I have my purpose and proceed. Who lives
With beasts assumes beast-nature, look and voice,
And, much more, thought, for beasts think. Selfishness
In us met selfishness in them, deserved
Such answer as it gained. My husband, bent
On saving his own soul by saving theirs,--
They, bent on being saved if saving soul
Included body's getting bread and cheese
Somehow in life and somehow after death,--
Both parties were alike in the same boat,
One danger, therefore one equality.
Safety induces culture: culture seeks
To institute, extend and multiply
The difference between safe man and man,
Able to live alone now; progress means
What but abandonment of fellowship?
We were in common danger, still stuck close.
No new books,--were the old ones mastered yet?
No pictures and no music: these divert
--What from? the staving danger off! You paint
The waterspout above, you set to words
The roaring of the tempest round you? Thanks!
Amusement? Talk at end of the tired day
Of the more tiresome morrow! I transcribed
The page on page of sermon-scrawlings--stopped
Intellect's eye and ear to sense and sound--
Vainly: the sound and sense would penetrate
To brain and plague there in despite of me
Maddened to know more moral good were done
Had we two simply sallied forth and preached
I' the '_Green_' they call their grimy,--I with twang
Of long-disused guitar,--with cut and slash
Of much-misvalued horsewhip he,--to bid
The peaceable come dance, the peace-breaker
Pay in his person! Whereas--Heaven and Hell,
Excite with that, restrain with this!--so dealt
His drugs my husband; as he dosed himself,
He drenched his cattle: and, for all my part
Was just to dub the mortar, never fear
But drugs, hand pestled at, have poisoned nose!
Heaven he let pass, left wisely undescribed:
As applicable therefore to the sleep
I want, that knows no waking--as to what 's
Conceived of as the proper prize to tempt
Souls less world-weary: there, no fault to find!
But Hell he made explicit. After death,
Life: man created new, ingeniously
Perfect for a vindictive purpose now,
That man, first fashioned in beneficence,
Was proved a failure; intellect at length
Replacing old obtuseness, memory
Made mindful of delinquent's bygone deeds
Now that remorse was vain, which life-long lay
Dormant when lesson might be laid to heart;
New gift of observation up and down
And round man's self, new power to apprehend
Each necessary consequence of act
In man for well or ill--things obsolete--
Just granted to supplant the idiocy
Man's only guide while act was yet to choose,
With ill or well momentously its fruit;
A faculty of immense suffering
Conferred on mind and body,--mind, erewhile
Unvisited by one compunctious dream
During sin's drunken slumber, startled up,
Stung through and through by sin's significance
Now that the holy was abolished--just
As body which, alive, broke down beneath
Knowledge, lay helpless in the path to good,
Failed to accomplish aught legitimate,
Achieve aught worthy,--which grew old in youth,
And at its longest fell a cut-down flower,--
Dying, this too revived by miracle
To bear no end of burden now that back
Supported torture to no use at all,
And live imperishably potent--since
Life's potency was impotent to ward
One plague off which made earth a hell before.
This doctrine, which one healthy view of things,
One sane sight of the general ordinance--
Nature--and its particular object--man,--
Which one mere eye-cast at the character
Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot,
Had dissipated once and evermore,--
This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal.
Why? Because none believed it. _They_ desire
Such Heaven and dread such Hell, whom every day
The alehouse tempts from one, a dog-fight bids
Defy the other? All the harm is done
Ourselves--done my good husband who in youth
Perhaps read Dickens, done myself who still
Could play both Bach and Brahms. Such life I lead--
Thanks to you, knave! You learn its quality--
Thanks to me, fool!"
He eyes her earnestly,
But she continues.
"--Life which, thanks once more
To you, arch-knave as exquisitest fool,
I acquiescingly--I gratefully
Take back again to heart! and hence this speech
Which yesterday had spared you. Four years long
Life--I began to find intolerable,
Only this moment. Ere your entry just,
The leap of heart which answered, spite of me,
A friend's first summons, first provocative,
Authoritative, nay, compulsive call
To quit, though for a single day, my house
Of bondage--made return seem horrible.
I heard again a human lucid laugh
All trust, no fear; again saw earth pursue
Its narrow busy way amid small cares,
Smaller contentments, much weeds, some few flowers,--
Never suspicious of a thunderbolt
Avenging presently each daisy's death.
I recognized the beech-tree, knew the thrush
Repeated his old music-phrase,--all right,
How wrong was I, then! But your entry broke
Illusion, bade me back to bounds at once.
I honestly submit my soul: which sprang
At love, and losing love lies signed and sealed
'_Failure._' No love more? then, no beauty more
Which tends to breed love! Purify my powers,
Effortless till some other world procures
Some other chance of prize! or, if none be,--
Nor second world nor chance,--undesecrate
Die then this aftergrowth of heart, surmised
Where May's precipitation left June blank!
Better have failed in the high aim, as I,
Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed
As, God be thanked, I do not! Ugliness
Had I called beauty, falsehood--truth, and you--
My lover! No--this earth's unchanged for me,
By his enchantment whom God made the Prince
O' the Power o' the Air, into a Heaven: there is
Heaven, since there is Heaven's simulation--earth.
I sit possessed in patience; prison-roof
Shall break one day and Heaven beam overhead."
His smile is done with; he speaks bitterly.
"Take my congratulations, and permit
I wish myself had proved as teachable!
--Or, no! until you taught me, could I learn,
A lesson from experience ne'er till now
Conceded? Please you listen while I show
How thoroughly you estimate my worth
And yours--the immeasurably superior! I
Believed at least in one thing, first to last,--
Your love to me: I was the vile and you
The precious; I abused you, I betrayed,
But doubted--never! Why else go my way
Judas-like plodding to this Potters' Field
Where fate now finds me? What has dinned my ear
And dogged my step? The spectre with the shriek
'_Such she was, such were you, whose punishment_
_Is just!_' And such she was not, all the while!
She never owned a love to outrage, faith
To pay with falsehood! For, my heart knows this--
Love once and you love always. Why, it 's down
Here in the Album: every lover knows
Love may use hate but--turn to hate, itself--
Turn even to indifference--no, indeed!
Well, I have been spellbound, deluded like
The witless negro by the Obeah-man
Who bids him wither: so, his eye grows dim,
His arm slack, arrow misses aim and spear
Goes wandering wide,--and all the woe because
He proved untrue to Fetish, who, he finds,
Was just a feather-phantom! I wronged love,
Am ruined,--and there was no love to wrong!"
"No love? Ah, dead love! I invoke thy ghost
To show the murderer where thy heart poured life
At summons of the stroke he doubts was dealt
On pasteboard and pretence! Not love, my love?
I changed for you the very laws of life:
Made you the standard of all right, all fair.
No genius but you could have been, no sage,
No sufferer--which is grandest--for the truth!
My hero--where the heroic only hid
To burst from hiding, brighten earth one day!
Age and decline were man's maturity;
Face, form were nature's type: more grace, more strength,
What had they been but just superfluous gauds,
Lawless divergence? I have danced through day
On tiptoe at the music of a word,
Have wondered where was darkness gone as night
Burst out in stars at brilliance of a smile!
Lonely, I placed the chair to help me seat
Your fancied presence; in companionship,
I kept my finger constant to your glove
Glued to my breast; then--where was all the world?
I schemed--not dreamed--how I might die some death
Should save your finger aching! Who creates
Destroys, he only: I had laughed to scorn
Whatever angel tried to shake my faith
And make you seem unworthy: you yourself
Only could do that! With a touch 't was done.
'_Give me all, trust me wholly!_' At the word,
I did give, I did trust--and thereupon
The touch did follow. Ah, the quiet smile,
The masterfully-folded arm in arm,
As trick obtained its triumph one time more!
In turn, my soul too triumphs in defeat:
Treason like faith moves mountains: love is gone!"
He paces to and fro, stops, stands quite close
And calls her by her name. Then--
"God forgives:
Forgive you, delegate of God, brought near
As never priests could bring him to this soul
That prays you both--forgive me! I abase--
Know myself mad and monstrous utterly
In all I did that moment; but as God
Gives me this knowledge--heart to feel and tongue
To testify--so be you gracious too!
Judge no man by the solitary work
Of--well, they do say and I can believe--
The devil in him: his, the moment,--mine
The life--your life!"
He names her name again.
"You were just--merciful as just, you were
In giving me no respite: punishment
Followed offending. Sane and sound once more,
The patient thanks decision, promptitude,
Which flung him prone and fastened him from hurt,
Haply to others, surely to himself.
I wake and would not you had spared one pang.
All's well that ends well!"
Yet again her name.
"Had _you_ no fault? Why must you change, forsooth,
Parts, why reverse positions, spoil the play?
Why did your nobleness look up to me,
Not down on the ignoble thing confessed?
Was it your part to stoop, or lift the low?
Wherefore did God exalt you? Who would teach
The brute man's tameness and intelligence
Must never drop the dominating eye:
Wink--and what wonder if the mad fit break,
Followed by stripes and fasting? Sound and sane,
My life, chastised now, couches at your foot.
Accept, redeem me! Do your eyes ask '_How?_'
I stand here penniless, a beggar; talk
What idle trash I may, this final blow
Of fortune fells me. _I_ disburse, indeed,
This boy his winnings? when each bubble-scheme
That danced athwart my brain, a minute since,
The worse the better,--of repairing straight
My misadventure by fresh enterprise,
Capture of other boys in foolishness
His fellows,--when these fancies fade away
At first sight of the lost so long, the found
So late, the lady of my life, before
Whose presence I, the lost, am also found
Incapable of one least touch of mean
Expedient, I who teemed with plot and wile--
That family of snakes your eye bids flee!
