O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, 
 
 Carelessness or consciousness — the gesture. 
 
 For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 
 
 Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, 
 
 Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed pre- 
 lude — 
 
 ''How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save 
 us?" 
 
 Guesses what is like to prove the sequel — 
 
 " Egypt's flesh-pots — nay, the drought was bet- 
 ter." 
 
ONE WORD MORE 39 
 
 X 
 
 Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! 
 Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's l cloven brilliance, 
 Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. 
 Never dares the man put off the prophet. 
 
 XI 
 
 Did he love one face from out the thousands, 
 (Were she Jethro's daughter, 2 white and wifely, 
 Were she but the ^Ethiopian bondslave,) 
 He would envy yon dumb patient camel, 
 Keeping a reserve of scanty water 
 Meant to save his own life in the desert; 
 Ready in the desert to deliver 
 (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) 
 Hoard and life together for his mistress. 
 
 XII 
 
 I shall never, in the years remaining, 
 
 Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 
 
 Make you music that should all-express me; 
 
 So it seems: I stand on my attainment. 
 
 This of verse alone, one life allows me; 
 
 Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 
 
 Other heights in other lives, God willing: 
 
 All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love! 
 
40 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 XIII 
 
 Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 
 
 Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. 
 
 Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, 
 
 Lines I write the first time and the last time. 
 
 He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, 
 
 Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, 
 
 Cramps his spirit, crowds it all in little, 
 
 Makes a strange art of an art familiar, 
 
 Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets. 
 
 He who blows through bronze, may breathe through 
 
 silver, 
 Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. 
 He who writes, may write for once as I do. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Love, you saw me gather men and women, 
 Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 
 Enter each and all, and use their service, 
 Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem, 
 Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
 Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving: 
 I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 
 Karshish, 1 Cleon, Xorbert, and the fifty. 
 Let me speak this once in my true person, 
 
ONE WORD MORE 41 
 
 Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 
 Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: 
 Pray you, look on these my men and women. 
 Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 
 Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also! 
 Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things. 
 
 xv 
 
 Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self! 
 
 Here in London, yonder late in Florence, 
 
 Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 
 
 Curving on a sky imbrued with color, 
 
 Drifted over Fiesole i by twilight, 
 
 Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth. 
 
 Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 2 
 
 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, 
 
 Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 
 
 Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, 
 
 Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, 
 
 Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, 
 
 Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 
 
 XVI 
 
 What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy? 
 Nay : for if that moon could love a mortal, 
 Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), 
 
42 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos *) , 
 She would turn a new side to her mortal, 
 Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman — 
 Blank to Zoroaster 2 on his terrace, 
 Blind to Galileo 3 on his turret, 
 Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even! 
 Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal — 
 When she turns round, comes again in heaven, 
 Opens out anew for worse or better! 
 Proves she like some portent of an iceberg- 
 Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 
 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? 
 Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire 
 Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? 
 Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu 4 
 Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 
 Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. 
 Like the bodied heaven in his clearness 
 Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, 
 When they ate and drank and saw God also ! 
 
 XVII 
 
 What were seen? None knows, none ever shall 
 
 know. 
 Only this is sure — the sight were other, 
 Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, 
 
ONE WORD MORE 43 
 
 Dying now impoverished here in London. 
 God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
 Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
 One to show a woman when he loves her! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 This I say of me, but think of you, Love! 
 
 This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 
 
 Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder. 
 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know 
 
 you! 
 There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 
 Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
 But the best is when I glide from out them, 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 
 Come out on the other side, the novel 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
 Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 
 Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 
 Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 
 Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom! 
 
44 HE RYE RIEL 
 
 HERVE RIEL 1 
 
 i 
 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 
 ninety-two, 
 Did the English fight the French, — woe to France ! 
 And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' 
 
 the blue, 
 Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of 
 sharks pursue, 
 Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo 2 on the 
 Ranee, 
 With the English fleet in view. 
 
 ii 
 
 'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor 
 in full chase; 
 First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 
 Damfreville ; 3 
 Close on him fled, great and small, 
 Twenty-two good ships in all; 
 And they signaled to the place 
 "Help the winners of a race! 
 
 Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick — 
 
 or, quicker still, 
 Here's the English can and will!" 
 
HERVE RIEL 45 
 
 III 
 
 Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt 
 on board; 
 " Why, what hope or chance have ships like these 
 to pass?" laughed they: 
 " Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 
 
 scarred and scored. 
 Shall the Formidable here with her twelve and 
 eighty l guns 
 Think to make the river-mouth by the single 
 narrow way, 
 Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty 
 tons, 
 And with flow at full beside? 
 Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
 Reach the mooring? Rather say, 
 While rock stands or water runs, 
 Not a ship will leave the bay!" 
 
 IV 
 
 Then was called a council straight. 
 
 Brief and bitter the debate : 
 
 " Here's the English at our heels; would you have 
 
 them take in tow 
 All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern 
 
 and bow, 
 
46 HERVE RIEL 
 
 For a prize to Plymouth ' Sound? 
 Better run the ships aground ! " 
 
 (Ended Damfreville his speech.) 
 Not a minute more to wait! 
 
 " Let the Captains all and each 
 
 Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels 
 on the beach! 
 France must undergo her fate. 
 
 v 
 
 "Give the word! " But no such word 
 Was ever spoke or heard ; 
 
 For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid 
 all these 
 — A Captain? A Lieutenant? A mate — first, sec- 
 ond, third? 
 No such man of mark, and meet 
 With his betters to compete! 
 But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville 2 
 for the fleet, 
 A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Riel the Croisickese. 3 
 
 VI 
 
 And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" 
 cries Herve Riel: 
 "Are you mad, you Malouins? 4 Are you cow- 
 ards, fools, or rogues? 
 
HERVE RIEL 47 
 
 Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the 
 
 soundings, tell 
 On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every 
 swell 
 'Twixt the offing here and Greve 1 where the river 
 disembogues? 
 Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the 
 lying's for? 
 Morn and eve, night and day, 
 Have I piloted your bay. 
 Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Sol- 
 idor. 2 
 Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were 
 worse than fifty Hogues ! 
 Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, be- 
 lieve me there's a way! 
 Only let me lead the line, 
 
 Have the biggest ship to steer, 
 Get this Formidable clear, 
 Make the others follow mine, 
 
 And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I 
 know well, 
 Right to Solidor past Greve, 
 
 And there lay them safe and sound ; 
 And if one ship misbehave, 
 
 — Keel so much as grate the ground, 
 
48 HERVk RIEL 
 
 Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my head!" 
 cries Herve Riel. 
 
 VII 
 
 Not a minute more to wait. 
 "Steer us in, then, small and great! 
 
 Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" 
 cried its chief. 
 Captains, give the sailor place ! 
 
 He is Admiral, in brief. 
 Still the north-wind, by God's grace! 
 See the noble fellow's face 
 As the big ship, with a bound, 
 Clears the entry like a hound, 
 
 Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 
 sea's profound ! 
 
 See, safe thro' shoal and rock, 
 
 How they follow in a flock, 
 Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates 
 the ground, 
 
 Not a spar that comes to grief! 
 The peril, see, is past, 
 All are harbored to the last, 
 And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!" — sure 
 
 as fate 
 Up the English come, too late! 
 
HERVE RIEL 49 
 
 VIII 
 
 So, the storm subsides to calm: 
 
 They see the green trees wave 
 
 On the heights overlooking Greve. 
 Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 
 " Just our rapture to enhance, 
 
 Let the English rake the bay, 1 
 Gnash their teeth and glare askance 
 
 As they cannonade away! 
 'Neath rampired 2 Solidor pleasant riding on the 
 
 Ranee ! " 
 How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's coun- 
 tenance ! 
 Out burst all with one accord, 
 
 " This is Paradise for Hell! 
 Let France, let France's King 
 Thank the man that did the thing!" 
 What a shout, and all one word, 
 
 "Herve Riel!" 
 As he stepped in front once more, 
 
 Not a symptom of surprise 
 
 In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
 Just the same man as before. 
 
50 HERV& RIEL 
 
 IX 
 
 Then said Damfreville, "My friend, 
 I must speak out at the end, 
 
 The-' I find the speaking hard. 
 Praise is deeper than the lips : 
 You have saved the King his ships, 
 
 You must name your own reward. 
 'Faith our sun was near eclipse! 
 Demand whate'er you will, 
 France remains your debtor still. 
 Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not 
 Damfreville." 
 
 x 
 
 Then a beam of fun outbroke 
 On the bearded mouth that spoke, 
 As the honest heart laughed through 
 Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 
 " Since I needs must say my say, 
 
 Since on board the duty's done, 
 
 And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is 
 it but a run? — 
 Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 
 
 Since the others go ashore — 
 Come! A good whole holiday! 
 
HERVfi RIEL 51 
 
 Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the 
 Belle Aurore!" 
 That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 
 
 XI 
 
 Name and deed alike are lost: 
 Not a pillar nor a post 
 
 In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
 Not a head in white and black 
 On a single fishing smack, 
 
 In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 
 wrack i 
 All that France saved from the fight whence Eng- 
 land bore the bell. 2 
 Go to Paris : rank on rank 
 
 Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
 On the Louvre, 3 face and flank! 
 
 You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve 
 Riel. 
 So, for better and for worse, 
 Herve Riel, accept my verse! 
 In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
 Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the 
 Bell Aurore! 
 
52 PHEID1PPIDES 
 
 PHEIDIPPIDES * 
 
 Xaipere pucuifxev. 
 
 First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and 
 
 rock! 
 Gods of my birthplace, daemons 2 and heroes, honor 
 
 to all! 
 Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co- 
 equal in praise 
 — Ay, with Zeus 3 the Defender, with Her of the 
 
 aegis and spear! 
 Also ye of the bow and the buskin, 4 praised be your 
 
 peer, 
 Now, henceforth and forever, — O latest to whom 
 
 I upraise 
 Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave 
 
 pasture and flock! 
 Present to help, potent to save, Pan 5 — patron I 
 
 call! 
 
 Archons 6 of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I 
 
 return ! 
 See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no specter that 
 
 speaks ! 
 Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, 
 
 Athens and you, 
 
PHEIDIPPIDES 53 
 
 "Run, Pheidippicles, run and race, reach Sparta 
 
 for aid! 
 Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your 
 
 command I obeyed, 
 Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire 
 
 runs through 
 Was the space between city and city; two days, 
 
 two nights did I burn 
 Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up 
 
 peaks. 
 Into their midst I broke: breath served but for 
 
 " Persia has come! 
 Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water 
 
 and earth : 1 
 Razed 2 to the ground is Eretria — but Athens, 
 
 shall Athens sink, 
 Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas 
 
 utterly die, 
 Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the 
 
 stupid, the stander-by? 
 Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you 
 
 stretch o'er destruction's brink? 
 How — when? No care for my limbs! — there's 
 
 lightning in all and some — 
 Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give 
 
 it birth!" 
 
54 PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 O my Athens — Sparta love thee? Did Sparta 
 
 respond? 
 Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust, 
 Malice, — each eye of her gave me its glitter of 
 
 gratified hate! 
 Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for 
 
 excuses. I stood 
 Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, 
 
 an inch from dry wood : 
 " Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they 
 
 debate? 
 Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a quarry 
 
 beyond 
 Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang 
 
 them ' Ye must 'I" 
 
 No bolt launched from Olumpos! 1 Lo, their 
 
 answer at last! 
 "Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — may 
 
 Sparta befriend? 
 Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty the 
 
 issue at stake! 
 Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect 
 
 to the Gods! 
 Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever 
 
 the odds 
 
PHEIDIPPIDES 55 
 
 In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is 
 
 unable to take 
 Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she 
 
 rounds to it fast: 
 Athens must wait, patient as we — who judgment 
 
 suspend." 
 
 Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, I 
 
 had moldered to ash! 
 That sent a blaze thro' my blood; off, off and away 
 
 was I back, 
 — Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the 
 
 false and the vile ! 
 Yet "O Gods of my land!" I cried, as each hillock 
 
 and plain, 
 Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past 
 
 them again, 
 "Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we 
 
 paid you erewhile? 
 Vain was the filleted ! victim, the fulsome libation! 
 
 Too rash 
 Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so 
 
 slack! 
 
 11 Oak and olive and bay, 2 — I bid you cease to en- 
 wreathe 
 
56 PHE1D1PPIDES 
 
 Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Per- 
 sian's foot, 
 
 You that, our patrons were pledged, should never 
 adorn a slave! 
 
 Rather I hail thee, Parnes, 1 — trust to thy wild 
 waste tract! 
 
 Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What mat- 
 ter if slacked 
 
 My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and 
 to cave 
 
 No deity deigns to drape with verdure? — at least 
 I can breathe, 
 
 Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from 
 the mute!" 
 
 Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge; 
 
 Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, 
 a bar 
 
 Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking 
 the way. 
 
 Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the 
 fissure across: 
 
 " Where I could enter, there I depart by ! Night in 
 the fosse? 2 
 
 Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, 
 thus I obey — 
 
PHEIDIPPIDES 57 
 
 Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! 
 
 No bridge 
 Better!" — when — ha! what was it I came on, of 
 
 wonders that are? 
 
 There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — majestical Pan! 
 
 Ivy x drooped wanton, 2 kissed his head, moss cush- 
 ioned his hoof; 
 
 All the great God was good in the eyes grave- 
 kindly — the curl 
 
 Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mor- 
 tal's awe 
 
 As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand 
 I saw. 
 
 "Halt, Pheidippides!" — halt I did, my brain of a 
 whirl : 
 
 "Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?" he 
 gracious began : 
 
 " How is it, — Athens, only in Hellas, holds me 
 aloof? 
 
 " Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no 
 feast ! 
 
 Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more 
 helpful of old? 
 
 Aye, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, 
 trust me! 
 
58 PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, 
 
 have faith 
 In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, 
 
 'The Goat-God saith: 
 When Persia — so much as strews not the soil — 
 
 is cast in the sea, 
 Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your 
 
 most and least, 
 Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, 1 made one cause with 
 
 the free and the bold ! ' 
 
 " Say Pan saith: ' Let this, foreshowing the place, be 
 
 the pledge!'" 
 (Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear 
 — Fennel, 2 — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — 
 
 whatever it bode), 
 " While, as for thee ..." But enough! He was 
 
 gone. If I ran hitherto — 
 Be sure that the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, 
 
 but flew. 
 Parnes to Athens — earth no more, the air was my 
 
 road; 
 Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on 
 
 the razor's edge! 
 Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon 
 
 rare! 
 
PHEIDIPPIDES 59 
 
 Then spoke Miltiades. 1 "And thee, best runner 
 of Greece, 
 
 Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is prom- 
 ised thyself? 
 
 Tell it us straightway, — Athens the mother de- 
 mands of her son ! " 
 
 Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but, lifting at 
 length 
 
 His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered 
 the rest of his strength 
 
 Into the utterance — "Pan spoke thus: 'For what 
 thou hast done 
 
 Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be al- 
 lowed thee release 
 
 From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or 
 in pelf!' 
 
 "I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most 
 
 to my mind! 
 Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this 
 
 fennel may grow, — 
 Pound — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, under 
 
 the deep, 
 Whelm her away for ever ; and then, — no Athens 
 
 to save, — 
 
60 PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the 
 
 brave, — 
 Hie to my house and home: and, when my children 
 
 shall creep 
 Close to my knees, — recount how the God was 
 
 awful yet kind, 
 Promised their sire reward to the full — rewarding 
 
 him — so!" 
 
 Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Marathon 
 
 day: 
 So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Akropolis! l 
 Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy 
 
 due! 
 'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!'' He 
 
 flung down his shield, 
 Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the 
 
 Fennel-field 
 And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire 
 
 runs through, 
 Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like 
 
 wine thro' clay, 
 Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the 
 
 bliss ! 
 
 So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word 
 of salute 
 
MY LAST DUCHESS 61 
 
 Is still " Rejoice!" — his word which brought 
 
 rejoicing indeed. 
 So is Pheidippides happy for ever, — the noble 
 
 strong man 
 Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, 
 
 whom a god loved so well, 
 He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and 
 
 was suffered to tell 
 Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as 
 
 he began. 1 
 So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter be 
 
 mute: 
 " Athens is saved!" — Pheidippides dies in the 
 
 shout for his meed. 
 
