Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser, 10
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
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 it;
No! Yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit. 20
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! 30
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
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?" 40
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, 50
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. 60
Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
Painful or easy!
Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
Ay, nor feel queasy."
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 70
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!
(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. 80
Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes:
Live now or never!"
He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever."
Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:
Calculus racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
Tussis attacked him.
"Now, master, take a little rest!"--not he!
(Caution redoubled, 90
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 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! 100
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?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
Just what it all meant?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment.
He ventured neck or nothing-heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure: 110
"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. 120
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.
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-- 130
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
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? 140
Here--here's his place, 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 Iying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.
NOTES:
"A Grammarian's Funeral" is an elegy of a typical pioneer
scholar of the Renaissance period, sung by the leader of
the chorus of disciples, and interspersed with parenthetical
directions to them, while they all bear the body of
their master to its appropriate burial-place on the highest
mountain-peak. A humorous sense of disproportion in
the labors of devoted scholarship to its results heightens
their exaltation of the dead humanist's indomitable trust
in the supremacy of the immaterial.
86. Calculus: the stone.
88. Tussis: a cough.
95. Hydroptic: dropsical.
129. Hoti: Greek particle, conjunction, that.
130. Oun: Greek particle, then, now then.
131. Enclitic De: Greek, concerning which Browning
wrote to the Editor of The News, London, Nov. 21,
1874: "In a clever article you speak of 'the doctrine of
the enclitic De--which, with all deference to Mr.
Browning, in point of fact, does not exist.' No, not to
Mr. Browning, but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose
fifth list of 'enclitics' ends with the inseparable De,'--
or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning
'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage).
That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated
'De, meaning but,' was the 'Doctrine' which the Grammarian
bequeathed to those capable of receiving it."
THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY
A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE
ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS-BY-
THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE,
Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS
ERAM, Jessides.
(It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning
of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314,
as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain,
during the course of a couple of centuries.)
[Molay was Grand Master of the Templars
when that order was suppressed in 1312.]
I
PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.
The Lord, we look to once for all,
Is the Lord we should look at, all at once:
He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul,
Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.
See him no other than as he is!
Give both the infinitudes their due--
Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
As infinite a justice too.
[Organ: plagal-cadence.]
As infinite a justice too.
II
[ONE SINGETH]
John, Master of the Temple of God, 10
Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,
What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,
He sold it to Sultan Saladin:
Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,
Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive,
And clipt of his wings in Paris square,
They bring him now to be burned alive.
[And wanteth there grace of lute or
clavicithern, ye shall say to
confirm him who singeth--
We bring John now to be burned alive.
III
In the midst is a goodly gallows built;
'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck; 20
But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,
Make a trench all round with the city muck;
Inside they pile log upon log, good store;
Faggots no few, blocks great and small,
Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,--
For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.
CHORUS.
We mean he should roast in the sight of all.
IV
Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith; 30
Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:
They up they hoist me John in a chafe,
Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
Sing "Laudes" and bid clap-to the torch.
CHORUS.
Laus deo--who bids clap-to the torch.
V
John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
Is burning alive in Paris square!
How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there? 40
Or heave his chest, which a band goes round?
Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
--Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
[Here one crosseth himself.]
VI
Jesus Christ--John had bought and sold,
Jesus Christ--John had eaten and drunk;
To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.
(Salva reverentia.)
Now it was, "Saviour, bountiful lamb,
"I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me! 50
"See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!
"Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!"
CHORUS.
'Tis John the mocker cries, "Save thou me!"
VII
Who maketh God's menace an idle word?
--Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,
Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?
For she too prattles of ugly names.
--Saith, he knoweth but one thing--what he knows?
That God is good and the rest is breath;
Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose? 60
Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.
CHORUS.
O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!
VIII
Alack, there be roses and roses, John!
Some, honied of taste like your leman's tongue:
Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!)
Their tree struck root in devil's-dung.
When Paul once reasoned of righteousness
And of temperance and of judgment to come,
Good Felix trembled, he could no less:
John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb. 70
CHORUS.
What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?
IX
Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose
To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
And lo, he is horribly in the toils
Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!
CHORUS.
What maketh heaven, That maketh hell. 80
X
So, as John called now, through the fire amain,
On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life--
To the Person, he bought and sold again--
For the Face, with his daily buffets rife--
Feature by feature It took its place:
And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark,
At the steady whole of the Judge's face--
Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.
SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.
God help all poor souls lost in the dark!
NOTES:
"The Heretic's Tragedy" is an Interlude imagined in the
manner of the Middle Ages, and typically representing
this period of human development in its quaint piety and
prejudice, its childish delight in cruelty, and its cumulative
legend-making during the course of two centuries as reflected
through the Flemish nature. It is supposed to be
sung by an abbot, a choir-singer, and a chorus, in celebration
of the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last
Grand Master of the wealthy and powerful secular order
of Knights Templar, which came into rivalry with the
Church after the Crusades and was finally suppressed by
Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, Molay's
burning at Paris in 1314 being a final scene in their
discomfiture and the Church's triumph.
8. Plagal-cadence: a closing progression of chords in
which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of
the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree
of the scale. The name arises from the modes used in
early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a
transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the
fourth degree of the authentic modes.
12. Bought of... Aldabrod, etc.: Clement's arraignment
of Jacques or John being that the riches won piously
by the order during the Crusades, he had not scrupled to
sell again to Saladin, the Sultan, who is portrayed by
Scott in "The Talisman.''
14. Pope Clement: the fifth Clement (1305-1314).
18. Clavicithern: a cithern with keys like a harpsichord.
25. Sing "Laudes": Sing the seven Psalms of praise
making up the service of the Church called Lauds.
48. Salva, etc. the bidding to greet here with a reverence,
according to custom, the Host, or Christ's flesh,
which had been mentioned.
60. Sharon's rose: Solomon's Song 2.1.
HOLY-CROSS DAY
ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME
[" Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord
preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the
merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least
from her conspicuous table here in Rome should be, though but once
yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon
beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of
so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now
maternally brought-nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in') haled,
as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts,
to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with
tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting
to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions
which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be
altogether the glory."-Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.]
What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather
to this effect:--
I
Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff,
Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
Gives us the summons--'tis sermon-time!
II
Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you?
Up stumps Solomon--bustling too?
Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears?
Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch? 10
Stand on a line ere you start for the church!
III
Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,
Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye,
Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve.
Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
And buzz for the bishop--here he comes.
IV
Bow, wow, wow--a bone for the dog!
I liken his Grace to an acorned hog. 20
What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass,
To help and handle my lord's hour-glass!
Didst ever behold so lithe a chine?
His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.
V
Aaron's asleep--shove hip to haunch,
Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch!
Look at the purse with the tassel and knob
And the gown with the angel and thingumbob!
What's he at, quotha? reading his text!
Now you've his curtsey--and what comes next? 30
VI
See to our converts--you doomed black dozen--
No stealing away--nor cog nor cozen!
You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly;
You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely;
You took your turn and dipped in the hat,
Got fortune--and fortune gets you; mind that!
VII
Give your first groan--compunction's at work
And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
Lo, Micah,--the selfsame beard on chin
He was four times already converted in! 40
Here's a knife, clip quick--it's a sign of grace--
Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.
VIII
Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?
I know a point where his text falls pat.
I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now
Went to my heart and made me vow
I meddle no more with the worst of trades--
Let somebody else pay his serenades.
IX
Groan all together now, whee-hee-hee!
It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me! 50
It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed,
Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist;
Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent
To usher in worthily Christian Lent.
X
It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds,
Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds:
It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed
Which gutted my purse would throttle my creed:
And it overflows when, to even the odd,
Men I helped to their sins help me to their God. 60
XI
But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,
And the rest sit silent and count the clock,
Since forced to muse the appointed time
On these precious facts and truths sublime,
Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,
In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.
XII
For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,
Called sons and sons' sons to his side,
And spoke, "This world has been harsh and strange;
Something is wrong: there needeth change. 70
But what, or where? at the last or first?
In one point only we sinned, at worst.
XIII
"The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,
And again in his border see Israel set.
When Judah beholds Jerusalem,
The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:
To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave.
So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.
XIV
"Ay, the children of the chosen race
Shall carry and bring them to their place: 80
In the land of the Lord shall lead the same
Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame,
When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er
The oppressor triumph for evermore?
XV
"God spoke, and gave us the word to keep,
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward,
Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.
By His servant Moses the watch was set:
Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet. 90
XVI
"Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
By the starlight, naming a dubious name!