Listen! Our troublesomest dreams die off
In daylight: I awake, and dream is--where?
I rouse up from the past: one touch dispels
England and all here. I secured long since
A certain refuge, solitary home
To hide in, should the head strike work one day,
The hand forget its cunning, or perhaps
Society grow savage,--there to end
My life's remainder, which, say what fools will,
Is or should be the best of life,--its fruit,
All tends to, root and stem and leaf and flower.
Come with me, love, loved once, loved only, come,
Blend loves there! Let this parenthetic doubt
Of love, in me, have been the trial test
Appointed to all flesh at some one stage
Of soul's achievement,--when the strong man doubts
His strength, the good man whether goodness be,
The artist in the dark seeks, fails to find
Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine.
What if the lover may elude, no more
Than these, probative dark, must search the sky
Vainly for love, his soul's star? But the orb
Breaks from eclipse: I breathe again: I love!
Tempted, I fell; but fallen--fallen lie
Here at your feet, see! Leave this poor pretence
Of union with a nature and its needs
Repugnant to your needs and nature! Nay,
False, beyond falsity you reprehend
In me, is such mock marriage with such mere
Man-mask as--whom you witless wrong, beside,
By that expenditure of heart and brain
He recks no more of than would yonder tree
If watered with your life-blood: rains and dews
Answer its ends sufficiently, while me
One drop saves--sends to flower and fruit at last
The laggard virtue in the soul which else
Cumbers the ground! Quicken me! Call me yours--
Yours and the world's--yours and the world's and God's!
Yes, for you can, you only! Think! Confirm
Your instinct! Say, a minute since, I seemed
The castaway you count me,--all the more
Apparent shall the angelic potency
Lift me from out perdition's deep of deeps
To light and life and love!--that's love for you--
Love that already dares match might with yours.
You loved one worthy,--in your estimate,--
When time was; you descried the unworthy taint,
And where was love then? No such test could e'er
Try my love: but you hate me and revile;
Hatred, revilement--had you these to bear,
Would you, as I do, nor revile, nor hate,
But simply love on, love the more, perchance?
Abide by your own proof! '_Your love was love:_
_Its ghost knows no forgetting!_' Heart of mine,
Would that I dared remember! Too unwise
Were he who lost a treasure, did himself
Enlarge upon the sparkling catalogue
Of gems to her his queen who trusted late
The keeper of her caskets! Can it be
That I, custodian of such relic still
As your contempt permits me to retain,
All I dare hug to breast is--'_How your glove_
_Burst and displayed the long thin lily streak!_'
What may have followed--that is forfeit now!
I hope the proud man has grown humble! True--
One grace of humbleness absents itself--
Silence! yet love lies deeper than all words,
And not the spoken but the speechless love
Waits answer ere I rise and go my way."
Whereupon, yet one other time the name.
To end she looks the large deliberate look,
Even prolongs it somewhat; then the soul
Bursts forth in a clear laugh that lengthens on,
On, till--thinned, softened, silvered, one might say
The bitter runnel hides itself in sand,
Moistens the hard gray grimly comic speech.
"Ay--give the baffled angler even yet
His supreme triumph as he hales to shore
A second time the fish once 'scaped from hook--
So artfully has new bait hidden old
Blood-imbrued iron! Ay, no barb's beneath
The gilded minnow here! You bid break trust,
This time, with who trusts me,--not simply bid
Me trust you, me who ruined but myself,
In trusting but myself! Since, thanks to you,
I know the feel of sin and shame,--be sure,
I shall obey you and impose them both
On one who happens to be ignorant
Although my husband--for the lure is love,
Your love! Try other tackle, fisher-friend!
Repentance, expiation, hopes and fears,
What you had been, may yet be, would I but
Prove helpmate to my hero--one and all
These silks and worsteds round the hook seduce
Hardly the late torn throat and mangled tongue.
Pack up, I pray, the whole assortment prompt!
Who wonders at variety of wile
In the Arch-cheat? You are the Adversary!
Your fate is of your choosing: have your choice!
Wander the world,--God has some end to serve,
Ere he suppress you! He waits: I endure,
But interpose no finger-tip, forsooth,
To stop your passage to the pit. Enough
That I am stable, uninvolved by you
In the rush downwards: free I gaze and fixed;
Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike
My crowned contempt. You kneel? Prostrate yourself!
To earth, and would the whole world saw you there!"
Whereupon--"All right!" carelessly begins
Somebody from outside, who mounts the stair,
And sends his voice for herald of approach:
Half in half out the doorway as the door
Gives way to push.
"Old fellow, all's no good!
The train's your portion! Lay the blame on me!
I'm no diplomatist, and Bismarck's self
Had hardly braved the awful Aunt at broach
Of proposition--so has world-repute
Preceded the illustrious stranger! Ah!"--
Quick the voice changes to astonishment,
Then horror, as the youth stops, sees, and knows.
The man who knelt starts up from kneeling, stands
Moving no muscle, and confronts the stare.
One great red outbreak buries--throat and brow--
The lady's proud pale queenliness of scorn:
Then her great eyes that turned so quick, become
Intenser:--quail at gaze, not they indeed!
V
It is the young man shatters silence first.
"Well, my lord--for indeed my lord you are,
I little guessed how rightly--this last proof
Of lordship-paramount confounds too much
My simple headpiece! Let's see how we stand
Each to the other! how we stood i' the game
Of life an hour ago,--the magpies, stile,
And oak-tree witnessed. Truth exchanged for truth--
My lord confessed his four-years-old affair--
How he seduced and then forsook the girl
Who married somebody and left him sad.
My pitiful experience was--I loved
A girl whose gown's hem had I dared to touch
My finger would have failed me, palsy-fixed.
She left me, sad enough, to marry--whom?
A better man,--then possibly not you!
How does the game stand? Who is who and what
Is what, o' the board now, since an hour went by?
My lord 's '_seduced_, _forsaken_, _sacrificed_,'
Starts up, my lord's familiar instrument,
Associate and accomplice, mistress-slave--
Shares his adventure, follows on the sly!
--Ay, and since 'bag and baggage' is a phrase--
Baggage lay hid in carpet-bag belike,
Was but unpadlocked when occasion came
For holding council, since my back was turned,
On how invent ten thousand pounds which, paid,
Would lure the winner to lose twenty more,
Beside refunding these! Why else allow
The fool to gain them? So displays herself
The lady whom my heart believed--oh, laugh!
Noble and pure: whom my heart loved at once,
And who at once did speak truth when she said
'_I am not mine now but another's_'--thus
Being that other's! Devil's-marriage, eh?
'_My lie weds thine till lucre us do part?_'
But pity me the snobbish simpleton,
You two aristocratic tiptop swells
At swindling! Quits, I cry! Decamp content
With skin I 'm peeled of: do not strip bones bare--
As that you could, I have no doubt at all!
O you two rare ones! Male and female, Sir!
The male there smirked, this morning, '_Come, my boy--_
_Out with it! You've been crossed in love, I think:_
_I recognize the lover's hangdog look;_
_Make a clean breast and match my confidence,_
_For, I'll be frank, I too have had my fling,_
_Am punished for my fault, and smart enough!_
_Where now the victim hides her head, God knows!_'
Here loomed her head, life-large, the devil knew!
Look out, Salvini! Here 's your man, your match!
He and I sat applauding, stall by stall,
Last Monday--'_Here 's Othello_' was our word,
'_But where 's Iago?_' Where? Why, there! And now
The fellow-artist, female specimen--
Oh, lady, you must needs describe yourself!
He 's great in art, but you--how greater still
--(If I can rightly, out of all I learned,
Apply one bit of Latin that assures
'_Art means just art's concealment_')--tower yourself!
For he stands plainly visible henceforth--
Liar and scamp: while you, in artistry
Prove so consummate--or I prove perhaps
So absolute an ass--that--either way--
You still do seem to me who worshipped you
And see you take the homage of this man,
Your master, who played slave and knelt, no doubt,
Before a mistress in his very craft ...
Well, take the fact, I nor believe my eyes,
Nor trust my understanding! Still you seem
Noble and pure as when we had the talk
Under the tower, beneath the trees, that day.
And there 's the key explains the secret: down
He knelt to ask your leave to rise a grade
I' the mystery of humbug: well he may!
For how you beat him! Half an hour ago,
I held your master for my best of friends;
And now I hate him! Four years since, you seemed
My heart's one love: well, and you so remain!
What 's he to you in craft?"
She looks him through.
"My friend, 't is just that friendship have its turn--
Interrogate thus me whom one, of foes
The worst, has questioned and is answered by.
Take you as frank an answer! answers both
Begin alike so far, divergent soon
World-wide--I own superiority
Over you, over him. As him I searched,
So do you stand seen through and through by me
Who, this time, proud, report your crystal shrines
A dewdrop, plain as amber prisons round
A spider in the hollow heart his house!
Nowise are you that thing my fancy feared
When out you stepped on me, a minute since,
--This man's confederate! no, you step not thus
Obsequiously at beck and call to help
At need some second scheme, and supplement
Guile by force, use my shame to pinion me
From struggle and escape! I fancied that!
Forgive me! Only by strange chance,--most strange
In even this strange world,--you enter now,
Obtain your knowledge. Me you have not wronged
Who never wronged you--least of all, my friend,
That day beneath the College tower and trees,
When I refused to say,--'_not friend, but love!_'
Had I been found as free as air when first
We met, I scarcely could have loved you. No--
For where was that in you which claimed return
Of love? My eyes were all too weak to probe
This other's seeming, but that seeming loved
The soul in me, and lied--I know too late!