 MY LAST DUCHESS 
 
 FERRARA 
 
 This poem — published in Bells and Pomegranates — is 
 the first direct progenitor of Andrea del Sarto and the other 
 great blank- verse monologues; in it we see the form, save for 
 the scarcely appreciable presence of rhyme, already devel- 
 oped. The poem is a subtle study, in the jealousy of egoism 
 — not a study so much as a creation ; and it places before 
 us, as if bitten out by the etcher's acid, a typical autocrat 
 of the Renaissance, with his serene self-composure of selfish- 
 ness, quiet uncompromising cruelty, and genuine devotion to 
 art. The scene and the actors in this little Italian drama 
 
62 MY LAST DUCHESS 
 
 stand out before us with the most natural clearness; there 
 is some telling touch in every line, an infinitude of cunningly 
 careless details, instinct with suggestion, and an appearance 
 through it all of simple artless ease, such as only the very 
 finest art can give. 
 
 That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 
 
 Looking as if she were alive. I call 
 
 That piece a wonder, now : Fra Pandolf s l hands 
 
 Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 
 
 Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said 
 
 "Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read 
 
 Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 
 
 The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 
 
 But to myself they turned (since none puts by 
 
 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 
 
 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 
 
 How such a glance came there; so, not the first 
 
 Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 
 
 Her husband's presence only, called that spot 
 
 Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps 
 
 Fra Pandolf chanced to say " Her mantle laps 
 
 Over my lady's wrist too much," or " Paint 
 
 Must never hope to reproduce the faint 
 
 Half -flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff 
 
 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 
 
 For calling up that spot of joy. She had 
 
 A heart — how shall I say? — too soon made glad, 
 
MY LAST DUCHESS 63 
 
 Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er 
 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
 
 Sir, 'twas all one ! My favor at her breast, 
 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 
 She rode with round the terrace — all and each 
 
 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
 
 Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but 
 
 thanked 
 Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
 With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 
 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill 
 In speech — (which I have not) — to make your 
 
 will 
 Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this 
 Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, 
 Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let 
 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
 — E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose 
 Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, 
 Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without 
 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave com- 
 mands; l 
 
64 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 
 
 Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 
 
 As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet 
 
 The company below, then. I repeat 
 
 The Count your master's known munificence 
 
 Is ample warrant that no just pretense 
 
 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; 
 
 Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 
 
 At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 
 
 Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, 1 though, 
 
 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 
 
 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me ! " 
 
 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 2 
 
 i 
 Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to 
 
 spare, 
 The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the 
 
 city-square ; 
 Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the win- 
 dow there ! 
 
 ii 
 
 Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, 
 
 at least! 
 There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect 
 
 feast; 
 
UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 65 
 
 While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more 
 than a beast. 
 
 in 
 Well, now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of 
 
 a bull 
 Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's 
 
 skull, 
 Save a mere shag of a bush, with hardly a leaf to 
 
 pull! 
 — I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's 
 
 turned wool. 
 
 IV 
 
 But the city, oh, the city — the square with the 
 
 houses! Why? 
 They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's 
 
 something to take the eye! 
 Houses in four straight lines, not a single front 
 
 awry : 
 You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, 
 
 who hurries by; 
 Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when 
 
 the sun gets high; 
 And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted 
 
 properly. 
 
66 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 
 
 V 
 
 What of a villa? Though winter be over in March 
 
 by rights, 
 Tis May, perhaps, ere the snow shall have withered 
 
 well off the heights ! 
 You've the brown ploughed land before, where the 
 
 oxen steam and wheeze, 
 And the hills oversmoked behind, by the faint grey 
 
 olive trees. 
 
 VI 
 
 Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer 
 
 all at once; 
 In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April 
 
 suns. 
 'Mid the sharp, short emerald wheat, scarce risen 
 
 three fingers well, 
 The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its 
 
 great red bell 
 Like a thin clear bubble of blood for the children 
 
 to prick and sell. 
 
 VII 
 
 Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to 
 
 spout and splash! 
 In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such 
 
 foam bows flash 
 
UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 67 
 
 On the horses with curling fish tails, that prance 
 
 and paddle and pash 
 Round the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers 
 
 do not abash, 
 Though all she wears is some weeds round her waist 
 
 in a sort of a sash. 
 
 VIII 
 
 All the year long in the villa, nothing to see, though 
 
 you linger, 
 Except yon cypress that points like death's lean 
 
 lifted forefinger; 
 Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the 
 
 corn and mingle, 
 Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it 
 
 seem atingle. 
 Late August or early September, the stunning 
 
 cicala l is shrill 
 And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the 
 
 resinous firs on the hill. 
 Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months 
 
 of the fever and chill. 
 
 IX 
 
 Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed 
 church-bells begin; 
 
68 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 
 
 No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence 1 
 
 rattles in; 
 You get the pick of the news and it costs you never 
 
 a pin. 
 By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, 
 
 lets blood, draws teeth; 
 Or the Pulcinello 2 trumpet breaks up the market 
 
 beneath. 
 At the post-office such a scene-picture, — the new 
 
 play, piping hot ! — 
 And a notice how only this morning three liberal 
 
 thieves were shot. 
 Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly 
 
 of rebukes, 
 And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some 
 
 little new law of the Duke's! 
 Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend 
 
 Don So-and-So, 
 Who is Dante, 3 Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome, and 
 
 Cicero, 
 "And moreover" (the sonnet goes rhyming), "the 
 
 skirts of St. Paul has reached, 
 Having preached us those six Lent lectures, more 
 
 unctuous than ever he preached." 
 Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession! our 
 
 Lady borne smiling and smart 
 
UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 69 
 
 With a pink gauze gown, all spangles, and seven 
 
 swords stuck in her heart ! 
 Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the 
 
 fife; 
 No keeping one's haunches still; it's the greatest 
 
 pleasure in life. 
 
 x 
 
 But bless you, it's dear, — it's dear! fowls, wine at 
 
 double the rate. 
 They've clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil 
 
 pays passing the gate 
 It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, 
 
 not the city! 
 Beggars can scarcely be choosers ; but still — ah, 
 
 the pity, the pity! 
 Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks 
 
 with cowls and sandals, 
 And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding 
 
 the yellow candles; 
 One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a 
 
 cross with handles, 
 And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the 
 
 better prevention of scandals ! 
 Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle 
 
 the fife. 
 
70 SA UL 
 
 Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleas- 
 ure in life. 
 
 SAUL 1 
 
 Said Abner, 2 "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, 
 
 ere thou speak, 
 Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, 
 
 and did kiss his cheek. 
 And he, "Since the king, O my friend, for thy 
 
 countenance sent, 
 Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from 
 
 his tent 
 Thou return with the joyful assurance the King 
 
 liveth yet, 
 Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the 
 
 water be wet. 
 For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of 
 
 three days, 
 Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer 
 
 nor of praise, 
 To betoken that Saul and the Spirit 3 have ended 
 
 their strife, 
 And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks 
 
 back upon life. 
 
SAUL 71 
 
 II 
 
 " Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child 
 with his dew 
 
 On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still liv- 
 ing and blue 
 
 Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if 
 no wild heat 
 
 Were now raging to torture the desert!" 
 
 in 
 
 Then I, as was meet, 
 Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on 
 
 my feet, 
 And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent 
 
 was unlooped; 
 I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I 
 
 stooped ; 
 Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all 
 
 withered and gone, 
 That extends to the second inclosure, I groped my 
 
 way on 
 Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once 
 
 more I prayed, 
 And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not 
 
 afraid 
 
72 SAUL 
 
 But spoke, " Here is David, thy servant!" And no 
 
 voice replied. 
 At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon 
 
 I descried 
 A something more black than the blackness — the 
 
 vast, the upright 
 Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow 
 
 into sight 
 Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of 
 
 all. 
 Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent roof, 
 
 showed Saul. 
 
 IV 
 
 He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms 
 
 stretched out wide, 
 On the great cross-support in the center, that goes 
 
 to each side; 
 He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught 
 
 in his pangs 
 And waiting his change, the king serpent all heavily 
 
 hangs, 
 Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance 
 
 come 
 With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear * 
 
 and stark, blind and dumb. 
 
SAUL 73 
 
 V 
 
 Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we 
 
 twine round its chords 
 Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — 
 
 those sunbeams like swords! 
 And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, 
 
 one after one, 
 So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be 
 
 done. 
 They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, 
 
 they have fed 
 Where the long grasses stifle the water within the 
 
 stream's bed; 
 And now one after one seeks its lodgings, a star fol- 
 lows star 
 Into eve and the blue far above us, — so blue and 
 
 so far! 
 
 VI 
 
 — Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland 
 
 will each leave his mate 
 To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets 
 
 elate 
 Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, 
 
 what has weight 
 
74 SAUL 
 
 To set the quick jerboa * a-musing outside his sand 
 
 house — 
 There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird 
 
 and half mouse! 
 God made all the creatures and gave them our love 
 
 and our fear, 
 To give sign, we and they are his children, one 
 
 family here. 
 
 VII 
 
 Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their 
 
 wine-song, when hand 
 Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 
 
 and great hearts expand 
 And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — 
 
 And then, the last song 
 When the dead man is praised on his journey — 
 
 " Bear him along 
 With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! 
 
 Are balm-seeds not here 
 To console us? The land has none left such as he 
 
 on the bier. 
 Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!" — 
 
 And then, the glad chant 
 Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, 
 
 next, she whom we vaunt 
 
SAUL 75 
 
 As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And 
 
 then, the great march 
 Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress 
 
 an arch 
 Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends? 
 
 — Then, the chorus intoned 
 As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. 
 But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul 
 
 groaned. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and 
 
 listened apart; 
 And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: 
 
 and sparkles 'gan dart 
 From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once 
 
 with a start 
 All its lordly male-sapphires, 1 and rubies courageous 
 
 at heart. 
 So the head: but the body still moved not, still 
 
 hung there erect. 
 And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it 
 
 unchecked, 
 As I sang, — 
 
 IX 
 
 " Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No 
 spirit feels waste, 
 
76 SAUL 
 
 Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew 
 
 unbraced. 
 Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock 
 
 up to rock, 
 The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the 
 
 cool silver shock 
 Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of 
 
 the bear, 
 And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in 
 
 his lair. 
 And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with 
 
 gold dust divine, 
 And the locust-flesh 1 steeped in the pitcher, the full 
 
 draught of wine, 
 And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bul- 
 rushes tell 
 That the water was wont to go warbling so softly 
 
 and well. 
 How good is man's life, the mere living ! 2 how fit 
 
 to employ 
 All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever 
 
 in joy! 
 Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose 
 
 sword thou didst guard 
 When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for 
 
 glorious reward? 
 
SAUL 77 
 
 Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held 
 
 up as men sung 
 The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her 
 
 faint tongue 
 Joining in while it could to the witness, ' Let one 
 
 more attest, 
 I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and 
 
 all was for best!' 
 Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, 
 
 not much, but the rest. 
 And thy brothers, the help and the contest, 1 the 
 
 working whence grew 
 Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the 
 
 spirit strained true : 
 And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of 
 
 wonder and hope, 
 Present promise and wealth of the future beyond 
 
 the eye's scope, — 
 Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is 
 
 thine : 
 And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one 
 
 head combine! 
 On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and 
 
 rage (like the throe 2 
 That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and lets 
 
 the gold go), 
 
78 SAUL 
 
 High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame 
 
 crowning them, — all 
 Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — 
 
 King Saul!" 1 
 
 x 
 
 And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, 
 
 harp, and voice, 
 Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding 
 
 rejoice 
 Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as when, 
 
 dare I say, 
 The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains thro' 
 
 its array, 
 And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot 2 — "Saul!" 
 
 cried I, and stopped, 
 And waited the thing that should follow. Then 
 
 Saul, who hung propped 
 By the tent's cross-support in the center, was 
 
 struck by his name. 
 Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes 
 
 right to the aim, 
 And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that 
 
 held (he alone, 
 While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on 
 
 a broad bust of stone 
 
SAUL 79 
 
 A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — 
 
 leaves grasp of the sheet? 
 Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously 
 
 down to his feet, 
 And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, 
 
 your mountain of old, 
 With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages 
 
 untold : 
 Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each 
 
 furrow and scar 
 Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — 
 
 all hail, there they are! 
 — Now again to be softened with verdure, again 
 
 hold the nest 
 Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the 
 
 green on his crest 
 For their food in the ardors of summer. One long 
 
 shudder thrilled 
 All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and 
 
 was stilled 
 At the King's self left standing before me, released 
 
 and aware. 
 What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 
 
 'twixt hope and despair. 1 
 Death was past, life not come : so he waited. Awhile 
 
 his right hand 
 
80 SAUL 
 
 Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant, 
 
 forthwith to remand 
 To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas 
 
 Saul as before. 
 I looked up, and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was 
 
 hurt any more 
 Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch 
 
 from the shore, 
 At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's 
 
 slow decline 
 Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap 
 
 and entwine 
 Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, 
 
 arm folded arm 
 O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 
 
 XI 
 
 What spell or what charm, 
 (For, awhile there was trouble within me) what 
 
 next should I urge 
 To sustain him where song had restored him? 
 
 Song filled to the verge 
 His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that 
 
 it yields 
 Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: 
 
 bevond, on what fields, 
 
SAUL 81 
 
 Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten 
 
 the eye, 
 And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the 
 
 cup they put by? 
 He saith, "It is good"; still he drinks not: he lets 
 
 me praise life, 
 Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 
 
 XII 
 
 Then fancies grew rife 
 Which had come long ago on the pasture, when 
 
 round me the sheep 
 Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow 
 
 as in sleep; 
 And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world 
 
 that might lie 
 'Neath his ken, tho' I saw but the strip 'twixt the 
 
 hill and the sky: 
 And I laughed — " Since my days are ordained to 
 
 be passed with my flocks, 
 Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains 
 
 and the rocks, 
 Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image 
 
 the show 
 Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly 
 
 shall know! 
 
82 SAUL 
 
 Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the 
 
 courage that gains, 
 And the prudence that keeps what men strive for!" 
 
 And now these old trains 
 Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, 
 
 once more the string 
 Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — 
 
 XIII 
 
 " Yea, my King," 
 I began — "thou dost well in rejecting mere com- 
 forts that spring 
 From the mere mortal life held in common by man 
 
 and by brute : 
 In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our 
 
 soul it bears fruit. 
 Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how 
 
 its stem trembled first 
 Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then 
 
 safely outburst 
 The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when 
 
 these too, in turn 
 Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: 
 
 yet more was to learn, 
 E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. 
 
 Our dates shall we slight, 
 
SAUL 83 
 
 When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or 
 
 care for the plight 
 Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced 
 
 them? Not so! stem and branch 
 Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the 
 
 palm-wine shall stanch 
 Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee 
 
 such wine. 
 Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit 
 
 be thine! 
 By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou 
 
 still shalt enjoy 
 More indeed, than at first when, inconscious, the 
 
 life of a boy. 
 Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each 
 
 deed thou hast done 
 Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en 
 
 as the sun 
 Looking down on the earth, tho' clouds spoil him, 
 
 tho' tempests efface, 
 Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must 
 
 everywhere trace 
 The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each 
 
 ray of thy will, 
 Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, 
 
 shall thrill 
 
84 SAUL 
 
 Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till 
 
 they too give forth 
 A like cheer to their sons: who in turn, fill the 
 
 South and the North 
 With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Ca- 
 rouse in the past ! 
 But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at 
 
 last. 
 As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at 
 
 her height. 
 So with man — so his power and his beauty for ever 
 
 take flight. 
 No ! Again a long draught of my soul-wine ! Look 
 
 forth o'er the years! 
 Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin 
 
 with the seer's! 
 Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his 
 
 tomb — bid arise 
 A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, 
 
 built to the skies, 
 Let it mark where the great First King ! slumbers : 
 
 whose fame would ye know? 
 Up above see the rock's naked face, where the 
 
 record shall go 
 In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was 
 
 Saul, so he did; 
 
SAUL 85 
 
 With the sages directing the work, by the populace 
 
 chid, — 
 For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! 
 
 Which fault to amend, 
 In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon 
 
 they shall spend 
 (See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, 
 
 and record 
 With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the 
 
 statesman's great word 
 Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The 
 
 river's a-wave 
 With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when 
 
 prophet-winds rave: 
 So the pen gives unborn generations their due and 
 
 their part 
 In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank 
 
 God that thou art!" 
 
