An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 46

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.

10.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 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 pa.s.sion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to G.o.d by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

11.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing 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 G.o.d has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

-- St. 11. And what is our failure here: "As long as effort is directed to the highest, that aim, though it is out of reach, is the standard of hope. The existence of a capacity, cherished and quickened, is a pledge that it will find scope.

The punishment of the man who has fixed all his thoughts upon earth, a punishment felt on reflection to be overwhelming in view of possibilities of humanity, is the completest gratification of desires unworthily limited:--

"'Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit; glut Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine For ever--take it!' ('Easter Day', xx.).

On the other hand, the soul which has found in success not rest but a starting-point, which refuses to see in the first-fruits of a partial victory the fulness of its rightful triumph, has ever before it a sustaining and elevating vision:--

"'What stops my despair?

This:--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!' ('Saul', 18).

"'What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me; A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.'"

('Rabbi Ben Ezra', 7).--Rev. Prof. Westcott on Browning's View of Life ('Browning Soc. Papers', iv., 405, 406).

12.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.

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 resting-place is found, The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

"Touch him ne'er so lightly."

{Epilogue to Dramatic Idyls. Second Series.}

-- * See 'Pages from an Alb.u.m', in 'The Century Ill.u.s.trated Monthly Magazine'

(Scribner's), for November 1882, pp. 159, 160, where is given a fac-simile of the poet's Ms. of these verses and of the ten verses he afterwards added, in response, it seems, to a carping critic.

"Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,--not one feather-seed, Not one flower dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous--prove a poet-soul!"

Indeed?

Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,--few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods--what the after age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage.

Memorabilia.

1.

Ah, did you once see Sh.e.l.ley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!

2.

But you were living before that, And also you are living after; And the memory I started at-- My starting moves your laughter!

3.

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:

4.

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.

How it strikes a Contemporary.

I only knew one poet in my life: And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid, A man of mark, to know next time you saw.

His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.

He walked, and tapped the pavement with his cane, {10} Scenting the world, looking it full in face: An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.

They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads no whither; now, they breathed themselves On the main promenade just at the wrong time.

You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat, Making a peaked shade blacker than itself Against the single window spared some house Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,-- Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick {20} Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the c.h.i.n.ks Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.

He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.