While your truth was truth: and I knew at once
My power was just my beauty--bear the word--
As I must bear, of all my qualities,
To name the poorest one that serves my soul
And simulates myself! So much in me
You loved, I know: the something that 's beneath
Heard not your call,--uncalled, no answer comes!
For, since in every love, or soon or late,
Soul must awake and seek out soul for soul,
Yours, overlooking mine then, would, some day,
Take flight to find some other; so it proved--
Missing me, you were ready for this man.
I apprehend the whole relation: his--
The soul wherein you saw your type of worth
At once, true object of your tribute. Well
Might I refuse such half-heart's homage! Love
Divining, had assured you I no more
Stand his participant in infamy
Than you--I need no love to recognize
As simply dupe and nowise fellow-cheat!
Therefore accept one last friend's-word,--your friend's,
All men's friend, save a felon's. Ravel out
The bad embroilment howsoe'er you may,
Distribute as it please you praise or blame
To me--so you but fling this mockery far--
Renounce this rag-and-feather hero-sham,
This poodle clipt to pattern, lion-like!
Throw him his thousands back, and lay to heart
The lesson I was sent,--if man discerned
Ever God's message,--just to teach. I judge--
To far another issue than could dream
Your cousin,--younger, fairer, as befits--
Who summoned me to judgment's exercise.
I find you, save in folly, innocent.
And in my verdict lies your fate; at choice
Of mine your cousin takes or leaves you. '_Take!_'
I bid her--for you tremble back to truth!
She turns the scale,--one touch of the pure hand
Shall so press down, emprison past relapse
Farther vibration 'twixt veracity--
That 's honest solid earth--and falsehood, theft
And air, that 's one illusive emptiness!
That reptile capture you? I conquered him:
You saw him cower before me! Have no fear
He shall offend you farther. Spare to spurn--
Safe let him slink hence till some subtler Eve
Than I, anticipate the snake--bruise head
Ere he bruise heel--or, warier than the first,
Some Adam purge earth's garden of its pest
Before the slaver spoil the Tree of Life!
"You! Leave this youth, as he leaves you, as I
Leave each! There 's caution surely extant yet
Though conscience in you were too vain a claim.
Hence quickly! Keep the cash but leave unsoiled
The heart I rescue and would lay to heal
Beside another's! Never let her know
How near came taint of your companionship!"
"Ah"--draws a long breath with a new strange look
The man she interpellates--soul astir
Under its covert, as, beneath the dust,
A coppery sparkle all at once denotes
The hid snake has conceived a purpose.
"Ah--
Innocence should be crowned with ignorance?
Desirable indeed, but difficult!
As if yourself, now, had not glorified
Your helpmate by imparting him a hint
Of how a monster made the victim bleed
Ere crook and courage saved her--hint, I say,--
Not the whole horror,--that were needless risk,--
But just such inkling, fancy of the fact,
As should suffice to qualify henceforth
The shepherd, when another lamb would stray,
For warning '_'Ware the wolf!_' No doubt at all,
Silence is generosity,--keeps wolf
Unhunted by flock's warder! Excellent,
Did--generous to me, mean--just to him!
But, screening the deceiver, lamb were found
Outraging the deceitless! So,--he knows!
And yet, unharmed I breathe--perchance, repent--
Thanks to the mercifully-politic!"
"Ignorance is not innocence but sin--
Witness yourself ignore what after-pangs
Pursue the plague-infected. Merciful
Am I? Perhaps! the more contempt, the less
Hatred; and who so worthy of contempt
As you that rest assured I cooled the spot
I could not cure, by poisoning, forsooth,
Whose hand I pressed there? Understand for once
That, sick, of all the pains corroding me
This burnt the last and nowise least--the need
Of simulating soundness. I resolved--
No matter how the struggle tasked weak flesh--
To hide the truth away as in a grave
From--most of all--my husband: he nor knows
Nor ever shall be made to know your part,
My part, the devil's part,--I trust, God's part
In the foul matter. Saved, I yearn to save
And not destroy: and what destruction like
The abolishing of faith in him, that's faith
In me as pure and true? Acquaint some child
Who takes yon tree into his confidence,
That, where he sleeps now, was a murder done,
And that the grass which grows so thick, he thinks,
Only to pillow him is product just
Of what lies festering beneath! 'T is God
Must bear such secrets and disclose them. Man?
The miserable thing _I_ have become
By dread acquaintance with my secret--_you_--
That thing had he become by learning _me_--
The miserable, whom his ignorance
Would wrongly call the wicked: ignorance
Being, I hold, sin ever, small or great.
No, he knows nothing!"
"He and I alike
Are bound to you for such discreetness, then.
What if our talk should terminate awhile?
Here is a gentleman to satisfy,
Settle accounts with, pay ten thousand pounds
Before we part--as, by his face, I fear,
Results from your appearance on the scene.
Grant me a minute's parley with my friend
Which scarce admits of a third personage!
The room from which you made your entry first
So opportunely--still untenanted--
What if you please return there? Just a word
To my young friend first--then, a word to you,
And you depart to fan away each fly
From who, grass-pillowed, sleeps so sound at home!"
"So the old truth comes back! A wholesome change,--
At last the altered eye, the rightful tone!
But even to the truth that drops disguise
And stands forth grinning malice which but now
Whined so contritely--I refuse assent
Just as to malice. I, once gone, come back?
No, my lord! I enjoy the privilege
Of being absolutely loosed from you
Too much--the knowledge that your power is null
Which was omnipotence. A word of mouth,
A wink of eye would have detained me once,
Body and soul your slave; and now, thank God,
Your fawningest of prayers, your frightfulest
Of curses--neither would avail to turn
My footstep for a moment!"
"Prayer, then, tries
No such adventure. Let us cast about
For something novel in expedient: take
Command,--what say you? I profess myself
One fertile in resource. Commanding, then,
I bid--not only wait there, but return
Here, where I want you! Disobey and--good!
On your own head the peril!"
"Come!" breaks in
The boy with his good glowing face. "Shut up!
None of this sort of thing while I stand here
--Not to stand that! No bullying, I beg!
I also am to leave you presently
And never more set eyes upon your face--
You won't mind that much; but--I tell you frank--
I do mind having to remember this
For your last word and deed--my friend who were!
Bully a woman you have ruined, eh?
Do you know,--I give credit all at once
To all those stories everybody told
And nobody but I would disbelieve:
They all seem likely now,--nay, certain, sure!
I daresay you did cheat at cards that night
The row was at the Club: '_sauter la coupe_'--
That was your 'cut,' for which your friends 'cut' you;
While I, the booby, 'cut'--acquaintanceship
With who so much as laughed when I said '_luck!_'
I daresay you had bets against the horse
They doctored at the Derby; little doubt,
That fellow with the sister found you shirk
His challenge and did kick you like a ball,
Just as the story went about! Enough:
It only serves to show how well advised,
Madam, you were in bidding such a fool
As I, go hang. You see how the mere sight
And sound of you suffice to tumble down
Conviction topsy-turvy: no,--that 's false,--
There 's no unknowing what one knows; and yet
Such is my folly that, in gratitude
For ... well, I 'm stupid; but you seemed to wish
I should know gently what I know, should slip
Softly from old to new, not break my neck
Between beliefs of what you were and are.
Well then, for just the sake of such a wish
To cut no worse a figure than needs must
In even eyes like mine, I 'd sacrifice
Body and soul! But don't think danger--pray!--
Menaces either! He do harm to us?
Let me say 'us' this one time! You 'd allow
I lent perhaps my hand to rid your ear
Of some cur's yelping--hand that 's fortified,
Into the bargain, with a horsewhip? Oh,
One crack and you shall see how curs decamp!--
My lord, you know your losses and my gains.
Pay me my money at the proper time!
If cash be not forthcoming--well, yourself
Have taught me, and tried often, I 'll engage,
The proper course: I post you at the Club,
Pillory the defaulter. Crack, to-day,
Shall, slash, to-morrow, slice through flesh and bone!
There, Madam, you need mind no cur, I think!"
"Ah, what a gain to have an apt no less
Thou grateful scholar! Nay, he brings to mind
My knowledge till he puts me to the blush,
So long has it lain rusty! Post my name!
That were indeed a wheal from whipcord! Whew!
I wonder now if I could rummage out
--Just to match weapons--some old scorpion-scourge!
Madam, you hear my pupil, may applaud
His triumph o'er the master. I--no more
Bully, since I 'm forbidden: but entreat--
Wait and return--for my sake, no! but just
To save your own defender, should he chance
Get thwacked through awkward flourish of his thong.
And what if--since all waiting 's weary work--
I help the time pass 'twixt your exit now
And entry then? for--pastime proper--here 's
The very thing, the Album, verse and prose
To make the laughing minutes launch away!
Each of us must contribute. I 'll begin--
'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
I 'm confident I beat the bard,--for why?
My young friend owns me an Iago--him
Confessed, among the other qualities,
A ready rhymer. Oh, he rhymed! Here goes!
--Something to end with '_horsewhip!_' No, that rhyme
Beats me; there 's '_cowslip_,' '_boltsprit_,' nothing else!
So, Tennyson take my benison,--verse for bard,
Prose suits the gambler's book best! Dared and done!"
Wherewith he dips pen, writes a line or two,
Closes and clasps the cover, gives the book,
Bowing the while, to her who hesitates,
Turns half away, turns round again, at last
Takes it as you touch carrion, then retires.