 XIV 
 
 And behold while I sang . . . but O Thou who didst 
 
 grant me that day, 
 And before it not seldom has granted thy help to 
 
 essay, 
 Carry on and complete an adventure, — my shield 
 
 and my sword 
 
86 SAUL 
 
 In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy 
 
 word was my word, — 
 Still be with me, who then at the summit of human 
 
 endeavor 
 And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed 
 
 hopeless as ever 
 On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, 
 
 mighty to save, 
 Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance — 
 
 God's throne from man's grave! 
 Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice 
 
 to my heart 
 Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last 
 
 night I took part, 
 As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with 
 
 my sheep, 
 And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish 1 like 
 
 sleep ! 
 For I wake in the grey dewy covert, while Hebron 2 
 
 upheaves 
 The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, 
 
 and Kidron 3 retrieves 
 Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 4 
 
SAUL 87 
 
 XV 
 
 I say then, — my song 
 While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever 
 
 more strong, 
 Made a proffer of good to console him, — he slowly 
 
 resumed 
 His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right 
 
 hand replumed 
 His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted 
 
 the swathes 
 Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his 
 
 countenance bathes, 
 He wipes off the robe; and he girds now his loins as 
 
 of yore, 
 And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the 
 
 clasp set before. 
 He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had bent 
 The broad brow from the daily communion; and 
 
 still, tho' much spent 
 Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, 
 
 God did choose. 
 To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never 
 
 quite lose. 
 So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by 
 
 the pile 
 
88 SAUL 
 
 Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned 
 
 there awhile, 
 And sat out my singing, — one arm round the tent- 
 prop, to raise 
 His bent head, and the other hung slack — till 1 
 
 touched on the praise 
 I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man 
 
 patient there; 
 And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then 
 
 first I was 'ware 
 That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his 
 
 vast knees 
 Which were thrust out on each side around me, like 
 
 oak roots which please 
 To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up 
 
 to know 
 If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke 
 
 not, but slow 
 Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 
 
 with care 
 Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my 
 
 brow : thro' my hair 
 The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back 
 
 my head, with kind power — 
 All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a 
 
 flower. 
 
SA UL 89 
 
 Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 
 scrutinized mine — 
 
 And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where 
 was the sign? 
 
 I yearned — " Could I help thee, my father, invent- 
 ing a bliss, 
 
 I would add, to that life of the past, both the future 
 and this; 
 
 I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages 
 hence, 
 
 As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's 
 heart to dispense!" 
 
 XVI 
 
 Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — 
 no song more ! outbroke — l 
 
 XVII 
 
 "I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw 
 
 and I spoke; 
 I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received 
 
 in my brain 
 And pronounced on the rest of his handwork — 
 
 returned him again 
 His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I 
 
 saw. 
 
90 SAUL 
 
 Reported, as man may of God's work — all's love, 
 yet all's law. 
 
 Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each 
 faculty tasked 
 
 To perceive him has gained an abyss, where a dew- 
 drop was asked. 
 
 Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wis- 
 dom laid bare. 
 
 Have I forethought? how purblind, 1 how blank, to 
 the Infinite Care! 
 
 Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? 
 
 I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and 
 no less, 
 
 In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is 
 seen God 
 
 In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and 
 the clod. 
 
 And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 
 
 (With that stoop of the soul which in bending 
 upraises it too) 
 
 The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's 
 all-complete, 
 
 As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his 
 feet. 
 
 Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity 
 known, 
 
SAUL 91 
 
 I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of 
 
 my own. 
 There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to 
 
 hoodwink, 
 I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I 
 
 think), 
 Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I 
 
 worst 
 E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold, I could love 
 
 if I durst! 
 But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may 
 
 overtake 
 God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain 
 
 for love's sake. 
 — What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? 
 
 when doors great and small, 
 Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the 
 
 hundredth appall? 
 In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 
 
 greatest of all? 
 Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate 
 
 gift, 
 That I doubt his own love can compete with it? 
 
 Here, the parts shift? 
 Here, the creature surpass the creator, — the end, 
 
 what began? 
 
92 SAUL 
 
 Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for 
 
 this man, 
 And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who 
 
 yet alone can? 
 Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, 
 
 much less power, 
 To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the mar- 
 velous dower 
 Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make 
 
 such a soul, 
 Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering 
 
 the whole? 
 And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 
 
 attest) , 
 These good things being given, to go on, and give 
 
 one more, the best? 
 Aye, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain 
 
 at the height 
 This perfection, — succeed, with life's dayspring, 
 
 death's minute of night? 
 Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the 
 
 mistake, 
 Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid 
 
 him awake 
 From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to 
 
 find himself set 
 
SAUL 93 
 
 Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 
 harmony yet 
 
 To be run and continued, and ended — who knows? 
 — or endure ! 
 
 The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest 
 to make sure; 
 
 By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensi- 
 fied bliss, 
 
 And the next world's reward and repose, by the 
 struggles in this." 
 
 XVIII 
 
 "I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I 
 
 who receive: 
 In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to 
 
 believe. 
 All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as 
 
 prompt to my prayer, 
 As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms 
 
 to the air. 
 From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, 
 
 thy dread Sabaoth : x 
 I will? — the mere atoms despise me! Why am I 
 
 not loath 
 To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it 
 
 I dare 
 
94 SAUL 
 
 Think but lightly of such impuissance? 1 What 
 
 stops my despair? 
 This; — 'tis not what man Does which exalts him, 
 
 but what man Would do ! 2 
 See the King — I would help him, but cannot, the 
 
 wishes fall through. 
 Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor 
 
 to enrich, 
 To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — 
 
 knowing which, 
 I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak thro' 
 
 me now! 
 Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst 
 
 thou — so wilt thou ! 
 So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- 
 most crown — 
 And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 
 
 nor down 
 One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no 
 
 breath, 
 Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins 
 
 issue with death! 
 As thy love is discovered almighty, almighty be 
 
 proved 
 Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being 
 
 Beloved! 
 
SAUL 95 
 
 He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest 
 
 shall stand the most weak. 
 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my 
 
 flesh, that I seek 
 In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it 
 
 shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like 
 
 to me, 
 Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand 
 
 like this hand 
 Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See 
 
 the Christ stand!" 
 
 XIX 
 
 I know not too well how I found my way home in 
 
 the night. 
 There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and 
 
 to right, 
 Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, 
 
 the aware: 
 I repressed, I got thro ? them as hardly, as strug- 
 
 glingly there, 
 As a runner beset by the populace famished for 
 
 news — 
 Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, 
 
 hell loosed with her crews; 
 
96 SAUL 
 
 And the stars of night beat with emotion, and 
 
 tingled and shot 
 Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but 
 
 I fainted not, 
 For the Hand still impelled me at once and sup- 
 ported, suppressed 
 All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and 
 
 holy behest, 
 Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth 
 
 sank to rest. 
 Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered 
 
 from earth — 
 Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's 
 
 tender birth; 
 In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of 
 
 the hills; 
 In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sud- 
 den wind-thrills; 
 In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with 
 
 eye sidling still, 
 Tho' averted with wonder and dread; in the birds 
 
 stiff and chill 
 That rose heavily as I approached them, made 
 
 stupid with awe: 
 E'en the serpent that slid away silent — he felt the 
 
 new law. 
 
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 97 
 
 The same stared in the white humid faces upturned 
 by the flowers; 
 
 The same worked in the heart of the cedar and 
 moved the vine bowers: 
 
 And the little brooks witnessing murmured, per- 
 sistent and low, 
 
 With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — " E'en 
 so, it is so!" * 
 
 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 2 
 
 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN 
 EUROPE 
 
 Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 
 
 Singing together. 
 Leave we the common crofts, 3 the vulgar thorpes, 
 
 Each in its tether 4 
 Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 
 
 Cared-for till cock-crow : 
 Look out if yonder be not day agaiu 
 
 Rimming the rock-row ! 5 
 That's the appropriate country; there man's thought, 
 
 Rarer, intenser, 
 Self -gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, 
 
 Chafes in the censer. 
 
98 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; 
 
 Seek we sepulture 
 On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 
 
 Crowded with culture! 
 All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; 
 
 Clouds overcome 1 it; 
 No ! yonder sparkle is the citadel's 
 
 Circling its summit. 
 Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: 
 
 Wait ye the warning? 
 Our low life was the level's and the night's : 
 
 He's for the morning. 
 Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 
 
 'Ware the beholders! 
 This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, 
 
 Borne on our shoulders. 
 
 Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and 
 croft 
 Safe from the weather ! 
 He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, 
 
 Singing together, 
 He was a man born with thy face and throat, 
 
 Lyric Apollo! 
 Long he lived nameless: how should spring take 
 note 
 
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 99 
 
 Winter would follow? 
 Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! 
 
 Cramped and diminished, 
 Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! 
 
 My dance is finished!" 
 No, that's the world's way; (keep the mountain-side, 
 
 Make for the city !) 
 He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride 
 
 Over men's pity; 
 Left play for work, and grappled with the world 
 
 Bent on escaping : 
 " What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest 
 furled? 
 
 Show me their shaping, 
 Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, — 
 
 Give!" — So, he gowned him, 1 
 Straight got by heart that book to its last page: 
 
 Learned, we found him. 
 Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, 
 
 Accents uncertain : 
 "Time to taste life," another would have said, 
 
 "Up with the curtain!" 
 This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? 
 
 Patience a moment! 
 Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, 
 Still there's the comment. 
 
100 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, 
 
 Painful or easy! 
 Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, 
 
 Aye, nor feel queasy." l 
 Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, 
 
 When he had learned it, 
 When he had gathered all books had to give! 
 
 Sooner, he spurned it. 
 Image the whole, then execute the parts — 
 
 Fancy the fabric 
 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, 
 
 Ere mortar dab brick ! 2 
 
 (Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market- 
 place 
 
 Gaping before us.) 
 Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace 
 
 (Hearten our chorus!) 
 That before living he'd learn how to live — 
 
 No end to learning : 
 Earn the means first — God surely will contrive 
 
 Use for our earning. 
 Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes! 
 
 Live now or never!" 
 He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and 
 apes! 
 
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 101 
 
 Man has Forever." 
 Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: 
 
 Calculus 1 racked him : 
 Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: 
 
 Tussis attacked him. 
 " Now, master, take a little rest ! " — not he ! 
 
 (Caution redoubled ! 
 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) 
 
 Not a whit troubled, 
 Back to his studies, fresher than at first, 
 
 Fierce as a dragon 
 He (soul-hydroptic 2 with a sacred thirst) 
 
 Sucked at the flagon. 
 Oh, if we draw a circle premature, 
 
 Heedless of far gain, 
 Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure 
 
 Bad is our bargain ! 
 Was it not great? did not he throw on God 
 
 (He loves the burthen) — 
 God's task to make the heavenly period 
 
 Perfect the earthen? 3 
 Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 
 
 Just what it all meant? 
 He would not discount life, as fools do here, 
 
 Paid by installment. 
 He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 
 
102 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 Found, or earth's failure : 
 "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered 
 "Yes! 
 
 Hence with life's pale lure!" 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it: 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 That low man goes on adding one to one, 
 
 His hundred's soon hit : 
 This high man, aiming at a million, 
 
 Misses an unit. 
 That, has the world here — should he need the next, 
 
 Let the world mind him! 
 This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 
 
 Seeking shall find Him. 1 
 So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 
 
 Ground he at grammar; 
 Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: 
 
 While he could stammer 
 He settled Hoti's business — let it be ! — 
 
 Properly based Oun — 
 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, 2 
 
 Dead from the waist down. 
 Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: 
 
 Hail to your purlieus, 3 
 
SONG FROM " PIPPA PASSES " 103 
 
 All ye highfliers of the feathered race, 
 
 Swallows and curlews! 
 Here's the top-peak; the multitude below 
 
 Live, for they can, there: 
 This man decided not to Live but Know — 
 
 Bury this man there? 
 Here — here's his place, 1 where meteors shoot, 
 clouds form, 
 
 Lightnings are loosened, 
 Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, 
 
 Peace let the dew send! 
 Lofty designs must close in like effects: 
 
 Loftily lying, 
 Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 
 
 Living and dying. 
 
 SONG FROM " PIPPA PASSES" 2 
 
 The year's at the spring, 
 And day's at the morn ; 
 Morning's at seven; 
 The hill-side's dew-pearled; 
 The lark's on the wing; 
 The snail's on the thorn; 
 God's in His heaven — 
 All's right with the world! 
 
104 AN EPISTLE 
 
 AN EPISTLE 
 
 CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF 
 KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN 
 
 Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, 
 
 The not-incurious in God's handiwork 
 
 (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, 
 
 Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, 
 
 To coop up and keep down on earth a space 
 
 That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul) 
 
 — To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, 
 
 Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, 
 
 Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 
 
 Befall the flesh thro' too much stress and strain, 
 
 Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip 
 
 Back and rejoin its source before the term, — 
 
 And aptest in contrivance (under God) 
 
 To baffle it by deftly stopping such : — 
 
 The vagrant Scholar to his sage at home 
 
 Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with 
 
 peace) 
 Three samples of true snake-stone 2 — rarer still, 
 One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
 (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 
 And writeth now the twenty-second time. 
 
AN EPISTLE 105 
 
 My journey ings were brought * to Jericho: 
 Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 
 Shall count a little labor unrepaid? 
 I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 
 On many a flinty furlong of this land. 
 Also the country-side is all on fire 
 With rumors of a marching hitherwarcl: 
 Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 2 
 A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear : 
 Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: 
 I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. 
 Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, 
 And once a town declared me for a spy; 3 
 But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, 
 Since this poor covert where I pass the night, 
 This Bethany, 4 lies scarce the distance thence 
 A man with plague-sores at the third degree 
 Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here! 
 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, 
 To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 
 And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 
 A viscid choler 5 is observable 
 In tertians, I was nearly bold to say; 
 And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 
 Than our school wots of : there's a spider 6 here 
 Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, 
 
106 AN EPISTLE 
 
 Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back; 
 
 Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his 
 
 mind. 
 The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to? 
 His service payeth me a sublimate 
 Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 
 Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn, 
 There set in order my experiences, 
 Gather what most deserves, and give thee all — 
 Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth 
 Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, 
 Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, 1 
 In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease 
 Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: 
 Thou hadst 2 admired one sort I gained at Zoar — 
 But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. 
 
 Yet stay! my Syrian blinketh gratefully, 
 Protesteth his devotion is my price 3 — 
 Suppose I write what harms not, tho' he steal? 
 I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, 
 What set me off a- writing first of all. 
 An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang! 
 For, be it this town's barrenness — or else 
 The Man had something in the look of him — 
 His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth. 
 So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose, 
 
AN EPISTLE 107 
 
 In the great press of novelty at hand, 
 The care and pains this somehow stole from me) 
 I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, 
 Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the truth? 
 The very man is gone from me but now, 
 Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. 
 Thus then, and let thy better wit help all' 
 
 Tis but a case of mania: subinducecl 
 By epilepsy, at the turning point 
 Of trance prolonged unduly some three days 
 When, by the exhibition ! of some drug 
 Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art 
 Unknown to me, and which 'twere well to know, 
 The evil thing, outbreaking all at once, 
 Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, — 
 But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, 
 Making a clear house of it too suddenly, 
 The first conceit that entered might inscribe 
 Whatever it was minded on the wall 
 So plainly at that vantage, as it were, 
 (First come, first served) that nothing subsequent 
 Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls 
 The just-returned and new-established soul 
 Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart 
 That henceforth she will read or these or none. 
 
108 AN EPISTLE 
 
 And first — the man's own firm conviction rests 
 That he was dead (in fact they buried him) 
 
 — That he was dead and then restored to life 
 By a Nazarene physician of his tribe : 
 
 — 'Sayeth, the same bade " Rise/' and he did rise. 
 " Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. 
 
 Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume, 1 
 
 Instead of giving way to time and health, 
 
 Should eat itself into the life of life, 
 
 As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all! 
 
 For see, how he takes up the after-life. 
 
 The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew, 
 
 Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, 
 
 The body's habit wholly laudable, 
 
 As much, indeed, beyond the common health 
 
 As he were made and put aside to show. 
 
 Think, could we penetrate by any drug 
 
 And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, 
 
 And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep! 
 
 Whence has the man the balm that brightens all? 
 
 This grown man eyes the world now like a child. 
 
 Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, 
 
 Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, 
 
 To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, 
 
 Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the case, — 
 
 He listened not except I spoke to him, 
 
AN EPISTLE 109 
 
 But folded his two hands and let them talk, 
 Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool. 
 And that's a sample how his years must go. 
 Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, 
 Should find a treasure, — can he use the same 
 With straitened habits and with tastes starved 
 
 small, 
 And take at once to his impoverished brain 
 The sudden element that changes things, 
 That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand, 
 And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? 
 Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — 
 Warily parsimonious, when no need, 
 Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? 
 All prudent counsel as to what befits 
 The golden mean, is lost on such an one: 
 The man's fantastic will is the man's law. 
 So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say, 
 Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — 
 Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, 
 Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: 
 The man is witless of the size, the sum, 
 The value in proportion of all things, 
 Or whether it be little or be much. 
 Discourse to him of prodigious armaments 
 Assembled to besiege his city now, 
 
110 AN EPISTLE 
 
 And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 
 
 Tis one! Then take it on the other side, 
 
 Speak of some trifling fact, — he will gaze rapt 
 
 With stupor at its very littleness, 
 
 (Far as I see) as if in that indeed 
 
 He caught prodigious import, whole results; 
 
 And so will turn to us the bystanders 
 
 In ever the same stupor (note the point) 
 
 That we too see not with his opened eyes. 
 
 Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, 
 
 Preposterously, at cross purposes. 
 
 Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look 
 
 For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 
 
 Or pretermission of the daily craft ! 
 
 While a word, gesture, glance from that same child 
 
 At play or in the school or laid asleep, 
 
 Will startle him to an agony of fear, 
 
 Exasperation, just as like. Demand 
 
 The reason why — "'tis but a word," object — 
 
 " A gesture" — he regards thee as our lord ! 
 
 Who lived there in the pyramid alone, 
 
 Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young, 
 
 We both would unadvisedly recite 
 
 Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, 
 
 Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst 
 
 All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 
 
AN EPISTLE 111 
 
 Thou and the child have each a veil alike 
 
 Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both 
 
 Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match 
 
 Over a mine of Greek fire, 1 did ye know! 
 
 He holds on firmly to some thread of life — 
 
 (It is the life to lead perforcedly) 
 
 Which runs across some vast distracting orb 
 
 Of glory on either side that meager thread, 
 
 Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — ■ 
 
 The spiritual life around the earthly life : 
 
 The law of that is known to him as this, 
 
 His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. 
 
 So is the man perplext with impulses 
 
 Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, 
 
 Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, 
 
 And not along, this black thread thro' the blaze — 
 
 "It should be" balked by ''here it cannot be." 
 
 And oft the man's soul springs into his face 
 
 As if he saw again and heard again 
 
 His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise. 
 
 Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within 
 
 Admonishes: then back he sinks at once 
 
 To ashes, who was very fire before, 
 
 In sedulous recurrence to his trade 
 
 Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 
 
 And studiously the humbler for that pride, 
 
112 AN EPISTLE 
 
 Professedly the faultier that he knows 
 
 God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 
 
 Indeed the especial marking of the man 
 
 Is prone submission to the heavenly will — 
 
 Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 
 
 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 
 
 For that same death which must restore his being 
 
 To equilibrium, body loosening soul 
 
 Divorced even now by premature full growth: 
 
 He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 
 
 So long as God please, and just how God please. 
 
 He even seeketh not to please God more 
 
 (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as Gocl please. 
 
 Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach 
 
 The doctrine of his text whate'er it be, 
 
 Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do : 
 
 How can he give his neighbor the real ground, 
 
 His own conviction? Ardent as he is — 
 
 Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old 
 
 "Be it as God please" reassureth him. 
 
 I probed the sore as thy disciples should : 
 
 "How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness 
 
 Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march 
 
 To stamp out like a little spark thy town, 
 
 Thy tribe, thy crazy tale, and thee at once?" 
 
 He merely looked with his large eyes on me. 
 
AN EPISTLE 113 
 
 The man is apathetic, you deduce? 
 
 Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, 
 
 Able and weak, affects the very brutes 
 
 And birds — how say I? flowers of the field — 
 
 As a wise workman recognizes tools 
 
 In a master's workshop, loving what they make. 
 
 Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : 
 
 Only impatient, let him do his best, 
 
 At ignorance and carelessness and sin — 
 
 An indignation which is promptly curbed: 
 
 As when in certain travel I have feigned 
 
 To be an ignoramus in our art 
 
 According to some proconceived design, 
 
 And happed to hear the land's practitioners 
 
 Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 
 
 Prattle fantastically on disease, 
 
 Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace ! 
 
 Thou wilt object — Why have I not ere this 
 Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene 
 Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, 
 Conferring with the frankness that befits? 
 Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech 
 Perished in a tumult many years ago, 
 Accused, — our learning's fate, — of wizardry, 
 Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 
 
114 AN EPISTLE 
 
 And creed prodigious as described to me. 
 
 His death, which happened when the earthquake 
 
 fell 
 (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss 
 To occult learning in our lord the sage 
 Who lived there in the pyramid alone) 
 Was wrought by the mad people — that's their 
 
 wont ! 
 On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, 
 To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — 
 How could he stop the earthquake? That's their 
 
 way! 
 The other imputations must be lies : 
 But take one, tho' I loathe to give it thee, 
 In mere respect for any good man's fame. 
 (And after all, our patient Lazarus 
 Is stark mad; should we count on what he says? 
 Perhaps not : tho' in writing to a leech 
 'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.) 
 This man so cured regards the curer, then, 
 As — God forgive me ! who but God himself, 
 Creator and sustainer of the world, 
 That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile. 
 — 'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, 
 Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own 
 
 house, 
 
AN EPISTLE 115 
 
 Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, 
 And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, 
 And must have so avouched himself, in fact, 
 In hearing of this very Lazarus 
 Who saith — but why all this of what he saith? 
 Why write of trivial matters, things of price 
 Calling at every moment for remark? 
 I noticed on the margin of a pool 
 Blue-flowering borage, 1 the Aleppo sort, 
 Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange! 
 
 Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, 
 Which, now that I review it, needs must seem 
 Unduly dwelt upon, prolixly set forth! 
 Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
 Good cause for the peculiar interest 
 And awe indeed this man has touched me with. 
 Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 
 Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 
 I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills 
 Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came 
 A moon made like a face with certain spots 
 Multiform, manifold, and menacing: 
 Then a wind rose behind me. So we met 
 In this old sleepy town at unaware, 
 The man and I. I send thee what is writ. 
 
116 MEETING AT NIGHT 
 
 Regard it as a chance, a matter risked 
 
 To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose, 
 
 Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 
 
 Jerusalem's repose shall make amends 
 
 For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine ; 
 
 Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell! l 
 
 The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 
 
 So, the All-Great, were the All- Loving too — 
 
 So, thro' the thunder comes a human voice 
 
 Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
 
 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
 
 Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine : 
 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee!" 
 
 The madman saith He said so : it is strange. 2 
 
 MEETING AT NIGHT 3 
 
 i 
 
 The gray sea and the long black land ; 
 And the yellow half-moon large and low; 
 And the startled little waves that leap 
 In fiery ringlets from their sleep, 
 As I gain the cove with pushing prow, 
 And quench its speed i' the slushy sand. 
 
PROSPICE 117 
 
 II 
 
 Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach; 
 Three fields to cross till a farm appears; 
 A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 
 And the blue spurt of a lighted match, 
 And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears, 
 Than the two hearts beating each to each! 
 
 PARTING AT MORNING 
 
 Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
 And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: 
 And straight was a path of gold for him, 
 And the need of a world of men for me. 
 
 PROSPICE l 
 
 Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 ■ The mist in my face, 
 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place, 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe ; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear 2 in a visible form, 
 
 Yet the strong man must go: 
 
118 EPILOGUE TO "ASOLANDO" 
 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained, 
 
 And the barriers fall, 
 Tho' a battle's to fight ere the guerdon ' be gained, 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
 forebore, 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 
 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, 2 in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, 
 
 The black minute's at end, 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul! 3 I shall clasp thee again, 
 And with God be the rest! 
 
 EPILOGUE TO "ASOLANDO" 4 
 
 At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 
 When you set your fancies free, 
 
EPILOGUE TO "ASOLANDO " 119 
 
 Will they pass to where — by death, fools think, 
 
 imprisoned — 
 Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved 
 
 so, 
 
 — Pity me? 
 
 Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! 
 
 What had I on earth to do 
 With the slothful, with the mawkish, 1 the unmanly? 
 Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel 
 — Being — who? 
 
 One who never turned his back but marched breast 
 forward, 
 Never doubted clouds would break, 
 Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, 2 wrong 
 
 would triumph, 
 Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 Sleep to wake. 
 
 No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 
 
 Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
 Bid him forward, breast and back as either should 
 
 be, 
 "Strive and thrive!" cry " Speed, — fight on, fare 3 
 
 ever 
 
 There as here!" 
 
120 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 MY STAR 
 All that I know 
 
 Of a certain star l 
 Is, it can throw 
 
 (Like the angled spar) __^_ 
 
 Now a dart of red, 
 
 Now a dart of blue; 
 Till my friends have said 
 
 They would fain see, too, 
 My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
 Then it stops like a bird ; like a flower, hangs furled : 
 
 They must solace themselves with the Saturn 
 above it. 
 What matter to me if their star is a world? 
 
 Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. 
 
 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 In Rabbi ben Ezra Mr. Browning has crystallized his re- 
 ligious philosophy into a shape of abiding beauty. It has 
 been called, not rashly, the noblest of modern religious 
 poems. Alike in substance and in form it belongs to the 
 highest order of meditative poetry; and it has an almost 
 unique quality of grave beauty, of severe restraint, of earnest 
 and measured enthusiasm. This is one of those poems 
 which can never be profitably analyzed or commented on: 
 it must be read. What the Psalm of Life is to the people 
 who do not think, Rabbi ben Ezra might and should be to 
 those who do ; a light through the darkness — a lantern of 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 121 
 
 guidance and a beacon of hope — to the wanderers lost and 
 weary in the selva selvagyia. It is one of those poems that 
 mold character. 
 
 Grow old along with me! 
 The best is yet to be. 1 
 
 The last of life, for which the first was made: 
 Our times are in His hand 
 Who saith, "A whole I planned, 
 Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be 
 afraid!" 
 
 Not that, amassing flowers, 
 Youth sighed, " Which rose makes ours, 
 Which lily leave and then as best recall?" 
 Not that, admiring stars, 
 It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; 
 Mine be some figured flame which blends, trans- 
 cends them all!" 
 
 Not for such hopes and fears 
 
 Annulling youth's brief years, 
 
 Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! 
 
 Rather I prize the doubt 
 
 Low kinds exist without, 
 
 Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark. 
 
 Poor vaunt of life indeed, 
 
122 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; 
 Such feasting ended, then 
 As sure an end to men ; 
 
 Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw- 
 crammed beast? ! 
 
 Rejoice we are allied 
 To That which doth provide 
 And not partake, effect and not receive! 
 A spark disturbs our clod ; 
 Nearer we hold of God 2 
 
 Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must 
 believe. 
 
 Then, welcome each rebuff 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
 Be our joys three-parts pain! 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
 Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge 
 the throe! 
 
 For thence, — a paradox 
 
 Which comforts while it mocks, — 
 
 Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 123 
 
 What I aspired to be, 
 
 And was not, comforts me: l 
 
 A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' 
 
 the scale. 
 
 What is he but a brute 
 Whose flesh hath soul to suit, 
 Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? 
 To man, propose this test — 
 Thy body at its best, 
 
 How far can that project thy soul on its lone 
 way? 
 
 Yet gifts should prove their use : 
 I own the Past profuse 
 Of power each side, perfection every turn: 
 Eyes, ears took in their dole, 2 
 Brain treasured up the whole; 
 
 Should not the heart beat once " How good to live 
 and learn"? 
 
 Not once beat " Praise be Thine! 
 
 I see the whole design, 
 
 I, who saw Power, see now Love perfect too: 
 
 Perfect I call Thy plan: 
 
 Thanks that I was a man! 
 
124 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what Thou 
 shalt do!" 
 
 For pleasant is this flesh; 
 Our soul, in its rose-mesh 
 Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest : 
 Would we some prize might hold 
 To match those manifold 
 
 Possessions of the brute, — gain most, as we did 
 best! 
 
 Let us not always say 
 
 " Spite of this flesh to-day 
 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the 
 
 whole!" 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 Let us cry, " All good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh 
 
 helps soul!" 
 
 Therefore I summon age 
 
 To grant youth's heritage, 
 
 Life's struggle having so far reached its term : l 
 
 Thence shall I pass, approved 
 
 A man, for aye removed 
 
 From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 125 
 
 And I shall thereupon 
 
 Take rest, ere I be gone 
 
 Once more on my adventure brave and new: 
 
 Fearless and unperplexed, 
 
 When I wage battle next, 
 
 What weapons to select, what armor to indue. 
 
 Youth ended, I shall try 
 
 My gain or loss thereby; 
 
 Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: 
 
 And I shall weigh the same, 
 
 Give life its praise or blame : 
 
 Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. 
 
 For, note when evening shuts, 
 
 A certain moment cuts 
 
 The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: 
 
 A whisper from the west 
 
 Shoots — " Add this to the rest, 
 
 Take it and try its worth: here dies another day." 
 
 So, still within this life, 
 
 Though lifted o'er its strife, 
 
 Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 
 
 "This rage was right i' the main, 
 
 That acquiescence vain: 
 
126 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 The Future I may face now I have proved the 
 
 Past." 
 
 For more is not reserved 
 To man, with soul just nerved 
 To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: 
 Here, work enough to watch 
 The Master work, and catch 
 
 Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true 
 play. 
 
 As it was better, youth 
 Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
 Toward making, than repose on aught found made: 
 So, better, age, exempt 
 From strife, should know, than tempt 
 Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death, nor be 
 afraid ! 
 
 Enough now, if the Right 
 And Good and Infinite 
 
 Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, 
 With knowledge absolute, 
 Subject to no dispute 
 
 From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel 
 alone. 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 127 
 
 Be there, for once and all, 
 Severed great minds from small, 
 Announced to each his station in the Past! 
 Was I, the world arraigned, 
 Were they, my soul disdained, 
 
 Right? * Let age speak the truth and give us 
 peace at last! 
 
 Now, who shall arbitrate? 
 Ten men love what I hate, 
 Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; 
 Ten, who in ears and eyes 
 Match me: we all surmise, 
 
 They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul 
 believe? 
 
 Not on the vulgar mass 
 Called "work," must sentence pass, 
 Things done, that took the eye and had the price, 
 O'er which, from level stand, 
 The low world laid its hand, 
 
 Found straightway to its mind, could value in a 
 trice: 
 
 But all, the world's coarse thumb 
 And finger failed to plumb, 
 
128 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 So passed in making up the main account: 
 All instincts immature, 
 All purposes unsure, 
 
 That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
 amount : 
 
 Thoughts hardly to be packed 
 Into a narrow act, 
 
 Fancies that broke through language and escaped: 
 All I could never be, 
 All men ignored in me, 
 
 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
 shaped. 
 
 Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 
 That metaphor! 1 and feel 
 
 Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, — 
 Thou, to whom fools propound, 
 When the wine makes its round, 
 "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, 
 seize to-day!" 
 
 Fool! All that is, at all, 
 
 Lasts ever, past recall; 
 
 Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 
 
 What entered into thee, 
 
RABBI BEN EZRA 129 
 
 That was, is, and shall be: 
 
 Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay 
 endure. 
 
 He fixed thee mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance, 
 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 
 To give thy soul its bent, 
 
 Try thee, and turn thee forth sufficiently impressed. 
 
 What though the earlier grooves 
 
 Which ran the laughing loves 
 
 Around thy base, no longer pause and press? 
 
 What though, about thy rim, 
 
 Skull-things in order grim 
 
 Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? 
 
 Look not thou down but up ! 
 To uses of a cup, 
 
 The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, 
 The new wine's foaming flow, 
 The Master's lips aglow! 
 
 Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou 
 with earth's wheel? 
 
130 MEMORABILIA 
 
 But I need, now as then, 
 
 Thee, God, who moldest men! 
 
