Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 34

XV

I say then,--my song While I sang thus, a.s.suring 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 re-plumed 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 with 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, though much spent Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, G.o.d 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 Of his armour 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 I 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: through 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.

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, inventing 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--

XVII

"I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke: I, a work of G.o.d's hand for that purpose, received in my brain And p.r.o.nounced on the rest of his handwork--returned him again His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw: I report, as a man may of G.o.d'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 dewdrop was asked.

Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.

Have I forethought? how purblind, 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 G.o.d is seen G.o.d 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 G.o.d's all-complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet.

Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known, 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 o'ertake G.o.d'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, G.o.d's ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?

Here, the creature surpa.s.s the Creator,--the end, what Began?

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 marvellous 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?

Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection,--succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of night?

Interpose at the difficult minute, s.n.a.t.c.h 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 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 intensified bliss, And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this."

XVIII

"I believe it! 'Tis thou, G.o.d, 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: _I_ will?--the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loth To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?

This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!

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 through me now!

Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou--so wilt thou!

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost 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!

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 G.o.dhead! 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, forever: 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 through them as hardly, as strugglingly there, As a runner beset by the populace famished for news-- Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, h.e.l.l loosed with her crews; 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 supported, 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 grey of the hills; In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills; In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still Though 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.

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, persistent and low, With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--"E'en so, it is so!"

On a clear, warm day in March, 1912, I stood on the Piazza Michel Angelo in Florence, with a copy of Browning in my hand, and gazed with delight on the panorama of the fair city below. Then I read aloud the first two stanzas of _Old Pictures in Florence_, and realised for the thousandth time the definiteness of Browning's poetry. This particular poem is a mixture of art and doggerel; but even the latter is interesting to lovers of Florence.

Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

Did you ever stand in front of the picture by Lorenzo that Browning had in mind, and observe the churlish saints? Most saints in Italian pictures look either happy or complacent; because they have just been elected to the society of heaven and are in for life. But for some strange reason, Lorenzo's saints, although in the Presence, and worshipping with music, look as if they were suffering from acute indigestion. If one will wander about the galleries of Florence, and take along Browning, one will find the poet more specifically informing than Baedeker.

The philosophy of this poem is Browning's favorite philosophy of development. He compares the perfection of Greek art with the imperfection of the real human body. We know what a man ought to look like; and if we have forgotten, we may behold a representation by a Greek sculptor. Stand at the corner of a city street, and watch the men pa.s.s; they are caricatures of the manly form. Yet ludicrously ugly as they are, the intention is clear; we see even in these degradations, what the figure of a man ought to be. In Greek art:

The Truth of Man, as by G.o.d first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was reuttered.

_Which the actual generations garble_--men as we see them are clumsy and garbled versions of the original. But there is no value in lamenting this; it is idle for men to gaze with regret and longing at the Apollo Belvedere. It is much better to remember that Perfection and Completion spell Death: only Imperfection has a future.

What if the souls in our ridiculously ugly bodies become greater and grander than the marble men of Pheidias? Giotto's unfinished Campanile is n.o.bler than the perfect zero he drew for the Pope. In our imperfect minds, housed in our over-fat, over-lean, and always commonplace bodies, exists the principle of development, for whose steady advance eternity is not too long. Statues belong to time: man has Forever.

For some strange reason, no tourist ever goes to Fano. One reason why I went there was simply because I had never met a person of any nationality who had ever seen the town. Yet it is easily accessible, very near Ancona, the scene of the _Grammarian's Funeral_, and the place where Browning wrote _The Guardian Angel_. One day Mr. and Mrs. Browning, walking about Fano, came to the church of San Agostino, in no way a remarkable edifice, and there in the tiny chapel, over the altar, they found Guercino's masterpiece. Its calm and serene beauty struck an immortal poem out of Browning's heart; and thanks to the poet, the picture is now one of the most familiar in the world.

But no copy comes near the ineffable charm of the original, as one sees it in the dim light of the chapel.

The child on the tomb is looking past the angel's face into the glory of heaven; but the poet, who wishes that he might take the place of the little child, declares that he would gaze, not toward heaven, but into the gracious face of the bird of G.o.d. If we could only see life as the angel sees it, if we could only see the whole course of history, we should then realise that:

All is beauty: And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.

We can not see the forest for the trees: the last place to obtain an idea of the range, grandeur, and beauty of a forest, is in it: one should climb a high mountain and look over its vast extent. So we, in life, "where men sit and hear each other groan," believe that the world is some dreadful mistake, full of meaningless anguish. This is because we are in the midst of it all: we can not see far: the nearest objects, though infinitesimal in size, loom enormous, as with the palm of your hand you can cut off the sun. But if we could only see the end from the beginning, if we could get the angel's view-point, the final result would be beauty. Browning is not satisfied with Keats's doctrine:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

He shows us what happened to Aprile with this philosophy. Browning adds the doctrine of love. The moment we realise that the universe is conceived in terms of beauty, love fills our hearts: love for our fellow-beings, who are making the journey through life with us; and love for G.o.d, the author of it all, just as a child loves one who gives it the gift of its heart's desire. That the supreme duty of life is love is simply one more ill.u.s.tration of Browning's steadfast adherence to the Gospel of Christ.

THE GUARDIAN-ANGEL

A PICTURE AT FANO

1855

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