The door shuts fast the couple.
VI
With a change
Of his whole manner, opens out at once
The Adversary.
"Now, my friend, for you!
You who, protected late, aggressive grown,
Brandish, it seems, a weapon I must 'ware!
Plain speech in me becomes respectable
Henceforth because courageous; plainly, then--
(Have lash well loose, hold handle tight and light!)
Throughout my life's experience, you indulged
Yourself and friend by passing in review
So courteously but now, I vainly search
To find one record of a specimen
So perfect of the pure and simple fool
As this you furnish me. Ingratitude
I lump with folly,--all 's one lot,--so--fool!
Did I seek you or you seek me? Seek? sneak
For service to, and service you would style--
And did style--godlike, scarce an hour ago!
Fool, there again, yet not precisely there
First-rate in folly: since the hand you kissed
Did pick you from the kennel, did plant firm
Your footstep on the pathway, did persuade
Your awkward shamble to true gait and pace,
Fit for the world you walk in. Once a-strut
On that firm pavement which your cowardice
Was for renouncing as a pitfall, next
Came need to clear your brains of their conceit
They cleverly could distinguish who was who,
Whatever folk might tramp the thoroughfare.
Men, now--familiarly you read them off,
Each phiz at first sight! Oh, you had an eye!
Who couched it? made you disappoint each fox
Eager to strip my gosling of his fluff
So golden as he cackled 'Goose trusts lamb'?
'_Ay, but I saved you--wolf defeated fox--_
_Wanting to pick your bones myself?_' then, wolf
Has got the worst of it with goose for once.
I, penniless, pay you ten thousand pounds
(--No gesture, pray! I pay ere I depart!)
And how you turn advantage to account
Here 's the example! Have I proved so wrong
In my peremptory '_debt must be discharged_'?
Oh, you laughed lovelily, were loth to leave
The old friend out at elbows, pooh, a thing
Not to be thought of! I must keep my cash,
And you forget your generosity!
Ha ha! I took your measure when I laughed
My laugh to that! First quarrel--nay, first faint
Pretence at taking umbrage--'_Down with debt,_
_Both interest and principal!--The Club,_
_Exposure and expulsion!--stamp me out!_'
That 's the magnanimous magnificent
Renunciation of advantage! Well,
But whence and why did you take umbrage, Sir?
Because your master, having made you know
Somewhat of men, was minded to advance,
Expound you women, still a mystery!
My pupil pottered with a cloud, on brow,
A clod in breast: had loved, and vainly loved:
Whence blight and blackness, just for all the world
As Byron used to teach us boys. Thought I--
'_Quick rid him of that rubbish! Clear the cloud,_
_And set the heart a-pulsing!_'--heart, this time:
'T was nothing but the head I doctored late
For ignorance of Man; now heart 's to dose,
Palsied by over-palpitation due
To Woman-worship--so, to work at once
On first avowal of the patient's ache!
This morning you described your malady,--
How you dared love a piece of virtue--lost
To reason, as the upshot showed: for scorn
Fitly repaid your stupid arrogance;
And, parting, you went two ways, she resumed
Her path--perfection, while forlorn you paced
The world that 's made for beasts like you and me.
My remedy was--tell the fool the truth!
Your paragon of purity had plumped
Into these arms at their first outspread--'_fallen_
_My victim_,' she prefers to turn the phrase--
And, in exchange for that frank confidence,
Asked for my whole life present and to come--
Marriage: a thing uncovenanted for!
Never so much as put in question! Life--
Implied by marriage--throw that trifle in
And round the bargain off, no otherwise
Than if, when we played cards, because you won
My money you should also want my head!
That, I demurred to: we but played '_for love_'--
She won my love; had she proposed for stakes,
'_Marriage_,'--why, that 's for whist, a wiser game.
Whereat she raved at me, as losers will,
And went her way. So far the story 's known,
The remedy 's applied, no farther--which
Here 's the sick man's first _honorarium_ for--
Posting his medicine-monger at the Club!
That being, Sir, the whole you mean my fee--
In gratitude for such munificence
I 'm bound in common honesty to spare
No droplet of the draught: so,--pinch your nose,
Pull no wry faces!--drain it to the dregs!
I say '_She went off_'--'_went off_,' you subjoin,
'_Since not to wedded bliss, as I supposed,_
_Sure to some convent: solitude and peace_
_Help her to hide the shame from mortal view,_
_With prayer and fasting._' No, my sapient Sir!
Far wiselier, straightway she betook herself
To a prize-portent from the donkey-show
Of leathern long-ears that compete for palm
In clerical absurdity: since he,
Good ass, nor practises the shaving-trick,
The candle-crotchet, nonsense which repays
When you 've young ladies congregant,--but schools
The poor,--toils, moils, and grinds the mill, nor means
To stop and munch one thistle in this life
Till next life smother him with roses: just
The parson for her purpose! Him she stroked
Over the muzzle; into mouth with bit,
And on to back with saddle,--there he stood,
The serviceable beast who heard, believed
And meekly bowed him to the burden,--borne
Off in a canter to seclusion--ay,
The lady 's lost! But had a friend of mine
--While friend he was--imparted his sad case
To sympathizing counsellor, full soon
One cloud at least had vanished from his brow.
'_Don't fear!_' had followed reassuringly--
_The lost will in due time turn up again,_
_Probably just when, weary of the world,_
_You think of nothing less than settling-down_
_To country life and golden days, beside_
_A dearest best and brightest virtuousest_
_Wife: who needs no more hope to hold her own_
_Against the naughty-and-repentant--no,_
_Than water-gruel against Roman punch!_'
And as I prophesied, it proves! My youth,--
Just at the happy moment when, subdued
To spooniness, he finds that youth fleets fast,
That town-life tires, that men should drop boys'-play,
That property, position have, no doubt,
Their exigency with their privilege,
And if the wealthy wed with wealth, how dire
The double duty!--in, behold, there beams
Our long-lost lady, form and face complete!
And where 's my moralizing pupil now,
Had not his master missed a train by chance?
But, by your side instead of whirled away,
How have I spoiled scene, stopped catastrophe,
Struck flat the stage-effect I know by heart!
Sudden and strange the meeting--improvised?
Bless you, the last event she hoped or dreamed!
But rude sharp stroke will crush out fire from flint--
Assuredly from flesh. '_'T is you?_' '_Myself!_'
'_Changed?_' '_Changeless!_' '_Then, what's earth to me?_' '_To me_
_What 's heaven?_' '_So,--thine!_' '_And thine!_'
'_And likewise mine!_'
Had laughed '_Amen_' the devil, but for me
Whose intermeddling hinders this hot haste,
And bids you, ere concluding contract, pause--
Ponder one lesson more, then sign and seal
At leisure and at pleasure,--lesson's price
Being, if you have skill to estimate,
--How say you?--I 'm discharged my debt in full!
Since paid you stand, to farthing uttermost,
Unless I fare like that black majesty
A friend of mine had visit from last Spring.
Coasting along the Cape-side, he 's becalmed
Off an uncharted bay, a novel town
Untouched at by the trader: here 's a chance!
Out paddles straight the king in his canoe,
Comes over bulwark, says he means to buy
Ship's cargo--being rich and having brought
A treasure ample for the purpose. See!
Four dragons, stalwart blackies, guard the same
Wrapped round and round: its hulls, a multitude,--
Palm-leaf and cocoa-mat and goat's-hair cloth
All duly braced about with bark and board,--
Suggest how brave, 'neath coat, must kernel be!
At length the peeling is accomplished, plain
The casket opens out its core, and lo
--A brand-new British silver sixpence--bid
That 's ample for the Bank,--thinks majesty!
You are the Captain; call my sixpence cracked
Or copper; '_what I 've said is calumny;_
_The lady 's spotless!_' Then,--I 'll prove my words,
Or make you prove them true as truth--yourself,
Here, on the instant! I 'll not mince my speech,
Things at this issue. When she enters, then,
Make love to her! No talk of marriage now--
The point-blank bare proposal! Pick no phrase--
Prevent all misconception! Soon you 'll see
How different the tactics when she deals
With an instructed man, no longer boy
Who blushes like a booby. Woman's wit!
Man, since you have instruction, blush no more!
Such your five minutes' profit by my pains,
'T is simply now,--demand and be possessed!
Which means--you may possess--may strip the tree
Of fruit desirable to make one wise!
More I nor wish nor want: your act 's your act,
My teaching is but--there 's the fruit to pluck
Or let alone at pleasure. Next advance
In knowledge were beyond you! Don't expect
I bid a novice--pluck, suck, send sky-high
Such fruit, once taught that neither crab nor sloe
Falls readier prey to who but robs a hedge,
Than this gold apple to my Hercules.
Were you no novice but proficient--then,
Then, truly, I might prompt you--Touch and taste,
Try flavor and be tired as soon as I!
Toss on the prize to greedy mouths agape,
Betake yours, sobered as the satiate grow,
To wise man's solid meal of house and land,
Consols and cousin! but, my boy, my boy,
Such lore 's above you!
Here 's the lady back!
So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page
And come to thank its last contributor?
How kind and condescending! I retire
A moment, lest I spoil the interview,
And mar my own endeavor to make friends--
You with him, him with you, and both with me!
If I succeed--permit me to inquire
Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."--
And out he goes.
VII
She, face, form, bearing, one
Superb composure--
"He has told you all?
Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--
What gives him, as he thinks, the mastery
Over my body and my soul!--has told
That instance, even, of their servitude
He now exacts of me? A silent blush!
