Robert Browning: How to Know Him Part 41

Was it Thou, above all lights that are, Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar The prison-gate of Rephan my Star?

In me did such potency wake a pulse Could trouble tranquillity that lulls Not lashes inertion till throes convulse

Soul's quietude into discontent?

As when the completed rose bursts, rent By ardors till forth from its...o...b..are sent

New petals that mar--unmake the disc-- Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk, Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk,

Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spread Till, fresh-formed, facetted, floretted, The flower that slept woke a star instead?

No mimic of Star Rephan! How long I stagnated there where weak and strong, The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,

Are merged alike in a neutral Best, Can I tell? No more than at whose behest The pa.s.sion arose in my pa.s.sive breast,

And I yearned for no sameness but difference In thing and thing, that should shock my sense With a want of worth in them all, and thence,

Startle me up, by an Infinite Discovered above and below me-height And depth alike to attract my flight,

Repel my descent: by hate taught love.

Oh, gain were indeed to see above Supremacy ever--to move, remove,

Not reach--aspire yet never attain To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain-- As each stage I left nor touched again.

To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss, Wring knowledge from ignorance,--just for this-- To add one drop to a love-abyss!

Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men, You fear, you agonize, die: what then?

Is an end to your life's work out of ken?

Have you no a.s.surance that, earth at end, Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?

Why should I speak? You divine the test.

When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast A voice said "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?"

"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth, Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?

Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"

Browning was an optimist with his last breath. In the _Prologue_ to _Asolando_, a conventional person is supposed to be addressing the poet: he says, "Of course your old age must be sad, because you have now lost all your youthful illusions. Once you looked on the earth with rose-colored spectacles, but now you see the naked and commonplace reality of the things you used to think so radiant."

Browning's answer is significant, and the figure he uses wonderfully apt. Suppose you are going to travel in Europe: you go to the optician, and you ask for a first-rate magnifying-gla.s.s, that you may scan the ocean, and view the remote corners of cathedrals. Now imagine him saying that he has for you something far better than that: he has a lovely kaleidoscope: apply your eye to the orifice, turn a little wheel, and you will behold all sorts of pretty colored rosettes. You would be naturally indignant. "Do you take me for a child to be amused with a rattle? I don't want pretty colors: I want something that will bring the object, _exactly as it is_, as near to my eyes as it can possibly be brought."

Indeed, when one buys a gla.s.s for a telescope, if one has sufficient cash, one buys a gla.s.s made of crown and flint gla.s.s placed together, which destroys color, which produces what is called an _achromatic_ lens. Now just as we judge of the value of a gla.s.s by its ability to bring things as they are within the range of our vision, so, says Browning, old age is much better than youth. In age our old eyes become achromatic. The rosy illusions of youth vanish, thank G.o.d for it! The colors which we imagined belonged to the object were in reality in our imperfect eyes--as we grow older these pretty colors disappear and we see what? We see life itself. Life is a greater and grander thing than any fool's illusion about it. The world of nature and man is infinitely more interesting and wonderful as it is than in any mistaken view of it. Therefore old age is better than youth.

PROLOGUE

1889

The Poet's age is sad: for why?

In youth, the natural world could show No common object but his eye At once involved with alien glow-- His own soul's iris-bow.

"And now a flower is just a flower: Man, bird, beast are but beast, bird, man-- Simply themselves, uncinct by dower Of dyes which, when life's day began, Round each in glory ran."

Friend, did you need an optic gla.s.s, Which were your choice? A lens to drape In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, Each object--or reveal its shape Clear outlined, past escape,

The naked very thing?--so clear That, when you had the chance to gaze, You found its inmost self appear Through outer seeming-truth ablaze, Not falsehood's fancy-haze?

How many a year, my Asolo, Since--one step just from sea to land-- I found you, loved yet feared you so-- For natural objects seemed to stand Palpably fire-clothed! No--

No mastery of mine o'er these!

Terror with beauty, like the Bush Burning but unconsumed. Bend knees, Drop eyes to earthward! Language? Tush!

Silence 'tis awe decrees.

And now? The lambent flame is--where?

Lost from the naked world: earth, sky, Hill, vale, tree, flower,--Italia's rare O'er-running beauty crowds the eye-- But flame? The Bush is bare.

Hill, vale, tree, flower--they stand distinct, Nature to know and name. What then?

A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked Fancy from fact: see, all's in ken: Has once my eyelid winked?

No, for the purged ear apprehends Earth's import, not the eye late dazed: The Voice said "Call my works thy friends!

At Nature dost thou shrink amazed?

G.o.d is it who transcends."

It is an interesting and dramatic parallel in literary history that Tennyson and Browning should each have published the last poem that appeared in his life-time in the same month of the same year, and that each farewell to the world should be so exactly characteristic of the poetic genius and spiritual temperament of the writer. In December, 1889, came from the press _Demeter and Other Poems_, closing with _Crossing the Bar_--came also _Asolando_, closing with the _Epilogue_. Tennyson's lyric is exquisite in its tints of sunset, a serene close to a long and calmly beautiful day. It is the perfect tone of dignified departure, with the admonition to refrain from weeping, with the quiet a.s.surance that all is well. Browning's _Epilogue_ is full of excitement and strenuous rage: there is no hint of acquiescence; it is a wild charge with drum and trumpet on the hidden foe. Firm in the faith, full of plans for the future, he looks not on the darkening night, but on to-morrow's sunrise.

He tells us not to pity him. He is angry at the thought that people on the streets of London, when they hear of his death will say, "Poor Browning! He's gone! How he loved life!" Rather he wishes that just as in this life when a friend met him in the city with a face lighted up by the pleasure of the sudden encounter, with a shout of hearty welcome--so now, when your thoughts perhaps turn to me, let it not be with sorrow or pity, but with eager recognition. I shall be striving there as I strove here: greet me with a cheer!

EPILOGUE

1889

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pa.s.s 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, 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, though right were worsted, 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 ever There as here!"