 And since, not even while the whirl was worst, 
 
 Did I, — to the wheel of life 
 
 With shapes and colors rife, 
 
 Bound dizzily, — mistake my end, to slakeThy thirst: 
 
 So, take and use Thy work, 
 
 Amend what flaws may lurk, 
 
 What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the 
 
 aim ! 
 My times be in Thy hand ! 
 Perfect the cup as planned ! 
 Let age approve of youth, and death complete the 
 
 same ! 
 
 MEMORABILIA 
 
 This poem, says Mrs. Orr, "is a picturesque comment on 
 the power of personal association to give importance to any 
 incident, however trifling; and tends to show that, from this 
 point of view, no incident is more trifling than another." 
 The enthusiastic lover of Shelley has so idealized the poet 
 that he can hardly believe him to be a man that can be 
 spoken to like other men. For him a falling eagle-feather, 
 with its sudden suggestion of the ethereal poet, is enough 
 to drive away all other memories of the moor. 
 
 Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 
 And did he stop and speak to you, 
 
AST VOGLER 131 
 
 And did you speak to him again? 
 How strange it seems, and new! 
 
 But you were living before that, 
 
 And also you are living after; 
 And the memory I started at — 
 
 My starting moves your laughter! 
 
 I crossed a moor, with a name of its own 
 And a certain use in the world, no doubt, 
 
 Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 
 'Mid the blank miles round about : 
 
 For there I picked up on the heather 
 
 And there I put inside my breast 
 A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! 
 
 Well, I forget the rest. 
 
 ABT VOGLER 
 
 (after he has been extemporizing upon the 
 musical instrument of his invention) 
 
 Abt Vogler 1 is an utterance on music which exceeds every 
 attempt that has ever been made in verse to set forth the 
 secret of the most sacred and illusive of the arts. Only the 
 wonderful lines in the Merchant of Venice come anywhere 
 near it. It is the richest, deepest, fullest poem on music in 
 the language. The wonder and beauty of it grow on one, 
 as the wonder and beauty of a sky, of the sea, of a landscape, 
 
132 ABT VOGLER 
 
 beautiful indeed and wonderful from the first, become momen- 
 tarily more evident, intense and absorbing. Life, religion, 
 and music — the Ganzen, Guten, Schonen of existence — are 
 combined in threefold unity, apprehended and interpreted 
 in their essential spirit. 
 
 Would that the structure brave, the manifold 
 music I build, 
 Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their 
 work, 
 Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as 
 when Solomon willed ' 
 Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons 
 that lurk, 
 Man, brute, reptile, fly, — alien of end and of aim, 
 Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell- 
 deep removed, — 
 Should rush into sight at once as he named the in- 
 effable Name, 
 And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the 
 princess he loved ! 
 
 Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful build- 
 ing of mine, 
 This which my keys in a crowd pressed and im- 
 portuned to raise! 
 
 Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart 
 now and now combine, 
 
ABT VOGLER 133 
 
 Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their mas- 
 ter his praise! 
 And one would bury his brow with a blind-plunge 
 down to hell, 
 
 Burrow a while and build, broad on the roots of 
 things, 
 Then up again swim into sight, having based me 
 my palace well, 
 
 Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether 
 springs. 
 
 And another would mount and march, like the 
 excellent minion he was, 
 Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with 
 many a crest, 
 Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent 
 as glass, 
 Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the 
 rest : 
 For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, 
 When a great illumination surprises a festal 
 night — 
 Outlining round and round Rome's dome from 
 space to spire) 
 Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of 
 my soul was in sight. 
 
134 ABT VOGLER 
 
 In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, 
 to match man's birth, 
 Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; 
 And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort 
 to reach the earth, 
 As the earth had done her best, in my passion, 
 to scale the sky: 
 Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and 
 dwelt with mine, 
 Not a point nor peak but found, but fixed its 
 wandering star; 
 Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale 
 nor pine, 
 For earth had attained to heaven, there was no 
 more near nor far. 
 
 Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the 
 
 glare and glow, 
 Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the 
 
 Protoplast, 1 
 Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind 
 
 should blow, 
 Lured to now begin and live, in a house to their 
 
 liking at last; 
 Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed 
 
 through the body and gone, 
 
ABT VOGLER 135 
 
 But were back once more to breathe in an old 
 
 world worth their new: 
 What never had been, was now; what was, as it 
 
 shall be anon; 
 And what is, — shall I say, matched both? for I 
 
 was made perfect too. 1 
 
 All through my keys that gave their sounds to a 
 wish of my soul, 
 All through my soul that praised as its wish 
 flowed visibly forth, 
 All through music and me! For think, had I 
 painted the whole, 
 Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process 
 so wonder-worth. 
 Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect 
 proceeds from cause, 
 Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the 
 tale is told; 
 It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to 
 laws, 
 Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list 
 enrolled : — 
 
 But here is the finger of God, 2 a flash of the will 
 that can, 
 
136 ABT VOGLER 
 
 Existent behind all laws: that made them, and, 
 lo, they are! 
 And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 
 to man, 
 That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
 sound, but a star. 
 Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is 
 naught ; 
 It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and 
 all is said : 
 Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my 
 thought, 
 And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider 
 and bow the head ! 
 
 Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I 
 reared ; 
 Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that 
 come too slow; 
 For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that 
 he feared, 
 That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing 
 was to go. 
 Never to be again! But many more of the kind 
 As good, nay, better perchance: is this your com- 
 fort to me? 
 
ABT VOGLER 137 
 
 To me, who must be saved because I cling with my 
 mind 
 To the same, same self, same love, same God : ay, 
 what was, shall be. 
 
 Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable 
 Name? 
 Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made 
 with hands! 
 What, have fear of change from thee who art ever 
 the same? 
 Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy 
 power expands? 
 There shall never be one lost good! What was, 
 shall live as before; 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying 
 sound ; 
 What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so 
 much good more; 
 On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a 
 perfect round. 
 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, 
 shall exist; 
 Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 
 nor power 
 
138 ABT VOGLER 
 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 
 the melodist, 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 
 too hard, 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in 
 the sky, 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
 Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it 
 by-and-by. 
 
 And what is our failure here but a triumph's evi- 
 dence 
 For the fullness of the days? Have we withered 
 or agonized? 
 W T hy else was the pause prolonged but that sing- 
 ing might issue thence? 
 Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony 
 should be prized? 
 Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 
 Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal 
 and woe: 
 But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the 
 ear; 
 The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musi- 
 cians know. 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 139 
 
 Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: 
 I will be patient and proud, and soberly ac- 
 quiesce. 
 Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord 
 again, 
 Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor, — 
 
 yes, 
 
 And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien 
 ground, 
 Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into 
 the deep; 
 Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my rest- 
 ing-place is found, 
 The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to 
 sleep. 
 
 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 [called "the faultless painter"] 
 
 Andrea del Sarto is a "translation into song" of the picture 
 called "Andrea del Sarto and his Wife," now in the Pitti 
 Palace, Florence. It is a perfect re-creation of the Andrea 
 described by Vasari, whose story is one of the saddest in the 
 records of art. The story is well known; how the painter, 
 who at one time seemed as if he might have competed with 
 Raphael, was ruined, as artist and as man, by his beautiful 
 soulless wife, the fatal Lucrezia del Fede; and how, led and 
 lured by her, he outraged his conscience, lowered his ideal, 
 and, losing all heart and hope, sank into the cold correctness, 
 
140 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 the unerring fluency, the uniform, melancholy repetition 
 of a single type — his wife's — which distinguish his later 
 works. Mr. Browning has taken his facts from Vasari, and 
 he has taken them quite literally. But what a change, 
 what a transformation and transfiguration! No more abso- 
 lutely creative work has been done in our days; few more 
 beautiful and pathetic poems written. The mood of sad, 
 wistful, hopeless mournfulness of resignation which the poem 
 expresses is a somewhat rare one with Mr. Browning's 
 vivid and vivacious genius. It is an autumn twilight piece. 
 The very movement of the lines, their very tone and touch, 
 contribute to the effect. A single clear impression is made 
 to result from an infinity of the minutest and scarcely appre- 
 ciable touches: how fine these touches are, how clear the 
 impression, can only be hinted at in words, can be realized 
 only by a loving and scrupulous study. 
 
 But do not let us quarrel any more, 
 No, my Lucrezia ! bear with me for once : 
 Sit down and all shall happen as you wish. 
 You turn your face, but does it bring your heart? 
 I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear, 
 Treat his own subject after his own way, 
 Fix his own time, accept too his own price, 
 And shut the money into this small hand 
 When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly? 
 Oh, I'll content him, — but to-morrow, Love! 
 I often am much wearier than you think, 
 This evening more than usual: and it seems 
 As if — forgive now — should you let me sit 
 Here by the window, with your hand in mine, 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 141 
 
 And look a half hour forth on Fiesole, 1 
 
 Both of one mind, as married people use, 2 
 
 Quietly, quietly the evening through, 
 
 I might get up to-morrow to my work 
 
 Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try. 
 
 To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this ! 
 
 Your soft hand is a woman of itself, 
 
 And mine, the man's bared breast she curls inside. 
 
 Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve 
 
 For each of the five pictures we require : 
 
 It saves a model. So ! keep looking so — 
 
 My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds! 
 
 — How could you ever prick those perfect ears, 
 Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet — 
 
 My face, my moon, my everybody's moon, 
 Which everybody looks on and calls his, 
 And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn, 
 While she looks — no one's : very dear, no less. 
 You smile? why there's my picture ready made, 
 There's what we painters call our harmony! 
 A common grayness silvers every thing, — 
 All in a twilight, you and I alike 
 
 — You, at the point of your first pride in me 
 (That's gone, you know) — but I, at every point; 
 My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down 
 To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole. 
 
142 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top ; 
 
 That length of convent-wall across the way 
 
 Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; 
 
 The last monk leaves the garden ; days decrease, 
 
 And autumn grows, autumn in every thing. 
 
 Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape, 
 
 As if I saw alike my work and self 
 
 And all that I was born to be and do, 
 
 A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand. 
 
 How strange now looks the life he makes us lead; 
 
 So free we seem, so fettered fast we are! 
 
 I feel he laid the fetter : let it lie ! 
 
 This chamber, for example — turn your head — 
 
 All that's behind us ! You don't understand 
 
 Nor care to understand about my art, 
 
 But you can hear at least when people speak : 
 
 And that cartoon, the second from the door 
 
 — It is the thing, Love! so such things should be: 
 
 Behold Madonna! — I am bold to say. 
 
 I can do with my pencil what I know, 
 
 What I see, what at bottom of my heart 
 
 I wish for, if I ever wish so deep — 
 
 Do easily, too — when I say, perfectly. 
 
 I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge, 
 
 Who listened to the Legate's talk last week; 
 
 And just as much they used to say in France. 1 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 143 
 
 At any rate 'tis easy, all of it! 
 
 No sketches first, no studies, that's long past: 
 
 I do what many dream of, all their lives, 
 
 — Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, 
 
 And fail in doing. I could count twenty such 
 
 On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, 
 
 Who strive — you don't know how the others 
 
 strive 
 To paint a little thing like that you smeared 
 Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, — 
 Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, 
 (I know his name, no matter) — so much less! 
 Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. 
 There burns a truer light of Gocl in them, 
 In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up 
 
 brain, 
 Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt 
 This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand 1 of 
 
 mine. 
 Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I 
 
 know, 
 Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, 
 Enter and take their place there sure enough, 
 Though they come back and cannot tell the world. 
 My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here. 
 The sudden blood of these men ! at a word — 
 
144 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too. 
 I, painting from myself and to myself, 
 Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame 
 Or their praise either. Somebody remarks 
 Morello's ! outline there is wrongly traced, 
 His hue mistaken; what of that? or else, 
 Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that? 
 Speak as they please, what does the mountain 
 
 care? 2 
 Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 3 
 Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray, 
 Placid and perfect with my art : the worse ! 
 I know both what I want and what might gain; 
 And yet how profitless to know, to sigh 
 " Had I been two, another and myself, 
 Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No 
 
 doubt. 
 Yonder's.a work now, of that famous youth 
 The Urbinate 4 who died five years ago. 
 (Tis copied, George Vasari 5 sent it me.) 
 Well, I can fancy how he did it all, 
 Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see, 
 Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him, 
 Above and through his art — for it gives way : 
 That arm is wrongly put — and there again — 
 A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines, 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 145 
 
 Its body, so to speak : its soul is right, 
 
 He means right — that, a child may understand. 
 
 Still, what an arm! and I could alter it: 
 
 But all the play, the insight and the stretch — 
 
 Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out? 
 
 Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul, 
 
 We might have risen to Rafael, I and you. 
 
 Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think — 
 
 More than I merit, yes, by many times. 
 
 But had you — oh, with the same perfect brow, 
 
 And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth, 
 
 And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird 
 
 The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare — 
 
 Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind! 
 
 Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged 
 
 "God and the glory! never care for gain. 
 
 The present by the future, 1 what is that? 
 
 Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo! 2 
 
 Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!" 
 
 I might have done it for you. So it seems : 
 
 Perhaps not. All is as God overrules. 
 
 Beside, incentives come from the soul's self; 
 
 The rest avail not. Why do I need you? 
 
 What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo? 
 
 In this world, who can do a thing, will not; 
 
 And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: 
 
146 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the 
 
 power — 
 And thus we half-men struggle. At the end, 
 God, I conclude, compensates, punishes. 
 Tis safer for me, if the award be strict, 
 That I am something underrated here, 
 Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth. 
 I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, 
 For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. 1 
 The best is when they pass and look aside; 
 But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all. 
 Well may they speak! That Francis, that first 
 
 time, 
 And that long festal year at Fontainebleau ! 
 I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, 
 Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, 
 In that humane great monarch's golden look, — 
 One finger in his beard or twisted curl 
 Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, 
 One arm about my shoulder, round my neck, 
 The jingle of his gold chain in my ear, 
 I painting proudly with his breath on me, 
 All his court round him, seeing with his eyes, 
 Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls 
 Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts, — 
 And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond, 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 147 
 
 This in the background, waiting on my work, 
 To crown the issue with a last reward! 
 A good time, was it not, my kingly days? 
 And had you not grown restless . . . but I know — 
 'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said; 
 Too live the life grew, golden and not gray: 
 And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt 
 Out of the grange whose four walls make this 
 
 world. 
 How could it end in any other way? 
 You called me, and I came home to your heart. 
 The triumph was, to have ended there; then, if 
 
 I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost? x 
 
 Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold, 
 You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine! 
 
 II Rafael did this, Andrea painted that; 
 The Roman's is the better when you pray, 
 But still the other's Virgin was his wife " 2 — 
 Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge 
 Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows 
 My better fortune, I resolve to think. 
 
 For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives, 
 
 Said one day Agnolo, his very self, 
 
 To Rafael ... I have known it all these years . . . 
 
 (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts 
 
 Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, 
 
148 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 Too lifted up in heart because of it) 
 
 " Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub 
 
 Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 
 
 Who, were he set to plan and execute 
 
 As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, 
 
 Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours !" 
 
 To Rafael's! — And indeed the arm is wrong. 
 
 I hardly dare . . . yet, only you to see, 
 
 Give the chalk here — quick, thus the line should 
 
 go! 
 Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out! 
 Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth, 
 (What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo? 
 Do you forget already words like those?) 
 If really there was such a chance so lost, — 
 Is, whether you're — not grateful — but more pleased. 
 Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed! 
 This hour has been an hour! Another smile? 
 If you would sit thus by me every night 
 I should work better, do you comprehend? 
 I mean that I should earn more, give you more. 
 See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star; 
 Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall, 
 The cue-owls speak the name we call them by. 
 Come from the window, Love, — come in, at last, 
 Inside the melancholy little house 
 
ANDREA DEL SARTO 149 
 
 We built to be so gay with. God is just. 
 
 King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights 
 
 When I look up from painting, eyes tired out, 
 
 The walls become illumined, brick from brick 
 
 Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold, 
 
 That gold of his I did cement them with! 
 
 Let us but love each other. Must you go? 
 
 That cousin here again? he waits outside? 
 