That 's well, though better would white ignorance
Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--
Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last
--Hideously learned as I seemed so late--
What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn
That, when my prophet's rod became the snake
I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up
--Incorporate whatever serpentine
Falsehood and treason and unmanliness
Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,
And so beginning, ends no otherwise
The Adversary! I was ignorant,
Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take
Nowise upon me as I ask myself
--_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read
The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep,
Even with him for consort? I revolve
Much memory, pry into the looks and words
Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,
And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams
Only pure marble through my dusky past,
A dubious cranny where such poison-seed
Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day
This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
Do not I recognize and honor truth
In seeming?--take your truth, and for return,
Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
You loved me: I believed you. I replied
--How could I other?--'_I was not my own_,'
No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
Now were another's. My own right in me,
For well or ill, consigned away--my face
Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
As though--less hasty and more provident--
Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
Buried away forever. Take it now,
Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
Those limes that make the College avenue!
I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
I had, that moment, seen into the heart
Of either, as I now am taught to see!
I do believe I should have straight assumed
My proper function, and sustained a soul,
--Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
So had I missed the momentary thrill
Of finding me in presence of a god,
But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
'_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
You would have yielded up your soul to me
--Not to the false god who has burned its clay
In his own image. I had shed my love
Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
That drinks and then disperses. Both of us
Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
That 's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
Then take love's last and best return! I think,
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
But, having run the circle, rests at home.
Why is your expiation yet to make?
Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
Now,--never wait the slow envelopment
Submitted to by unelastic age!
One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
Break from beneath this icy premature
Captivity of wickedness--I warn
Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
This May breaks all to bud--no winter now!
Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
I am past sin now, so shall you become!
Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"
He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
--Makes the due effort to surmount himself.
"I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
How he could read my purpose, which, it seems,
He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
My purpose put before you fair and plain
Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
Right what he set down wrong? He said--let 's think!
Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
Any one told me--my own mother died
Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
You would not wonder surely if I knew,
By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
Would you? No reason 's wanted in the case.
So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
Make captive any visitor and scream
All sorts of stories of their keeper--he 's
Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
Married or single--how, don't matter much:
Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,
That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.
Oh, and he added some absurdity
--That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--
Still love you, still of mind to die for you,
Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!
Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself;
--What I am, what I am not, in the eye
Of the world, is what I never cared for much.
Fool then or no fool, not one single word
In the whole string of lies did I believe,
But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--
I believe somehow in your purity
Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?
He is God, and work miracles he can!
Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!
They 've got a thing they call their Labyrinth
I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played
A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep
Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;
And there might I be staying now, stock-still,
But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose
And so straight pushed my path through let and stop
And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,
But well behind my back the prison-bars
In sorry plight enough, I promise you!
So here: I won my way to truth through lies--
Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame
I 'll rescue and redeem her,--shame 's no shame?
Then, I 'll avenge, protect--redeem myself
The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!
Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said,
Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,
Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?
You were revealed to me: where 's gratitude,
Where 's memory even, where the gain of you
Discernible in my low after-life
Of fancied consolation? why, no horse
Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch
Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,
And in your place found--him, made him my love,
Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught
So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows
Whether I bow me to the dust enough! ..
To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope
That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,
And give her hand of mine with no more heart
Than now you see upon this brow I strike!
What atom of a heart do I retain
Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
May she accord me pardon when I place
My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
Since uttermost indignity is spared--
Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
Where you appoint and how you see the good!
I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
Means that have power against the world. For time--
Take my whole life for your experiment!
If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
Still, sure, there 's something for a friend to do,
Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
I 'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
Swing it wide open to let you and him
Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend?_'
Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?
After no end of weeks and months and years
You might smile '_I believe you did your best!_'
And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
Ah, there 's just one thing more! How pale you look!
Why? Are you angry? If there 's, after all,
Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
The shame--I said was no shame,--none, I swear!--
In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--
Why, here 's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--
No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,
To let me off probation by one day,
Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!
Here 's the hand with the name to take or leave!
That 's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"
"Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.
"Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"
Hand in hand
The couple face him as he enters, stops
Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away
Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.
"So, you accept him?"
"Till us death do part!"
"No longer? Come, that 's right and rational!
I fancied there was power in common sense,
But did not know it worked thus promptly. Well--
At last each understands the other, then?
Each drops disguise, then? So, at supper-time
These masquerading people doff their gear,
Grand Turk his pompous turban, Quakeress
Her stiff-starched bib and tucker,--make-believe
That only bothers when, ball-business done,
Nature demands champagne and _mayonnaise_.
Just so has each of us sage three abjured
His and her moral pet particular
Pretension to superiority,
And, cheek by jowl, we henceforth munch and joke!
Go, happy pair, paternally dismissed
To live and die together--for a month,
Discretion can award no more! Depart
From whatsoe'er the calm sweet solitude
Selected--Paris not improbably--
At month's end, when the honeycomb 's left wax,
--You, daughter, with a pocketful of gold
Enough to find your village boys and girls
In duffel cloaks and hobnailed shoes from May
To--what 's the phrase?--Christmas-come-never-mas!
You, son and heir of mine, shall reappear
Ere Spring-time, that 's the ring-time, lose one leaf,
And--not without regretful smack of lip
The while you wipe it free of honey-smear--
Marry the cousin, play the magistrate,
Stand for the county, prove perfection's pink--
Master of hounds, gay-coated dine--nor die
Sooner than needs of gout, obesity,
And sons at Christ Church! As for me,--ah me,
I abdicate--retire on my success,
Four years well occupied in teaching youth
--My son and daughter the exemplary!
Time for me to retire now, having placed
Proud on their pedestal the pair: in turn,
Let them do homage to their master! You,--
Well, your flushed cheek and flashing eye proclaim
Sufficiently your gratitude: you paid
The _honorarium_, the ten thousand pounds
To purpose, did you not? I told you so!
And you,--but, bless me, why so pale--so faint
At influx of good fortune? Certainly,
No matter how or why or whose the fault,
I save your life--save it, nor less nor more!
You blindly were resolved to welcome death
In that black boor-and-bumpkin-haunted hole
Of his, the prig with all the preachments! _You_
Installed as nurse and matron to the crones
And wenches, while there lay a world outside
Like Paris (which again I recommend),
In company and guidance of--first, this,
Then--all in good time--some new friend as fit--
What if I were to say, some fresh myself,
As I once figured? Each dog has his day,
And mine 's at sunset: what should old dog do
But eye young litters' frisky puppyhood?
Oh, I shall watch this beauty and this youth
Frisk it in brilliance! But don't fear! Discreet,
I shall pretend to no more recognize
My quondam pupils than the doctor nods
When certain old acquaintances may cross
His path in Park, or sit down prim beside
His plate at dinner-table: tip nor wink
Scares patients he has put, for reason good,
Under restriction,--maybe, talked sometimes
Of douche or horsewhip to,--for why? because
The gentleman would crazily declare
His best friend was--Iago! Ay, and worse--
The lady, all at once grown lunatic,
In suicidal monomania vowed,
To save her soul, she needs must starve herself!
They 're cured now, both, and I tell nobody.
Why don't you speak? Nay, speechless, each of you
Can spare--without unclasping plighted troth--
At least one hand to shake! Left-hands will do--
Yours first, my daughter! Ah, it guards--it gripes
The precious Album fast--and prudently!
As well obliterate the record there
On page the last: allow me tear the leaf!
Pray, now! And afterward, to make amends,
What if all three of us contribute each
A line to that prelusive fragment,--help
The embarrassed bard who broke out to break down
Dumfoundered at such unforeseen success?
'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot_'
You begin--_place aux dames!_ I 'll prompt you then!
'_Here do I take the good the gods allot!_'
Next you, Sir! What, still sulky? Sing, O Muse!
'_Here does my lord in full discharge his shot!_'
Now for the crowning flourish! mine shall be" ...
"Nothing to match your first effusion, mar
What was, is, shall remain your masterpiece!
Authorship has the alteration-itch!
No, I protest against erasure. Read,
My friend!" (she gasps out). "Read and quickly read
'_Before us death do part_,' what made you mine
And made me yours--the marriage-license here!
Decide if he is like to mend the same!"
And so the lady, white to ghastliness,
Manages somehow to display the page
With left-hand only, while the right retains
The other hand, the young man's,--dreaming-drunk
He, with this drench of stupefying stuff,
Eyes wide, mouth open,--half the idiot's stare
And half the prophet's insight,--holding tight,
All the same, by his one fact in the world--
The lady's right-hand: he but seems to read--
Does not, for certain; yet, how understand
Unless he reads?
So, understand he does,
For certain. Slowly, word by word, _she_ reads
Aloud that license--or that warrant, say.
"_One against two--and two that urge their odds_
_To uttermost--I needs must try resource!_
_Madam, I laid me prostrate, bade you spurn_
_Body and soul: you spurned and safely spurned_
_So you had spared me the superfluous taunt_
_'Prostration means no power to stand erect,_
_Stand, trampling on who trampled--prostrate now!'_
_So, with my other fool-foe: I was fain_
_Let the boy touch me with the buttoned foil._
_And him the infection gains, he too must needs_
_Catch up the butcher's cleaver. Be it so!_
_Since play turns earnest, here 's my serious fence._
_He loves you; he demands your love: both know_
_What love means in my language. Love him then!_
_Pursuant to a pact, love pays my debt:_
_Therefore, deliver me from him, thereby_
_Likewise delivering from me yourself!_
_For, hesitate--much more, refuse consent--_
_I tell the whole truth to your husband. Flat_
_Cards lie on table, in our gamester-phrase!_
_Consent--you stop my mouth, the only way._"
"I did well, trusting instinct: knew your hand
Had never joined with his in fellowship
Over this pact of infamy. You known--
As he was known through every nerve of me.