And if, too heavy with sleep--too rash
With fear--O Thou, if that martyr-gash
Fell on Thee coming to take thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne--
XVII
"Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
But, the Judgment over, join sides with us!
Thine too is the cause! and not more thine
Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, 100
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!
Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!
XVIII
"We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how
At least we withstand Barabbas now!
Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared,
To have called these--Christians, had we dared!
Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee,
And Rome make amends for Calvary!
XIX
"By the torture, prolonged from age to age,
By the infamy, Israel's heritage, 110
By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace,
By the badge of shame, by the felon's place,
By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,
And the summons to Christian fellowship,--
XX
"We boast our proof that at least the Jew
Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew.
Thy face took never so deep a shade
But we fought them in it, God our aid!
A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band,
South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!" 120
[Pope Gregory XVI abolished this bad business of the Sermon.
--R. B.]
NOTES:
"Holy-Cross Day" reflects the attitude of the corrupt mediaeval
Christians and Jews toward each other. The prose
preceding the poem gives the point of view of an imaginary
Bishop's Secretary, who congratulates himself upon
the good work the Church is doing in forcing its doctrine
on the Jews in the Holy-Cross Day sermon, and effecting
many conversions. The poem shows that the Jews regard
this solicitude on the part of the Christians with hatred
and scorn, and that their conversions are in derision of
their would-be converters. The sarcasm of the speaker
reaches a pinnacle of bitterness when he accuses the
Christian bishops of being men he had helped to their sins
and who now help him to their God. From scorn toward
such followers of Christ, he passes, in the contemplation
of Rabbi Ben Ezra's death song, to a defence of Christ
against these followers who profess but do not act his
precepts, and a hope that if the Jews were mistaken in
not accepting Christ, the tortures they now suffer will be
received as expiation for their sin.
Holy-Cross Day is September 14. The discovery of the
true cross by Saint Helen inaugurated the festival, celebrated
both by Latins and Greeks as early as the fifth or
sixth century, under the title of the Exaltation of the
Cross and later in commemoration of the alleged miraculous
appearance of the Cross to Constantine in the sky
at midday. Though the particular incidents of the poem
are not historical, it is a fact (see Milman's "History of the
Jews'') that, by a Papal Bull issued by Gregory XIII in
1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled
to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian
priest.
52. Corso: a street in Rome
67. Rabbi Ben Ezra: or Ibn Ezra, a mediaeval Jewish
writer and thinker, born in Toledo, near the end of the
eleventh century.
III. Ghetto: the Jew's quarter. Pope Paul IV first
shut the Jews up in the Ghetto, and prohibited them from
leaving it after sunset.
PROTUS
Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.
Now, read here. "Protus ends a period
Of empery beginning with a god;
Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant, 10
Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire
Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
A fame that he was missing spread afar:
The world from its four corners, rose in war,
Till he was borne out on a balcony
To pacify the world when it should see.
The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
And day by day more beautiful he grew 20
In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,
Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled.
Already sages laboured to condense
In easy tomes a life's experience:
And artists took grave counsel to impart
In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art,
To make his graces prompt as blossoming
Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, 30
For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
And mortals love the letters of his name."
--Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.
New reign, same date. The scribe goes on to say
How that same year, on such a month and day,
"John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
The Empire from its fate the year before,
Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
The same for six years (during which the Huns 40
Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons
Put something in his liquor"--and so forth.
Then a new reign. Stay--"Take at its just worth"
(Subjoins an annotator) "what I give
As hearsay. Some think, John let Protus live
And slip away. 'Tis said, he reached man's age
At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
Then tutor to the children; last, of use
About the hunting-stables. I deduce
He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,' 50
Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
Is extant yet. A Protus of the race
Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,
And if the same, he reached senility."
Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,
Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!
NOTES:
"Protus" sets in contrast the representations by artist and
annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the
baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently
nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John,
the blacksmith's bastard, predestined to usurp his throne
and save the empire with his harder hand.
THE STATUE AND THE BUST
There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
And a statue watches it from the square,
And this story of both do our townsmen tell.
Ages ago, a lady there,
At the farthest window facing the East
Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"
The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased;
She leaned forth, one on either hand;
They saw how the blush of the bride increased--
They felt by its beats her heart expand-- 10
As one at each ear and both in a breath
Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand."
That self-same instant, underneath,
The Duke rode past in his idle way,
Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.