 Must see you — you, and not with me? Those 
 
 loans? • 
 
 More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that? 
 Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend? 
 While hand and eye and something of a heart 
 Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth? 
 I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit 
 The gray remainder of the evening out, 
 Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly 
 How I could paint, were I but back in France, 
 One picture, just one more — the Virgin's face, 
 Not yours this time! I want you at my side 
 To hear them — that is, Michel Agnolo — 
 Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. 
 Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. 
 I take the subjects for his corridor, 
 Finish the portrait out of hand — there, there, 
 And throw him in another thing or two 
 
150 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 If he demurs; the whole should prove enough 
 
 To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside, 
 
 What's better and what's all I care about, 
 
 Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! 
 
 Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, 
 
 The cousin! what does he to please you more? 
 
 I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
 I regret little, I would change still less. 
 Since there my .past life lies, why alter it? 
 The very wrong to Francis ! — it is true 
 I took his coin, was tempted and complied, 
 And built this house and sinned, and all is said. 
 My father and my mother died of want. 
 Well, had I riches of my own? you see 
 How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot. 
 They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they 
 
 died: 
 And I have labored somewhat in my time 
 And not been paid profusely. Some good son 
 Paint my two hundred pictures — let him try ! 
 No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes, 
 You love me quite enough, it seems to-night. 
 This must suffice me here. What would one 
 
 have? 
 In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance — 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 151 
 
 Four great walls in the New Jerusalem, 
 Meted on each side by the angel's reed, 
 For Leonard, 1 Rafael, Agnolo, and me 
 To cover — the three first without a wife, 
 While I have mine ! So — still they overcome 
 Because there's still Lucrezia, — as I choose. 
 
 Again the cousin's whistle! Go, my Love. 
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 How well I know what I mean to do 
 
 When the long, dark autumn evenings come; 
 
 And where, my soul, is 2 thy pleasant hue? 
 With the music of all thy voices, dumb 
 
 In life's November too! 
 
 I shall be found by the fire, suppose, 
 
 O'er a great wise book, as beseemeth age; 
 
 While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, 
 And I turn the page, and I turn the page, 
 
 Not verse now, only prose! 
 
 Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, 
 " There he is at it, deep in Greek: 
 
152 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 Now then, or never, out we slip 
 
 To cut from the hazels by the creek 
 A mainmast for our ship ! " 
 
 I shall be at it indeed, my friends! 
 
 Greek puts already on either side 
 Such a branch-work forth as soon extends 
 
 To a vista opening far and wide, 
 And I pass out where it ends. 
 
 The outside frame, like your hazel-trees — 
 But the inside-archway widens fast, 
 
 And a rarer sort succeeds to these, 
 And we slope to Italy at last 
 
 And youth, by green degrees. 
 
 I follow wherever I am led, 
 
 Knowing so well the leader's hand: 
 
 Oh woman-country, wooed not wed, 
 
 Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, 
 
 Laid to their hearts instead! 
 
 Look at the ruined chapel again 
 Half-way up in the Alpine gorge ! 
 
 Is that a tower, I point you plain, 
 Or is it a mill, or an iron forge 
 
 Breaks solitude in vain? 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 153 
 
 A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; 
 
 The woods are round us, heaped and dim; 
 From slab to slab how it slips and springs, 
 
 The thread of water single and slim, 
 Through the ravage some torrent brings! 
 
 Does it feed the little lake below? 
 
 That speck of white just on its marge 
 Is Pella; see, in the evening glow, 
 
 How sharp the silver spear-heads charge 
 When Alp meets heaven in snow ! 
 
 On our other side is the straight-up rock; 
 
 And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it 
 By bowlder-stones, where lichens mock 
 
 The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit 
 Their teeth to the polished block. 
 
 Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, 
 
 And thorny balls, each three in one, 
 The chestnuts throw on our path in showers! 
 
 For the drop of the woodlands fruit's begun, 
 These early November hours, 
 
 That crimson the creeper's leaf across 
 Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, 
 
154 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, 
 
 And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped 
 Elf -needled mat of moss, 
 
 By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged 
 Last evening — nay, in to-day's first dew 
 
 Yon sudden coral nipple bulged, 
 
 Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew 
 
 Of toad-stools peep indulged. 
 
 And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge 
 That takes the turn to a range beyond, 
 
 Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge, 
 Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond 
 
 Danced over by the midge. 
 
 The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, 
 
 Blackish-gray and mostly wet; 
 Cut hemp-stalks steep * in the narrow dike. 
 
 See here again, how the lichens fret 2 
 And the roots of the ivy strike ! 
 
 Poor little place, where its one priest comes 
 
 On a festa-day, if he comes at all, 
 To the dozen folk from their scattered homes, 
 
 Gathered within that precinct small 
 By the dozen ways one roams — 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 155 
 
 To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts, 
 Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, 
 
 Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, 
 Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread 
 
 Their gear on the rock's bare juts. 
 
 It has some pretension, too, this front, 
 With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise 
 
 Set over the porch, Art's early wont : 
 'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise, 
 
 But has borne the weather's brunt — 
 
 Not from the fault of the builder, though, 
 
 For a pent-house properly projects 
 Where three carved beams make a certain show, 
 
 Dating — good thought of our architect's — 
 'Five, six, nine, he lets you know. 
 
 And all day long a bird sings there, 
 
 And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times; 
 The place is silent and aware; 1 
 
 It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes, 
 But that is its own affair. 
 
 My perfect wife, my Leonor, 2 
 
 Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too, 
 
156 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 Whom else could I dare look backward for, 
 With whom beside should I dare pursue 
 The path gray heads abhor? 
 
 For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; 
 
 Youth, flowery all the way, there stops — 
 Not they; age threatens and they contemn, 
 
 Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops, 
 One inch from our life's safe hem! 
 
 With me, youth led ... I will speak now, 
 
 No longer watch you as you sit 
 Reading by firelight, that great brow 
 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it, 
 Mutely, my heart knows how — 
 
 When, if I think but deep enough, 
 
 You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; 
 
 And you, too, find without rebuff 
 
 Response your soul seeks many a time, 
 
 Piercing its fine flesh-stuff. 
 
 My own, confirm me! If I tread 
 
 This path back, is it not in pride 
 To think how little I dreamed it led 
 
 To an age so blest that, by its side, 
 Youth seems the waste instead? 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 157 
 
 My own, see where the years conduct! 
 
 At first, 'twas something our two souls 
 Should mix as mists do; each is sucked 
 
 In each now; on, the new stream rolls, 
 Whatever rocks obstruct. 
 
 Think, when our one soul understands 
 
 The great Word which makes all things new, 
 
 When earth breaks up and heaven expands, 
 How will the change strike me and you 
 
 In the house not made with hands? 
 
 Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine, 
 
 Your heart anticipate my heart, 
 You must be just before, in fine, 
 
 See and make me see, for your part, 
 New depths of the divine! 
 
 But who could have expected this 
 
 When we two drew together first 
 Just for the obvious human bliss, 
 
 To satisfy life's daily thirst 
 With a thing men seldom miss? 
 
 Come back with me to the first of all, 
 Let us lean and love it over again, 
 
158 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 Let us now forget and now recall, 
 
 Break the rosary in a pearly rain, 
 And gather what we let fall ! 
 
 What did I say? 1 — that a small bird sings 
 All day long, save when a brown pair 
 
 Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings 
 Strained to a bell: 'gainst noonday glare 
 
 You count the streaks and rings. 
 
 But at afternoon or almost eve 
 Tis better; then the silence grows 
 
 To that degree, you half believe 
 It must get rid of what it knows, 
 
 Its bosom does so heave. 
 
 Hither we walked then, side by side, 
 
 Arm in arm and cheek to cheek, 
 And still I questioned or replied, 
 
 While my heart, convulsed to really speak, 
 Lay choking in its pride. 
 
 Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, 
 And pity and praise the chapel sweet, 
 
 And care about the fresco's loss, 
 
 And wish for our souls a like retreat, 
 
 And wonder at the moss. 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 159 
 
 Stoop and kneel on the settle under, 
 
 Look through the window's grated square: 
 
 Nothing to see ! For fear of plunder, 
 The cross is down and the altar bare, 
 
 As if thieves don't fear thunder. 
 
 We stoop and look in through the grate, 
 
 See the little porch and rustic door, 
 Read duly the dead builder's date; 
 
 Then cross the bridge that we crossed before, 
 Take the path again — but wait ! 
 
 Oh moment one and infinite! 
 
 The water slips o'er stock and stone; 
 The West is tender, hardly bright : 
 
 How gray at once is the evening grown — 
 One star, its chrysolite ! 1 
 
 We two stood there with never a third, 
 But each by each, as each knew well: 
 
 The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, 
 The lights and the shades made up a spell 
 
 Till the trouble grew and stirred. 
 
 Oh, the little more, and how much it is! 
 And the little less, and what worlds away! 
 
160 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, 
 Or a breath suspend the blood's best play, 
 And life be a proof of this ! 
 
 Had she willed it, still had stood the screen 
 So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her: 
 
 I could fix her face with a guard between, 
 And find her soul as when friends confer, 
 
 Friends — lovers that might have been. 
 
 For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, 
 
 Wanting to sleep now over its best. 
 Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, 
 
 But bring to the last leaf no such test ! 
 "Hold the last fast!" runs the rhyme. 
 
 For a chance to make your little much, 
 
 To gain a lover and lose a friend, 
 Venture the tree and a myriad such, 
 
 When nothing you mar but the year can mend 
 But a last leaf — fear to touch! 
 
 Yet should it unfasten itself and fall 
 
 Eddying down till it find your face 
 At some slight wind — best chance of all! 
 
 Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place 
 You trembled to forestall! 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 161 
 
 Worth how well, those dark gray eyes, 
 That hair so dark and dear, how worth 
 
 That a man should strive and agonize, 
 And taste a veriest hell on earth 
 
 For the hope of such a prize! 
 
 You might have turned and tried a man, 
 
 Set him a space to weary and wear, 
 And prove which suited more your plan, 
 
 His best of hope or his worst despair, 
 Yet end as he began. 
 
 But you spared me this, like the heart you are, 
 And filled my empty heart at a word. 
 
 If two lives join, there is oft a scar, 
 
 They are one and one, with a shadowy third; 
 
 One near one is too far. 
 
 A moment after, and hands unseen 
 
 Were hanging the night around us fast; 
 
 But we knew that a bar was broken between 
 Life and life : we were mixed at last 
 
 In spite of the mortal screen. 
 
 The forests had done it; there they stood; 
 We caught for a moment the powers at play: 
 
162 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 They had mingled us so, for once and good, 
 
 Their work was done — we might go or stay, 
 They relapsed to their ancient mood. 
 
 How the world is made for each of us! 
 
 How all we perceive and know in it 
 Tends to some moment's product thus, 
 
 When a soul declares itself — to wit, 
 By its fruit, the thing it does! l 
 
 Be hate that fruit, or love that fruit, 
 It forwards the general deed of man, 
 
 And each of the Many helps to recruit 
 The life of the race by a general plan ; 
 
 Each living his own, to boot. 
 
 I am named and known by that moment's feat; 
 
 There took my station and degree; 
 So grew my own small life complete, 
 
 As Nature obtained her best of me — 
 One born to love you, sweet! 
 
 And to watch you sink by the fireside now 
 
 Back again, as you mutely sit 
 Musing by firelight, that great brow 
 
 And the spirit-small hand propping it, 
 Yonder, my heart knows how! 
 
BY THE FIRESIDE 163 
 
 So, earth has gained by one man the more, 
 And the gain of earth must be heaven 's gain 
 too; 
 
 And the whole is well worth thinking o'er 
 When autumn comes: which I mean to do 
 
 One day, as I said before. 
 
NOTES 
 
 CAVALIER TUNES 
 
 15, 1. These three songs were included in the Dramatic 
 Lyrics published in 1842 as the third number of Bells and 
 Pomegranates. The third was originally entitled My Wife 
 Gertrude. They have been set to music by Dr. Villiers 
 Stanford. 
 
 " The speaker is a typical cavalier of the days of Charles 
 I., the time is the height of the Civil War with the issue 
 still in the balance, the place a banquet hall echoing the 
 clash of glasses and shouts of cavaliers." 
 
 2. Pym: John Pym, John Hampden, Sir Arthur Hazel- 
 rig, William Fiennes, and Sir Harry Vane " the Younger " 
 were English statesmen. Prince Rupert was a Bavarian 
 soldier, a general in the army of his uncle, Charles I. 
 
 3. Carles (Dial. Eng.): Churls, rustics — in contempt. 
 
 4. Paries (Fr. parler, speak): Parleys. 
 
 16, 1. Rouse (Sw. rusa, rush): "An awakening to or a 
 signal for action." 
 
 17, 1. Noll: Oliver Cromwell, England's patriot general 
 and statesman, after Charles I's execution Lord Protector 
 of England. 
 
 18, 1. Flouts: (ME. fluyten, jeer, play the flute): Scoff, 
 mock. 
 
 2. Fay: An archaic form of faith. 
 
 " HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM 
 GHENT TO AIX" 
 
 21, 1. Pique: The pommel of the saddle. 
 2. Lokeren: This town and the others mentioned in the 
 165 
 
166 NOTES 
 
 poem will be found upon any good map, in a general line 
 from Ghent to Aix-la-Chapelle. The whole distance is about 
 ninety miles. 
 
 3. Mecheln: The Flemish form of the more common 
 French Malines. 
 
 23, 1. Dalhem: Probably Dalheim, a town about midway 
 between Tongres and Aix. 
 
 2. Save Aix from her fate: The reader is to imagine that 
 Aix has resolved upon self-destruction, rather than yield to 
 the Spaniards. 
 
 HOME THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA 
 
 28, 1. This poem is an expression of patriotic feeling 
 awakened in the poet by passing the scenes of Nelson's 
 great naval exploits. 
 
 INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP 
 
 28, 2. Ratisbon or Regensburg: A town on the Danube, 65 
 miles north of Munich, not far from the river Isar. The 
 " incident " here described was an actual occurrence. 
 
 29, 1. My army-leader Lannes: One of Napoleon's most 
 distinguished marshals. He commanded in the battles of 
 Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and others. For 
 winning the battle of Montebello he was made Duke of 
 Montebello. 
 
 2. Vans: From the French van, a wing. The wings of the 
 imperial eagle upon the banner flap in the wind. 
 
 THE BOY AND THE ANGEL 
 
 32,1. Tiring-room: "The room where the "holy vest- 
 ments" are kept, with which the priests and pope are dight," 
 i.e., decked or attired. Shakespeare used the noun tire for 
 attire. 
 
NOTES 167 
 
 ONE WORD MORE 
 
 35, 1. Louvre: The great museum in Paris. 
 
 2. In circle: This last picture is circular in form. 
 
 3. Guido Reni (1575-1642): An Italian painter. 
 
 4. Beatrice: Pronounce in four syllables. 
 37, 1. Bice: Pronounce in two syllables. 
 2. Read Exodus xvii. 
 
 39, 1. Sinai-forehead: Read Exodus xxiv, xxxii, and 
 xxxiv. 
 
 2. Jethro's daughter: Read Exodus ii and iii. 
 
 40, 1. Karshish, etc.: These and the names two lines below 
 are characters in his poems. 
 
 41, 1. Fiesole: A town on a hill above Florence. 
 2. Samminiato: In Florence. 
 
 42, 1. Mythos: Of the. mortal whom Diana loved. 
 
 2. Zoroaster: Founder of the ancient Persian religion. 
 
 3. Galileo (1564-1642): An Italian astronomer. 
 
 4. Aaron, Nadab, Abihu: See Exodus vi and xxviii. 
 
 HERVE RIEL 
 
 44, 1. It is noticeable that of Browning's two grand bal- 
 lads — Herve Riel and How They Brought the Good News 
 from Ghent to Aix — neither has an English inspiration. Herve 
 Riel records the heroism of a Breton sailor who guided the 
 French squadron retreating from La Hogue, through the 
 shallows of the river Ranee, to a safe harborage. Brown- 
 ing follows history, except in one point which he overlooked 
 — that Herve Riel claimed holiday for life, instead of for 
 one day. 
 