Therefore I '_stopped his mouth the only way_'
But _my_ way! none was left for you, my friend--
The loyal--near, the loved one! No--no--no!
Threaten? Chastise? The coward would but quail.
Conquer who can, the cunning of the snake!
Stamp out his slimy strength from tail to head,
And still you leave vibration of the tongue.
His malice had redoubled--not on me
Who, myself, choose my own refining fire--
But on poor unsuspicious innocence;
And,--victim,--to turn executioner
Also--that feat effected, forky tongue
Had done indeed its office! Once snake's '_mouth_'
Thus '_open_'--how could mortal '_stop it_'?"
"So!"
A tiger-flash--yell, spring, and scream: halloo!
Death 's out and on him, has and holds him--ugh!
But _ne trucidet coram populo_
_Juvenis senem!_ Right the Horatian rule!
There, see how soon a quiet comes to pass!
VIII
The youth is somehow by the lady's side.
His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again.
Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.
"And that was good but useless. Had I lived,
The danger was to dread: but, dying now--
Himself would hardly become talkative,
Since talk no more means torture. Fools--what fools
These wicked men are! Had I borne four years,
Four years of weeks and months and days and nights,
Inured me to the consciousness of life
Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply,--
But that I bore about me, for prompt use
At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_'
And stays the venom? Since such need was now
Or never,--how should use not follow need?
Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life
By virtue of the license--warrant, say,
That blackens yet this Album--white again,
Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page!
Now, let me write the line of supplement,
As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line!_'"
And she does falteringly write to end.
"_I die now through the villain who lies dead,_
_Righteously slain. He would have outraged me,_
_So, my defender slew him. God protect_
_The right! Where wrong lay, I bear witness now._
_Let man believe me, whose last breath is spent_
_In blessing my defender from my soul!_"
And so ends the Inn Album.
As she dies,
Begins outside a voice that sounds like song,
And is indeed half song though meant for speech
Muttered in time to motion--stir of heart
That unsubduably must bubble forth
To match the fawn-step as it mounts the stair.
"All 's ended and all 's over! Verdict found
'_Not guilty_'--prisoner forthwith set free,
'Mid cheers the Court pretends to disregard!
Now Portia, now for Daniel, late severe.
At last appeased, benignant! '_This young man--_
_Hem--has the young man's foibles but no fault._
_He 's virgin soil--a friend must cultivate._
_I think no plant called "love" grows wild--a friend_
_May introduce, and name the bloom, the fruit!_'
Here somebody dares wave a handkerchief--
She 'll want to hide her face with presently!
Good-by then! '_Cigno fedel, cigno fedel,_
_Addio!_' Now, was ever such mistake--
Ever such foolish ugly omen? Pshaw!
Wagner, beside! '_Amo te solo, te_
_Solo amai!_' That 's worth fifty such!
But, mum, the grave face at the opened door!"
And so the good gay girl, with eyes and cheeks
Diamond and damask,--cheeks so white erewhile
Because of a vague fancy, idle fear
Chased on reflection!--pausing, taps discreet;
And then, to give herself a countenance,
Before she comes upon the pair inside,
Loud--the oft-quoted, long-laughed-over line--
"'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
Open the door!"
No: let the curtain fall!
PACCHIAROTTO
AND
HOW HE WORKED IN DISTEMPER
WITH OTHER POEMS
PROLOGUE
Oh, the old wall here! How I could pass
Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
My eyes from a wall not once away!
And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loth,
In lappets of tangle they laugh between.
Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims
The body,--the house, no eye can probe,--
Divined as, beneath a robe, the limbs?
And there again! But my heart may guess
Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
So, the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess
Died out and away in the leafy wraps!
Wall upon wall are between us: life
And song should away from heart to heart!
I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strife
At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start--
Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
That 's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
Of the rueful neighbors, and--forth to thee!
OF PACCHIAROTTO, AND HOW HE WORKED IN DISTEMPER
I
Query: was ever a quainter
Crotchet than this of the painter
Giacomo Pacchiarotto
Who took "Reform" for his motto?
II
He, pupil of old Fungaio,
Is always confounded (heigho!)
With Pacchia, contemporaneous
No question, but how extraneous
In the grace of soul, the power
Of hand,--undoubted dower
Of Pacchia who decked (as _we_ know,
My Kirkup!) San Bernardino,
Turning the small dark Oratory
To Siena's Art-laboratory,
As he made its straitness roomy
And glorified its gloomy,
With Bazzi and Beccafumi.
(Another heigho for Bazzi:
How people miscall him Razzi!)
III
This Painter was of opinion
Our earth should be his dominion
Whose Art could correct to pattern
What Nature had slurred--the slattern!
And since, beneath the heavens,
Things lay now at sixes and sevens,
Or, as he said, _sopra-sotto_--
Thought the painter Pacchiarotto
Things wanted reforming, therefore.
"Wanted it"--ay, but wherefore?
When earth held one so ready
As he to step forth, stand steady
In the middle of God's creation
And prove to demonstration
What the dark is, what the light is,
What the wrong is, what the right is,
What the ugly, what the beautiful,
What the restive, what the dutiful,
In Mankind profuse around him?
Man, devil as now he found him,
Would presently soar up angel
At the summons of such evangel,
And owe--what would Man _not_ owe
To the painter Pacchiarotto?
Ay, look to thy laurels, Giotto!
IV
But Man, he perceived, was stubborn,
Grew regular brute, once cub born;
And it struck him as expedient--
Ere he tried, to make obedient
The wolf, fox, bear, and monkey
By piping advice in one key,--
That his pipe should play a prelude
To something heaven-tinged not hell-hued,
Something not harsh but docile,
Man-liquid, not Man-fossil--
Not fact, in short, but fancy.
By a laudable necromancy
He would conjure up ghosts--a circle
Deprived of the means to work ill
Should his music prove distasteful
And pearls to the swine go wasteful.
To be rent of swine--that _was_ hard!
With fancy he ran no hazard:
Pact might knock him o'er the mazard.
V
So, the painter Pacchiarotto
Constructed himself a grotto
In the quarter of Stalloreggi--
As authors of note allege ye.
And on each of the whitewashed sides of it
He painted--(none far and wide so fit
As he to perform in fresco)--
He painted nor cried _quiesco_
Till he peopled its every square foot
With Man--from the Beggar barefoot
To the Noble in cap and feather;
All sorts and conditions together.
The Soldier in breastplate and helmet
Stood frowningly--hail fellow well met--
By the Priest armed with bell, book, and candle.
Nor did he omit to handle
The Fair Sex, our brave distemperer:
Not merely King, Clown, Pope, Emperor--
He diversified too his Hades
Of all forms, pinched Labor and paid Ease,
With as mixed an assemblage of Ladies.
VI
Which work done, dry,--he rested him,
Cleaned palette, washed brush, divested him
Of the apron that suits _frescanti_,
And, bonnet on ear stuck jaunty,
This hand upon hip well planted,
That, free to wave as it wanted,
He addressed in a choice oration
His folk of each name and nation,
Taught its duty to every station.
The Pope was declared an arrant
Impostor at once, I warrant.
The Emperor--truth might tax him
With ignorance of the maxim
"Shear sheep but nowise flay them!"
And the Vulgar that obey them,
The Ruled, well-matched with the Ruling,
They failed not of wholesome schooling
On their knavery and their fooling.
As for Art--where 's decorum? Pooh-poohed it is
By Poets that plague us with lewd ditties,
And Painters that pester with nudities!
VII
Now, your rater and debater
Is balked by a mere spectator
Who simply stares and listens
Tongue-tied, while eye nor glistens
Nor brow grows hot and twitchy,
Nor mouth, for a combat itchy,
Quivers with some convincing
Reply--that sets him wincing?
Nay, rather--reply that furnishes
Your debater with just what burnishes
The crest of him, all one triumph,
As you see him rise, hear him cry "Humph!
Convinced am I? This confutes me?
Receive the rejoinder that suits me!
Confutation of vassal for prince meet--
Wherein all the powers that convince meet,
And mash my opponent to mincemeat!"
VIII
So, off from his head flies the bonnet,
His hip loses hand planted on it,
While t' other hand, frequent in gesture,
Slinks modestly back beneath vesture,
As--hop, skip and jump,--he 's along with
Those weak ones he late proved so strong with!
Pope, Emperor, lo, he 's beside them,
Friendly now, who late could not abide them,
King, Clown, Soldier, Priest, Noble, Burgess;
And his voice, that out-roared Boanerges,
How minikin-mildly it urges
In accents how gentled and gingered
Its word in defence of the injured!
"Oh, call him not culprit, this Pontiff!
Be hard on this Kaiser ye won't if
Ye take into con-si-der-ation
What dangers attend elevation!
The Priest--who expects him to descant
On duty with more zeal and less cant?
He preaches but rubbish he 's reared in.
The Soldier, grown deaf (by the mere din
Of battle) to mercy, learned tippling
And what not of vice while a stripling.
The Lawyer--his lies are conventional.
And as for the Poor Sort--why mention all
Obstructions that leave barred and bolted
Access to the brains of each dolt-head?"
IX
He ended, you wager? Not half! A bet?
Precedence to males in the alphabet!
Still, disposed of Man's A B C, there 's X
Y Z want assistance,--the Fair Sex!
How much may be said in excuse of
Those vanities--males see no use of--
From silk shoe on heel to laced poll's-hood!