 The battle of La Hogue was fought May 19, 1692., in the 
 war begun by Louis XIV of France to secure his succession 
 to the Palatinate. Other powers formed a " Grand Alli- 
 ance " against him, and at La Hogue, between the penin- 
 sula of La Manche and the Isle of Wight, the French fleet 
 was defeated by the English and Dutch fleet, commanded 
 
168 NOTES 
 
 by Admiral Russell. This victory transferred naval suprem- 
 acy from France to England and Holland. Some of the 
 French ships which retreated to Cherbourg were taken; how 
 others escaped Browning here tells us. 
 
 This poem was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine, 
 March, 1871. The hundred pounds which Browning re- 
 ceived for it was given to a fund for the relief of Paris, then 
 suffering from the Franco-German war. 
 
 2. St. Malo, on the river Ranee, and La Hogue are on 
 the north coast of Normandy. 
 
 3. Damfreville: The commander of the largest French ship. 
 
 45, 1. Twelve and eighty: A literal translation of the French 
 quatre-vingt-douze. 
 
 46, 1. Plymouth: One of the chief British naval stations. 
 
 2. Tourville: The French admiral. 
 
 3. Croisickese: An inhabitant of Le Croisic. Le Croisic, 
 the home of Herve Riel, is a small fishing village on the south 
 coast of Brittany. 
 
 4. Malouins: People of St. Malo. 
 
 47, 1. Greve: The sands around Mont St. Michel. Dis- 
 embogues (Sp. disemboca): Empties. 
 
 2. Solidor: A fortified place on the French mainland. 
 
 49, 1. The bay: Of St. Michel. 
 
 2. Rampired: An archaic form of " ramparted "; fortified. 
 
 51, 1. Wrack (D. wrak, wrack): Ruin, destruction. 
 
 2. Bore the bell: Won the victory. 
 
 3. The heroes . . . Louvre: The heroes whose pictures 
 are in the Louvre, the great art gallery of Paris. 
 
 PHEIDIPPIDES 
 
 52, 1. This poem was published in Dramatic Idyls in 1879. 
 " The story stands out with something of the joyful pride 
 of a Greek statue among its Gothic associates." 
 
 In 490 B.C. the Persians, having razed Eretria, invaded 
 Attica, and camped on the plain of Marathon. The Athenian 
 army assembled and its generals sent a trained runner, 
 
NOTES 169 
 
 Philippides, or Pheidippides, to ask Lacedaemonian aid. 
 He traversed the one hundred and forty miles between 
 Athens and Sparta in forty-eight hours, and found the 
 Spartans, who were celebrating their great national festival 
 of the Carneia, backward from superstition or jealousy in 
 joining their forces with the Athenians. 
 
 " And as to Pan, they say that Philippides (who was sent 
 as a messenger to Lacedaemon when the Persians landed) 
 reported that the Lacedaemonians were deferring their 
 march ; for it was their custom not to go out on a campaign 
 till the moon was at its full. But he said that he had met 
 with Pan near the Parthenian forest, and he had said that 
 he was friendly to the Athenians, and would come out and 
 help them at Marathon. Pan has been honored therefore 
 for this message." — Pausanias in Description of Greece. 
 
 For full account of the battle of Marathon, consult Creasy's 
 Fifteen Decisive Battles. There seems no historic founda- 
 tion for the closing incident related by Browning. 
 
 This motto is the Greek: " Rejoice, we conquer." " Re- 
 joice " was the usual Greek salutation, born of Marathon 
 day. 
 
 2. Daemons (Gr. daimori): Spirits. 
 
 3. Zeus: The supreme Greek god. Her of the aegis and 
 spear: Pallas-Athene, the guardian goddess of Athens, the 
 only deity whose authority was equal to that of Zeus. This 
 eegis was a wonderful shield given to her by her father Zeus. 
 
 4. Ye of the bow and the buskin: Artemis and Phoebus- 
 Apollo, whose symbols these were. 
 
 5. Pan: The Greek god of the woods, always represented 
 as having the legs of a goat. 
 
 6. Archons (Gr. archo, rule): The chief magistrates of 
 Athens after the cessation of kingly rule. Tettix (Gr.): 
 A grasshopper. " The Athenians sometimes wore golden 
 grasshoppers in their hair as badges of honor," because they 
 thought those insects sprang from the ground, and they 
 claimed for their ancestors similar origin. 
 
170 NOTES 
 
 53, 1. Water and earth: In token of submission. 
 2. Razed: Destroyed utterly. 
 
 54, 1. Olumpos: A lofty mountain in Thessaly, whose 
 cloudy summit was believed to be the home of the gods. 
 
 55, 1. Filleted: Animals about to be sacrificed to the gods 
 were adorned with garlands. Every sacrifice was accom- 
 panied by a libation, wine poured on the ground in honor 
 of the deity. Fulsome (ME. fulsum, ful, iu\\+sum, some). 
 Here used with its early meaning of full, rich, not its later 
 acquired meaning of over-rich, hence disgusting. 
 
 2. Oak and olive and bay: Zeus is frequently depicted 
 with his head garlanded with oak leaves. The olive tree, 
 symbol of peace and plenty, was sacred to Athene, as was 
 the bay or laurel to Apollo. 
 
 56, 1. Parnes: These mountains were north of Athens, 
 outside of Pheidippides' route. 
 
 2. Fosse (Lat. fossa): A ditch. 
 
 57, 1. Ivy: The ivy was consecrated to Pan. 
 
 2. Wanton: Hanging loose. Cf. Paradise Lost, IV, 366. 
 
 58, 1. Greaved-thigh: Cf. note 52, 5. Greaves were armor 
 worn to protect the legs from knee to ankle. 
 
 2. Fennel: (Gr. marathon): A common herb. The field of 
 Marathon was so named because overgrown with this plant. 
 What was the significance of Pan's gift? 
 
 59, 1. Miltiades: The great Athenian general selected for 
 supreme command at Marathon. 
 
 60, 1. Akropolis (Gr. akros, height + polis, city): The cit- 
 adel of Athens. 
 
 61, 1. How did the fame of Miltiades and Themistocles 
 decline? 
 
 MY LAST DUCHESS 
 
 62, 1. Fra Pandolf: An imaginary artist, as also Claus of 
 Innsbruck in the last verse. 
 
 63, 1. I gave commands: It is not necessary to suppose 
 that the " commands " were for her death. Prolonged 
 cruelty would have served his purpose. Browning, when 
 
NOTES 171 
 
 asked what the " commands " were, called the query " a 
 silly question," saying he had no thought of anything beyond 
 the mere order as a revelation of character. 
 
 64, 1. Notice Neptune: As they are about to descend the 
 stairs, the soulless old virtuoso calls the envoy's attention 
 to a work of art in the courtyard below, of which he is 
 especially proud. 
 
 UP AT A VILLA — DOWN IN THE CITY 
 
 64, 2. The whole poem is a picture of Italian life before the 
 kingdom of Italy was formed — the Italy of nearly a cen- 
 tury ago. It is famous for its pictures of Italian scenery 
 as well as for its interpretation of character. The Italian 
 nobleman of the poverty-stricken villa is as real a picture 
 as Andrea del Sarto, or the Duke of My Last Duchess. 
 Browning knew Italy and the Italians. It is worth noting 
 how the meter is suited to the theme; its rapid movement, 
 the prosaic effect secured in many passages, the whole so 
 unlike the melody of A bt Vogler or Saul. 
 
 67, 1. " The stunning cicala " : Like the locust of our north- 
 ern lands. 
 
 68, 1. "The diligence": The stage coach of continental 
 Europe; still used in parts of Italy and Switzerland. 
 
 2. " Pulcinello " : Punch and Judy shows, announced by 
 a trumpeter. 
 
 3. "Who is Dante," etc.: Who surpasses the greatest 
 poets, theologians, orators, and is as great a preacher as 
 St. Paul. 
 
 SAUL 
 
 70, 1. The first nine sections of Saul were printed in the 
 seventh number of Bells and Pomegranates in 1845. The 
 concluding stanzas were written in the winter of 1853-54, 
 and the poem as enlarged was published in Men and Women, 
 1855. 
 
172 NOTES 
 
 The poem is based on / Samuel xvi, 14-23, where Saul is 
 roused to consciousness and sanity by the music of David. 
 This music is represented as " having three series of rising 
 motives: first, tunes used to the brutes, sheep, quail, crickets, 
 jerboa; second, the help-tunes of great epochs in human 
 life, — reapers, burial, marriage, soldiers, priests; third, the 
 songs of human aspirations, wild joys of living, fame crown- 
 ing ambition and noble deeds, praise of unborn genera- 
 tions, the next world's reward and repose," but it is not 
 until the culmination, the assurance of the God-love, which 
 is the Christ, that the king is roused from his lethargy. 
 " Saul is a magnificent interpretation of the old theme, a 
 favorite with the mystics, that evil spirits are driven out by 
 music. But in this interpretation it is not the mere tones, 
 the thrumming on the harp, it is the religious movement of 
 the intelligence, it is the truth of Divine love throbbing in 
 every chord, which constitutes the-spell." — Corson. 
 
 2. Abner: A Jewish general, Saul's cousin and friend. 
 
 3. Spirit: Melancholy and insanity were anciently attrib- 
 uted to evil spirits, which took possession of the afflicted 
 persons. 
 
 72, 1. Drear (A.S. dreorig, sad): Dreary, cheerless. Stark 
 (A.S. Stearc, stiff): Rigid. 
 
 74, 1. Jerboa: An Old-World rodent animal, remarkable 
 for swift flying leaps. 
 
 75, 1. Male-sapphire: The ancient sapphire was the same 
 as our lapis-lazuli. 
 
 76, 1. Locust-flesh: Sometimes used in Oriental countries 
 for food. 
 
 2. How good is man's life, the mere living: This strikes 
 the keynote of the whole stanza. 
 
 77, 1. Sympathy and rivalry may exist at the same time 
 between brothers. 
 
 2. Throe (Scot, thraw): Pain, agony. 
 
 78, 1. In the edition of 1845 the last four lines of this 
 section read thus: 
 
NOTES 173 
 
 " On one head the joy and the pride, even rage like the throe 
 That opes the rock, helps its glad labor, and lets the 
 
 gold go — 
 And ambition that sees a man lead it — oh, all of these — 
 
 all 
 Combine to unite in one creature — Saul." 
 
 2. Cherubim (Heb. k'mbh): Angelic beings excelling in 
 knowledge, next in rank to seraphim. 
 
 79, 1. David's music had served Saul an ill turn had it 
 only roused him from lethargy to despair. 
 
 84, 1. First King: Cf. / Samuel 10. 
 
 86, 1. Evanish: A poetical form of vanish. 
 
 2. Hebron: A town sixteen miles southwest of Jerusalem. 
 
 3. Kidron: Kedron, a winter brook in a ravine east of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 4. And behold . . . sunshine: David pauses in his narra- 
 tion, which he resumes in the next section. 
 
 89, 1. Harp and song have served their turn, and David 
 puts them aside for inspired speech. " The truth " bursts 
 on him. Would he save Saul? Why, so would God. He 
 cannot? But God can. And so by his human love and 
 sympathy he realizes the divine, and prophesies the Christ. 
 It is a tremendous inference, but nothing less is possible 
 unless the creature's love is to excel the Creator's. 
 
 90, 1. Purblind (pure + blind): First, totally blind ; then, 
 dim of vision. 
 
 93, 1. Sabaoth (Gr. from Heb. tsebaoth): Armies, hosts; 
 used chiefly in the phrase Lord God of Sabaoth. 
 
 94, 1. Impuissance : Want of power, inability. 
 2. Cf. Rabbi Ben Ezra: 
 
 " What I aspired to be 
 And was not, comforts me." 
 
 97, 1. The whole earth . . . is so: " Mr. Browning's most 
 characteristic feeling for nature appears in his rendering of 
 
174 NOTES 
 
 those aspects of sky, or earth, or sea, of sunset, or noonday, or 
 dawn, which seem to acquire some sudden passionate sig- 
 nificance; which seem to be charged with some spiritual 
 secret eager for disclosure ; in his rendering of those moments 
 which betray the passion at the heart of things, which thrill 
 and tingle with prophetic fire . . . when to David the 
 stars shoot out the pain of pent knowledge and in the gray 
 of the hills at morning there dwells a gathered intensity, — 
 then nature rises from her sweet ways of use and wont, 
 and shows herself the Priestess, the Pythoness, the Divinity 
 which she is. Or rather, through nature, the spirit of God 
 addresses itself to the spirit of man." — Dowden. 
 
 A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL 
 
 97, 2. The Grammarian's Funeral was published in 1855 in 
 the volume Men and Women. 
 
 Grammarian is here used, not in its present narrow sense, 
 but with the broader meaning of a scholar, a student whose 
 life was devoted to letters. No particular person is indicated, 
 but the spirit is that which animated many a scholar — a 
 Scaliger, a Casaubon, a Pierre de Maricourt — of the early 
 Renaissance period, the Revival of Learning which, begin- 
 ing in Italy, spread over all Europe, and marked the transi- 
 tion from mediaeval to modern history. The speaker is 
 one of the dead Grammarian's disciples who are bearing him 
 to the mountain top — a fit burial-place for him of lofty 
 aspirations. The parentheses give the leader's directions to 
 the corpse-bearers. Note the effect and appropriateness of 
 the meter, the long iambic followed by the short adonic. 
 
 3. Crofts (A.S. croft): Fields or little farms. Thorpes (A.S. 
 thorp): Villages or hamlets. Common and vulgar refer to 
 the ignorant and uneducated people of these crofts and 
 thorpes. 
 
 4. Tether (A.S. teodor, halter): Narrow bounds. 
 
 5. Rock-row: Mountain ridge. 
 
NOTES 175 
 
 98, 1. Overcome: Pass over; overshadow. Cf. Macbeth 
 III. 4, 3. 
 
 99, 1. Gowned him: Took up the student life. 
 
 100, 1. Queasy (Norw. kveis, sickness after a debauch): 
 Qualmish, nauseated. 
 
 2. Fabric, dab brick: Note effect of this and similar rhymes. 
 
 101, 1. Calculus . . . him: Diseases attacked him. Cal- 
 culus (Lat.): The stone. Tussis (Lat.): A cough. 
 
 2. Hydroptic (Gr. hydropikos): Dropsical, thirsty. " Every 
 lust is a kind of hydropic distemper, and the more we drink 
 the more we shall thirst." — Tillotson. 
 
 3. God's task ... the earthen? Cf. Abt Voglet. "On 
 earth the broken arcs; in heaven, the perfect round." 
 
 102, 1. The keynote of this poem is Browning's favorite 
 tenet, which the Talmud thus words: "It is not incumbent 
 on thee to complete the work; but thou must not therefore 
 desist from it." 
 
 2. To know the whole he would perfect himself in the 
 minutest parts. Hoti, the Greek particle, tin, that, etc. 
 Oun, the Greek particle, olv, then, etc. Concerning " the 
 doctrine of the enclitic De," Browning cited scholarly author- 
 ity and said " that De meaning ' towards ' and as a demon- 
 strative appendage is not to be confounded with the accen- 
 tuated De meaning ' but,' was the ' doctrine ' which the 
 Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving 
 it." 
 
 3. Purlieus (Lat. per, through + Fr. alive, go). Outlying 
 districts. 
 
 103, 1. This man of lofty aspirations must have a burial- 
 place symbolic of his past" and future. 
 
 SONG FROM " PIPPA PASSES" 
 
 103, 2. Pippa's hymn strikes the keynote of the whole 
 poem, asserting that " the service of all God's children is 
 equally valuable in his sight." 
 
176 NOTES 
 
 AN EPISTLE 
 
 104, 1. An Epistle was begun at Rome in the winter of 
 1853-54, and finished later at Florence. It was published 
 in Men and Women, 1855. 
 
 The poem is based on the account given in John ii, 1-46 of 
 Christ's healing of Lazarus. Hardly less remarkable than 
 the depictment of the effect of Lazarus' experience on his 
 subsequent life is the psychological study of the learned 
 leech, with his incredulous, science-trained intellect and his 
 heart hungering for God's truth. Despite his protestations, 
 we soon feel that it is to tell this strange tale of Lazarus — 
 not to discourse of spiders and borage — that he writes to 
 his master, and the truth breaks out at the last in that 
 yearning eloquent cry for the God of Love. 
 