What 's their frailty beside our own falsehood?
The boldest, most brazen of ... trumpets,
How kind can they be to their dumb pets!
Of their charms--how are most frank, how few venal!
While as for those charges of Juvenal--
_Quæ nemo dixisset in toto_
_Nisi (ædepol) ore illoto_--
He dismissed every charge with an "_Apage!_"
X
Then, cocking (in Scotch phrase) his cap a-gee,
Right hand disengaged from the doublet
--Like landlord, in house he had sublet
Resuming of guardianship gestion,
To call tenants' conduct in question--
Hop, skip, jump, to inside from outside
Of chamber, he lords, ladies, louts eyed
With such transformation of visage
As fitted the censor of this age.
No longer an advocate tepid
Of frailty, but champion intrepid
Of strength,--not of falsehood but verity,--
He, one after one, with asperity
Stripped bare all the cant-clothed abuses,
Disposed of sophistic excuses,
Forced folly each shift to abandon,
And left vice with no leg to stand on.
So crushing the force he exerted,
That Man at his foot lay converted!
XI
True--Man bred of paint-pot and mortar!
But why suppose folks of this sort are
More likely to hear and be tractable
Than folks all alive and, in fact, able
To testify promptly by action
Their ardor, and make satisfaction
For misdeeds _non verbis sed factis?_
"With folks all alive be my practice
Henceforward! O mortar, paint-pot O,
Farewell to ye!" cried Pacchiarotto,
"Let only occasion intérpose!"
XII
It did so: for, pat to the purpose
Through causes I need not examine,
There fell upon Siena a famine.
In vain did the magistrates busily
Seek succor, fetch grain out of Sicily,
Nay, throw mill and bakehouse wide open--
Such misery followed as no pen
Of mine shall depict ye. Faint, fainter
Waxed hope of relief: so, our painter,
Emboldened by triumph of recency,
How could he do other with decency
Than rush in this strait to the rescue,
Play schoolmaster, point as with fescue
To each and all slips in Man's spelling
The law of the land?--slips now telling
With monstrous effect on the city,
Whose magistrates moved him to pity
As, bound to read law to the letter,
They minded their hornbook, no better.
XIII
I ought to have told you, at starting,
How certain, who itched to be carting
Abuses away clean and thorough
From Siena, both province and borough,
Had formed themselves into a company
Whose swallow could bolt in a lump any
Obstruction of scruple, provoking
The nicer throat's coughing and choking:
Fit Club, by as fit a name dignified
Of "Freed Ones"--"_Bardotti_"--which signified
"Spare-Horses" that walk by the wagon
The team has to drudge for and drag on.
This notable Club Pacchiarotto
Had joined long since, paid scot and lot to,
As free and accepted "Bardotto."
The Bailiwick watched with no quiet eye
The outrage thus done to society,
And noted the advent especially
Of Pacchiarotto their fresh ally.
XIV
These Spare-Horses forthwith assembled:
Neighed words whereat citizens trembled
As oft as the chiefs, in the Square by
The Duomo, proposed a way whereby
The city were cured of disaster.
"Just substitute servant for master,
Make Poverty Wealth and Wealth Poverty,
Unloose Man from overt and covert tie,
And straight out of social confusion
True Order would spring!" Brave illusion--
Aims heavenly attained by means earthy!
XV
Off to these at full speed rushed our worthy,--
Brain practised and tongue no less tutored,
In argument's armor accoutred,--
Sprang forth, mounted rostrum, and essayed
Proposals like those to which "Yes" said
So glibly each personage painted
O' the wall-side where with you 're acquainted.
He harangued on the faults of the Bailiwick:
"Red soon were our State-candle's paly wick,
If wealth would become but interfluous,
Fill voids up with just the superfluous;
If ignorance gave way to knowledge
--Not pedantry picked up at college
From Doctors, Professors _et cætera_--
(_They_ say: '_kai ta loipa_'--like better a
Long Greek string of _kappas_, _taus_, _lambdas_,
Tacked on to the tail of each damned ass)--
No knowledge we want of this quality,
But knowledge indeed--practicality
Through insight's fine universality!
If you shout '_Bailiffs, out on ye all! Fie,_
_Thou Chief of our forces, Amalfi,_
_Who shieldest the rogue and the clotpoll!_'
If you pounce on and poke out, with what pole
I leave ye to fancy, our Siena's
Beast-litter of sloths and hyenas--"
(Whoever to scan this is ill able
Forgets the town's name 's a dissyllable)--
"If, this done, ye did--as ye might--place
For once the right man in the right place,
If you listened to me" ...
XVI
At which last "If"
There flew at his throat like a mastiff
One Spare-Horse--another and another!
Such outbreak of tumult and pother,
Horse-faces a-laughing and fleering,
Horse-voices a-mocking and jeering,
Horse-hands raised to collar the caitiff
Whose impudence ventured the late "If"--
That, had not fear sent Pacchiarotto
Off tramping, as fast as could trot toe,
Away from the scene o£ discomfiture--
Had he stood there stock-still in a dumb fit--sure
Am I he had paid in his person
Till his mother might fail to know her son,
Though she gazed on him never so wistful,
In the figure so tattered and tristful.
Each mouth full of curses, each fist full
Of cuffings--behold, Pacchiarotto,
The pass which thy project has got to,
Of trusting, nigh ashes still hot--tow!
(The paraphrase--which I much need--is
From Horace "_per ignes incedis_.")
XVII
Right and left did he dash helter-skelter
In agonized search of a shelter.
No purlieu so blocked and no alley
So blind as allowed him to rally
His spirits and see--nothing hampered
His steps if he trudged and not scampered
Up here and down there in a city
That 's all ups and downs, more the pity
For folks who would outrun the constable.
At last he stopped short at the one stable
And sure place of refuge that 's offered
Humanity. Lately was coffered
A corpse in its sepulchre, situate
By St. John's Observance. "Habituate
Thyself to the strangest of bedfellows,
And, kicked by the live, kiss the dead fellows!"
So Misery counselled the craven.
At once he crept safely to haven
Through a hole left unbricked in the structure.
Ay, Misery, in have you tucked your
Poor client and left him conterminous
With--pah!--the thing fetid and verminous!
(I gladly would spare you the detail,
But History writes what I retail.)
XVIII
Two days did he groan in his domicile:
"Good Saints, set me free and I promise I 'll
Abjure all ambition of preaching
Change, whether to minds touched by teaching
--The smooth folk of fancy, mere figments
Created by plaster and pigments,--
Or to minds that receive with such rudeness
Dissuasion from pride, greed and lewdness,
--The rough folk of fact, life's true specimens
Of mind--'_hand in posse sed esse mens_'
As it was, is, and shall be forever
Despite of my utmost endeavor.
O live foes I thought to illumine,
Henceforth lie untroubled your gloom in!
I need my own light, every spark, as
I couch with this sole friend--a carcase!"
XIX
Two days thus he maundered and rambled;
Then, starved back to sanity, scrambled
From out his receptacle loathsome.
"A spectre!"--declared upon oath some
Who saw him _emerge_ and (appalling
To mention) his garments a-crawling
With plagues far beyond the Egyptian.
He gained, in a state past description,
A convent of months, the Observancy.
XX
Thus far is a fact: I reserve fancy
For Fancy's more proper employment:
And now she waves wing with enjoyment,
To tell ye how preached the Superior,
When somewhat our painter's exterior
Was sweetened. He needed (no mincing
The matter) much soaking and rinsing,
Nay, rubbing with drugs odoriferous,
Till, rid of his garments pestiferous,
And, robed by the help of the Brotherhood
In odds and ends,--this _gown_ and t' other hood,--
His empty inside first well-garnished,--
He delivered a tale round, unvarnished.
XXI
"Ah, Youth!" ran the Abbot's admonishment,
"Thine error scarce moves my astonishment.
For--why shall I shrink from asserting?--
Myself have had hopes of converting
The foolish to wisdom, till, sober,
My life found its May grow October.
I talked and I wrote, but, one morning,
Life's Autumn bore fruit in this warning:
'_Let tongue rest, and quiet thy quill be!_
_Earth is earth and not heaven, and ne'er will be._'
Man's work is to labor and leaven--
As best he may--earth here with heaven;
'T is work for work's sake that he 's needing:
Let, him work on and on as if speeding
Work's end, but not dream of succeeding!
Because if success were intended,
Why, heaven would begin ere earth ended.
A Spare-Horse? Be rather a thill-horse,
Or--what 's the plain truth--just a mill-horse!
Earth 's a mill where we grind and wear mufflers:
A whip awaits shirkers and shufflers
Who slacken their pace, sick of lugging
At what don't advance for their tugging.
Though round goes the mill, we must still post
On and on as if moving the mill-post.
So, grind away, mouth-wise and pen-wise,
Do all that we can to make men wise!
And if men prefer to be foolish,
Ourselves have proved horse-like not mulish:
Sent grist, a good sackful, to hopper,
And worked as the Master thought proper.
Tongue I wag, pen I ply, who am Abbot;
Stick, thou, Son, to daub-brush and dab-pot!
But, soft! I scratch hard on the scab hot?
Though cured of thy plague, there may linger
A pimple I fray with rough finger?
So soon could my homily transmute
Thy brass into gold? Why, the man 's mute!"
XXII
"Ay, Father, I 'm mute with admiring
How Nature's indulgence untiring
Still bids us turn deaf ear to Reason's
Best rhetoric--clutch at all seasons
And hold fast to what 's proved untenable!