 2. Snake-stone: Placed upon a snake-bite, it was supposed 
 to absorb or charm away the poison. 
 
 105, 1. Were brought: That is, in his last letter. 
 
 2. This gives us the date of the Epistle. Titus Flavius 
 Vespasianus was sent by Nero in 66 to conduct the war 
 against the Jews; when proclaimed emperor in 70 he left 
 his son to carry on the war. 
 
 3. Who studious ... for a spy: See the true spirit of the 
 man of science, — his zeal in pursuit of knowledge, his 
 contempt of hindering dangers. 
 
 4. Bethany: A village two miles from Jerusalem. The 
 leech indicates the distance vividly and characteristically. 
 
 5. Choler (Gr. chole, bile): Here used in its original sense 
 of bile. 
 
 6. Spider: Probably one of the saltigrade species, which 
 springs on its prey like a cat or tiger. Spiders were used 
 internally and externally for medicine down to a compara- 
 tively recent period. Sir Walter Raleigh, for instance, 
 approved the healing virtues of a certain spider preparation. 
 
 106, 1. Porphyry: A hard stone used by the ancients as 
 a mortar. 
 
NOTES 177 
 
 2. Hadst: Wouldst have. Zoar: One of the " cities of 
 the plain," near the Dead Sea. Cf. Genesis xix, 22. 
 
 3. Devotion is my price, et seq.i Karshish protests that it 
 is because he fears to trust his Syrian messenger with im- 
 portant matters that he tells the idle tale of Lazarus — thus 
 deprecating Abib's scorn. 
 
 107, 1. Exhibition: Here has its medical sense — to admin- 
 ister a remedy. 
 
 108, 1. Fume: A fancy. 
 
 110, 1. Our lord: Some sage under whom Abib and Kar- 
 shish had studied. 
 
 111, 1. Greek fire: This is an anachronism, as Greek fire 
 was first used in warfare by the Byzantine Greeks against 
 the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 a.d. 
 Liquid fire, however, was used by the ancients. Gibbon 
 says (Ch. 57): " It would seem that the principal ingredient 
 was the naphtha or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious inflam- 
 mable oil, which springs from the earth and catches fire as 
 soon as it comes in contact with the air." 
 
 115, 1. Blue-flowering borage: A plant valued for its 
 stimulating medical properties. " The ancients deemed this 
 plant one of the four ' cordial flowers ' for cheering the spirits, 
 the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet." Aleppo: A 
 city of Syria. 
 
 116, 1. Perhaps the journey's end . . . and farewell! Kar- 
 shish apologizes for dwelling at length on the case of this 
 recovered epileptic Jew, and promises to write at leisure from 
 Jerusalem on matters of more moment. 
 
 2. The very God! ... it is strange: Art and science are 
 thrust aside: the man's very soul cries out for God, — the 
 God of this despised " madman." 
 
 MEETING AT NIGHT 
 
 118, 3. Meeting at Night and Parting at Morning were 
 published in 1845 in the seventh number of Bells and 
 Pomegranates. The speaker is a man who at night goes gladly 
 
178 NOTES 
 
 home to peace and love, and at morning as gladly back to 
 the world and work. 
 
 PROSPICE 
 
 117, 1. Prospice (look forward), written the fall after Mrs. 
 Browning's death, was published in Dramatis Personal in 
 1864. It expresses the poet's scorn of the idle and cowardly- 
 fear of death, and his faith in personal immortality. 
 " Death," said Browning, when its shadow was over him, 
 " is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is 
 none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of exist- 
 ence. Without death, which is our crape-like churchyardy 
 word for change, for growth, there could be no prolongation 
 of that which we call life. . . . For myself, I deny death as 
 an end of anything. Never say of me that I am dead." 
 
 2. Arch fear: Death. 
 
 118, 1. Guerdon (LL. voider donum. A half translation of 
 the OHG. widarlon, widar, back again + Ion, reward.): Rec- 
 ompense. 
 
 2. Brunt (Tee. brenna, burn): " The ' brunt ' of the battle 
 is the ' heat ' of the battle where it burns most fiercely." — 
 Trench. 
 
 3. A beautiful allusion to his wife. 
 
 EPILOGUE TO " ASOLANDO" 
 
 118, 4. The Epilogue to Asolando, 1889, is " the last word 
 spoken by Browning to the world. It is an epilogue not only 
 to Asolando but to the whole of his life . . . reminds us of 
 Browning's bracing, tonic effect upon all of us, and the hope- 
 fulness and support he has afforded many in hours of gloom 
 or trouble. Standing apart from criticism, the poem is 
 brave, energetic, stimulant." — F. M. Wilson. 
 
 Compare with this Tennyson's swan song, Crossing the 
 Bar. Reread also Browning's Prospice, which it suggests. 
 
 119, 1. Mawkish (Ice. madhkr, maggot): Sickening, in- 
 sipid. 
 
NOTES 179 
 
 2. Worsted: Defeated; have the worst of it. 
 
 3. Fare (A.S. faran, travel) : Go on ; often used impersonally. 
 
 MY STAR 
 
 120, 1. A certain star: The metaphor of this suggestive 
 little poem is thus interpreted by Mrs. Orr, in her " Hand- 
 book to Browning's Works ": " ' My Star ' may be taken as 
 a tribute to the personal element in love ; the bright peculiar 
 light in which the sympathetic soul reveals itself to the 
 object of its sympathy." 
 
 RABBI BEN EZRA 
 
 121, 1. The best is yet to be: The poet expresses the thought 
 in Saul thus: 
 
 " By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt 
 enjoy 
 More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of 
 a boy." 
 
 122, 1. Irks care, etc.: Care does not annoy, nor doubt 
 fret, the well-fed bircT or beast. 
 
 2. Nearer we hold of God: We possess the right or title to 
 a nearer relationship with God. 
 
 123, 1. In Saul the poet says: " 'tis not what man Does 
 which exalts him, but what man Would do." 
 
 2. Dole: Share, that which is dealt. 
 
 124, 1. Its term: Its terminus, proper end or limit. 
 
 127, 1. Right? Was I whom the world arraigned, or 
 were they whom my soul disdained, right? 
 
 128, 1. That metaphor: Compare the same metaphor, 
 Isaiah lxiv, 8 and xxix, 16; Jeremiah xviii, 2-6; Romans 
 ix, 21. 
 
 ABT VOGLER 
 
 131, 1. The Abt or Abbe George Joseph Vogler (born at 
 Wiirzburg, Bavaria, in 1749, died at Darmstadt, 1824) was 
 
180 NOTES 
 
 a composer, professor, kapellmeister, and writer on music. 
 Among his pupils were Weber and Meyerbeer. The " mu- 
 sical instrument of his invention " was called an orchestrion. 
 " It was," says Sir G. Grove, " a very compact organ, in 
 which four keyboards of five octaves each, and a pedal board 
 of thirty-six keys, with swell complete, were packed into a 
 cube of nine feet." 
 
 132, 1. As when Solomon willed: The reference is to legends 
 of the Koran, which attribute to Solomon the possession of 
 magical powers. 
 
 134, 1. Protoplast: " The original; the thing first formed as 
 a copy to be imitated." 
 
 135, 1. In sight? . . . made perfect too: " Verses four and 
 five are a bold attempt to describe the indescribable, to 
 shadow forth that strange state of clairvoyance when the 
 soul shakes itself free from all external impressions, which 
 Vogel tells us was the case with Schubert, and which is true 
 of all great composers — ' whether in the body or out of the 
 body, I cannot say.'" — Mrs. Turnbull: Browning Soc. 
 Papers, Pt. IV. 
 
 2. But here is the finger of God: Tha other arts are " tri- 
 umphant," but are only " art in obedience to laws "; the 
 effects of music are allied to the miraculous. 
 
 " There is no sound in nature," says Schopenhauer, " fit 
 to serve the musician as a model, or to supply him with 
 more than an occasional suggestion for his sublime purpose. 
 He approaches the original sources of existence more closely 
 than all other artists, nay, even than Nature herself." 
 
 ANDREA DEL SARTO 
 
 141, 1. Fiesole (fes'o-le) : The ancient Fcesuloe, a town 
 three miles N.E. of Florence, on a steep hill, commanding a 
 magnificent view of the Arno Valley. 
 
 2. As married people use: i.e., ought, or are wont to be. 
 
 142, 1. In France: Andrea del Sarto was summoned to the 
 court of Francis I of France, where his painting was highly 
 
NOTES 181 
 
 honored and handsomely remunerated. Urged by the let- 
 ters from his wife, he obtained permission of the king to 
 revisit Florence, on condition of a speedy return to his 
 work; but he broke his pledges, and with a sum of money 
 with which his royal patron had intrusted him, for the 
 purchase of works of art, built the " melancholy little house " 
 (page 148, last line), to please the soulless Lucrezia. 
 
 143, 1. Low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand: "Andrea 
 del Sarto 's was, after all, but the ' low-pulsed forthright crafts- 
 man's hand,' and therefore his perfect art does not touch 
 our hearts like that of Fra Bartolommeo, who occupies about 
 the same position with regard to the great masters of the 
 century as Andrea del Sarto. Fra Bartolommeo spoke 
 from his heart. He was moved by the spirit, so to speak, 
 to express his pure and holy thoughts in beautiful language, 
 and the ideal that presented itself to his mind, and from 
 which he, equally with Raphael, worked, approached almost 
 as closely as Raphael's to that abstract beauty after which 
 they both longed. Andrea del Sarto had no such longing; 
 he was content with the loveliness of earth. This he could 
 understand and imitate in its fullest perfection, and there- 
 fore he troubled himself but little about the ' wondrous 
 paterne ' laid up in heaven. Many of his Madonnas have 
 greater beauty, strictly speaking, than those of Bartolommeo, 
 or even of Raphael; but we miss in them that mysterious 
 spiritual loveliness that gives the latter their chief charm." 
 — Heaton's History of Painting. 
 
 144, 1. Morello: The highest spur of the Apennines to the 
 north of Florence. 
 
 2. What does the mountain care? It is beyond their crit- 
 icism. 
 
 3. A man's reach should exceed his grasp: " The true glory 
 of art is, that in its creation there arise desires and aspira- 
 tions never to be satisfied on earth, but generating new de- 
 sires and new aspirations, by which the spirit of man mounts 
 to God himself. The artist (Mr. Browning loves to insist on 
 
182 NOTES 
 
 this point) who can realize in marble, or in color, or in music, 
 his ideal, has thereby missed the highest gain of art. In 
 Pip pa Passes the regeneration of the young sculptor's 
 work turns on his finding that in the very perfection which 
 he had attained lies ultimate failure. And one entire poem, 
 Andrea del Sarto, has been devoted to the exposition of 
 this thought. Andrea is ' the faultless painter' ; no line of 
 his drawing ever goes astray; his hand expresses adequately 
 and accurately all that his mind conceives; but for this 
 very reason, precisely because he is ' the faultless painter,' 
 his work lacks the highest qualities of art." — Professor 
 Doted en. 
 
 4. The Urbinate . . . out of me! Raphael Santi, born in 
 Urbino, 1483. Though Andrea knows that Raphael is 
 inferior to himself in technique, yet he acknowledges him 
 to be his superior, because he reaches " above and through 
 his art " toward heaven and things divine. 
 
 5. George Vasari: Friend and pupil of Michael Angelo 
 and Andrea del Sarto, and author of Lives of the Painters, 
 Sculptors, and Architects. 
 
 145, 1. By the future: i.e., in comparison with the future. 
 2. Agnolo: Michael Angelo (or Michel Agnolo) Buona- 
 
 rotti. 
 
 146, 1. For fear, etc. : See note 1, page 142. 
 
 147, 1. The triumph was, etc.: The real triumph was, to 
 have ended in your heart ; that reached, the lesser triumph in 
 France is no loss. 
 
 2. Rafael did this, etc. : The supposed remark of some critic. 
 151, 1. Leonard: Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE 
 
 151, 2. Is: The present with future meaning: " Where 
 will be thy pleasant hue? " 
 
 154, 1. Hemp-stalks steep: Hemp that is soaking in prep- 
 aration for dressing. 
 
 2. Fret: The lichens ornament as with raised work. 
 
NOTES 183 
 
 155, 1. Aware: Self-conscious. 
 
 2. My Leonor: The " perfect wife," with the " great brow " 
 and the " spirit-small hand," can be no other than Eliza- 
 beth Barrett Browning. The poem, though in its circum- 
 stances purely dramatic and imaginary, is autobiographic 
 in soul. Other beautiful allusions to Mrs. Browning may 
 be found in One Word More, Prospice, and My Star. 
 
 158, 1. What did I say? The description is here resumed, 
 which was broken off at line 20, page 155. 
 
 159, 1. Chrysolite: Greek XP V<X ^ and XtSos, gold-stone. 
 Technically, a mineral substance of a pale green color. 
 
 162, 1. "With Mr. Browning," says Professor Dowden, 
 "those moments are most glorious in which the obscure ten- 
 dency of many years has been revealed by the lightning of sud- 
 den passion, or in which a resolution that changes the current 
 life has been taken in reliance upon that insight which vivid 
 emotion bestows ; and those periods of our history are charged 
 most fully with moral purpose, which take their direction 
 from moments such as these." Here it is the remembrance 
 of one of those supreme moments which determined the 
 issue of his life, that leads the speaker of the poem to ex- 
 claim: " How the world is made for each of us! " etc. 
 
LIST OF TITLES IN 
 
 The dates following the name of the book indicate 
 the years for which it is scheduled for Uniform 
 College Entrance Requirements in English 
 
 A double star (**) indicates that an edition of the book is in preparation 
 
 Addison, Steele, and Budgell. The Sir Roger de Coverley 
 Papers in "The Spectator." 1909-1915. Price, 30 
 cents. 
 
 Browning. Cavalier Tunes, The Lost Leader, How They 
 Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix, Evelyn 
 Hope, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Home Thoughts 
 from the Sea, Incident of the French Camp, The Boy 
 and the Angel, One Word More, Herve Riel, Pheidip- 
 pides, My Last Duchess, Up at a Villa — Down in the 
 City. 1909-1915. Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Bunyan. Pilgrim's Progress. Part I. 1909-1915. Price,** 
 
 Coleridge. The Ancient Mariner. 1909-1915. Price, 25 
 
 cents. 
 Coleridge — The Ancient Mariner, and Lowell— The Vision 
 
 of Sir Launfal, Combined. 1909-1915. Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Defoe. Robinson Crusoe, Part I. 1913-1915. Price,** 
 
Dickens. A Tale of Two. Cities. 1909-1915. Price, 50 
 cents. 
 
 Eliot (George). Silas Marner. 1909-1915. Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Emerson. Essays. (Selected.) 1909-1912. Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Goldsmith. The Deserted Village. 1909-1915. Price, 25 
 cents. 
 
 Gray — Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and Goldsmith — 
 The Deserted Village, Combined. 1913-1915. Price, 
 30 cents. 
 
 Hawthorne. The House of the Seven Gables. 1909-1915. 
 Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Lamb. Essays of Elia. 1909-1912. Price, 50 cents. 
 
 Lincoln, Selections from. Including the two Inaugurals, 
 the Speeches in Independence Hall and at Gettysburg, 
 the Last Public Address, and Letter to Horace Greeley, 
 along with a brief memoir or estimate. 1913-1915. 
 Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Lowell. The Vision of Sir Launfal. 1909-1915. Price, 
 25 cents. 
 
 Macaulay. Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. 
 1913-1915. Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Macaulay— Lays of Ancient Rome, and Arnold — Sohrab 
 and Rustum, Combined. 1909-1915. Price, 30 cents. 
 
 Milton. Lycidas, Comus, L'Allegro, and II Penseroso. 
 
 1909-1915. Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Poe — The Raven, Longfellow — The Courtship of Miles 
 Standish, and Whittier — Snow-Bound, Combined. 
 1913-1915. Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Stevenson. Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey. 
 1913-1915. Price,** 
 
 Stevenson. Treasure Island. 1913-1915. Price, 40 cents. 
 
 Thoreau. Walden. 1913-1915. Price** 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: March 2009 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 
 
 111 Thomson Park Drive 
 
15 JSU* 
 
 (COPY. OB TO CAT OV. 
 
 NOV 15 .1909