Thy maxim is--Man 's not amenable
To argument: whereof by consequence--
Thine arguments reach me: a non-sequence!
Yet blush not discouraged, O Father!
I stand unconverted, the rather
That nowise I need a conversion.
No live man (I cap thy assertion)
By argument ever could take hold
Of me. 'T was the dead thing, the clay-cold,
Which grinned '_Art thou so in a hurry_
_That out of warm light thou must scurry_
_And join me down here in the dungeon_
_Because, above, one 's Jack and one--John,_
_One 's swift in the race, one--a hobbler,_
_One 's a crowned king and one--a capped cobbler,_
_Rich and poor, sage and fool, virtuous, vicious?_
_Why complain? Art thou so unsuspicious_
_That all 's for an hour of essaying_
_Who 's fit and who 's unfit for playing_
_His part in the after-construction_
_--Heaven's Piece whereof Earth 's the Induction?_
_Things rarely go smooth at Rehearsal._
_Wait patient the change universal,_
_And act, and let act, in existence!_
_For, as thou art clapped hence or hissed hence,_
_Thou hast thy promotion or otherwise._
_And why must wise thou have thy brother wise_
_Because in rehearsal thy cue be_
_To shine by the side of a booby?_
_No polishing garnet to ruby!_
_All 's well that ends well--through Art's magic._
_Some end, whether comic or tragic,_
_The Artist has purposed, be certain!_
_Explained at the fall of the curtain--_
_In showing thy wisdom at odds with_
_That folly: he tries men and gods with_
_No problem for weak wits to solve meant,_
_But one worth such Author's evolvement._
_So, back nor disturb play's production_
_By giving thy brother instruction_
_To throw up his fool's-part allotted!_
_Lest haply thyself prove besotted_
_When stript, for thy pains, of that costume_
_Of sage, which has bred the imposthume_
_I prick to relieve thee of,--Vanity!_'
XXIII
"So, Father, behold me in sanity!
I 'm back to the palette and mahlstick:
And as for Man--let each and all stick
To what was prescribed them at starting!
Once planted as fools--no departing
From folly one inch, _sæculorum_
_In sæcula!_ Pass me the jorum,
And push me the platter--my stomach
Retains, through its fasting, still some ache--
And then, with your kind _Benedicite_,
Good-by!"
XXIV
I have told with simplicity
My tale, dropped those harsh analytics,
And tried to content you, my critics,
Who greeted my early uprising!
I knew you through all the disguising,
Droll dogs, as I jumped up, cried "Heyday!
This Monday is--what else but May-day?
And these in the drabs, blues, and yellows,
Are surely the privileged fellows.
So, saltbox and bones, tongs and bellows!"
(I threw up the window) "Your pleasure?"
XXV
Then he who directed the measure--
An old friend--put leg forward nimbly,
"We critics as sweeps out your chimbly!
Much soot to remove from your flue, sir!
Who spares coal in kitchen an't you, sir!
And neighbors complain it 's no joke, sir,
--You ought to consume your own smoke, sir!"
XXVI
Ah, rogues, but my housemaid suspects you--
Is confident oft she detects you
In bringing more filth into my house
Than ever you found there! I 'm pious,
However: 't was God made you dingy
And me--with no need to be stingy
Of soap, when 't is sixpence the packet.
So, dance away, boys, dust my jacket,
Bang drum and blow fife--ay, and rattle
Your brushes, for that 's half the battle!
Don't trample the grass,--hocus-pocus
With grime my Spring snowdrop and crocus,--
And, what with your rattling and tinkling,
Who knows but you give me an inkling
How music sounds, thanks to the jangle
Of regular drum and triangle?
Whereby, tap-tap, chink-chink, 't is proven
I break rule as bad as Beethoven.
"That chord now--a groan or a grunt is 't?
Schumann's self was no worse contrapuntist.
No ear! or if ear, so tough-gristled--
He thought that he sung while he whistled!"
XXVII
So, this time I whistle, not sing at all,
My story, the largess I fling at all
And every the rough there whose _aubade_
Did its best to amuse me,--nor _so_ bad!
Take my thanks, pick up largess, and scamper
Off free, ere your mirth gets a damper!
You 've Monday, your one day, your fun-day,
While mine is a year that 's all Sunday.
I 've seen you, times--who knows how many?--
Dance in here, strike up, play the zany,
Make mouths at the Tenant, hoot warning
You 'll find him decamped next May-morning;
Then scuttle away, glad to 'scape hence
With--kicks? no, but laughter and ha'pence!
Mine 's freehold, by grace of the grand Lord
Who lets out the ground here,--my landlord:
To him I pay quit-rent--devotion;
Nor hence shall I budge, I 've a notion,
Nay, here shall my whistling and singing
Set all his street's echoes a-ringing
Long after the last of your number
Has ceased my front-court to encumber
While, treading down rose and ranunculus,
You _Tommy-make-room-for-your-Uncle_ us!
Troop, all of you--man or homunculus,
Quick march! for Xanthippe, my housemaid,
If once on your pates she a souse made
With what, pan or pot, bowl or _skoramis_,
First comes to her hand--things were more amiss!
I would not for worlds be your place in--
Recipient of slops from the basin!
You, Jack-in-the-Green, leaf-and-twiggishness
Won't save a dry thread on your priggishness!
While as for Quilp-Hop-o'-my-thumb there,
Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum there--
He 'll think as the pickle he curses,
I 've discharged on his pate his own verses!
"Dwarfs are saucy," says Dickens: so, sauced in
Your own sauce,[5] ...
XXVIII
But, back to my Knight of the Pencil,
Dismissed to his fresco and stencil!
Whose story--begun with a chuckle,
And throughout timed by raps of the knuckle,--
To small enough purpose were studied
If it ends with crown cracked or nose bloodied.
Come, critics,--not shake hands, excuse me!
But--say have you grudged to amuse me
This once in the forty-and-over
Long years since you trampled my clover
And scared from my house-eaves each sparrow
I never once harmed by that arrow
Of song, _karterotaton belos_,
(Which Pindar declares the true _melos_,)
I was forging and filing and finishing,
And no whit my labors diminishing
Because, though high up in a chamber
Where none of your kidney may clamber
Your hullabaloo would approach me?
Was it "grammar" wherein you would "coach" me--
You,--pacing in even that paddock
Of language allotted you _ad hoc_,
With a clog at your fetlocks,--you--scorners
Of me free of all its four corners?
Was it "clearness of words which convey thought"?
Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught
But ignorance, impudence, envy
And malice--what word-swathe would then vie
With yours for a clearness crystalline?
But had you to put in one small line
Some thought big and bouncing--as noddle
Of goose, born to cackle and waddle
And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is,
Never felt plague its puny _os frontis_--
You 'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered,
Clear cackle is easily uttered!
XXIX
Lo, I 've laughed out my laugh on this mirth-day!
Beside, at week's end, dawns my birthday,
That _hebdome, hieron emar_--
(More things in a day than you deem are!)
--_Tei gar Apollona chrusaora_
_Egeinato Leto._ So, gray or ray
Betide me, six days hence, I 'm vexed here
By no sweep, that 's certain, till next year!
"Vexed?"--roused from what else were insipid ease!
Leave snoring abed to Pheidippides!
We 'll up and work! won't we, Euripides?
AT THE "MERMAID"
The figure that thou here seest ... Tut!
Was it for gentle Shakespeare put?
B. JONSON. (_Adapted._)
I--"Next Poet?" No, my hearties,
I nor am nor fain would be!
Choose your chiefs and pick your parties,
Not one soul revolt to me!
I, forsooth, sow song-sedition?
I, a schism in verse provoke?
I, blown up by bard's ambition,
Burst--your bubble-king? You joke.
Come, be grave! The sherris mantling
Still about each mouth, mayhap,
Breeds you insight--just a scantling--
Brings me truth out--just a scrap.
Look and tell me! Written, spoken,
Here 's my life-long work: and where
--Where 's your warrant or my token
I 'm the dead king's son and heir?
Here 's my work: does work discover--
What was rest from work--my life?
Did I live man's hater, lover?
Leave the world at peace, at strife?
Call earth ugliness or beauty?
See things there in large or small?
Use to pay its Lord my duty?
Use to own a lord at all?
Blank of such a record, truly,
Here 's the work I hand, this scroll,
Yours to take or leave; as duly,
Mine remains the unproffered soul.
So much, no whit more, my debtors--
How should one like me lay claim
To that largess elders, betters
Sell you cheap their souls for--fame?
Which of you did I enable
Once to slip inside my breast,
There to catalogue and label
What I like least, what love best,
Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
Seek and shun, respect--deride?
Who has right to make a rout of
Rarities he found inside?
Rarities or, as he 'd rather,
Rubbish such as stocks his own:
Need and greed (oh, strange) the Father
Fashioned not for him alone!
Whence--the comfort set a-strutting,
Whence--the outcry "Haste, behold!
Bard's breast open wide, past shutting,
Shows what brass we took for gold!"
Friends, I doubt not he 'd display you
Brass--myself call orichale,--
Furnish much amusement; pray you
Therefore, be content I balk
Him and you, and bar my portal!
Here 's my work outside: opine
What 's inside me mean and mortal!
Take your pleasure, leave me mine!
Which is--not to buy your laurel
As last king did, nothing loth.
Tale adorned and pointed moral
Gained him praise and pity both.
Out rushed sighs and groans by dozens,
Forth by scores oaths, curses flew:
Proving you were cater-cousins,
Kith and kindred, king and you!
Whereas do I ne'er so little
(Thanks to sherris), leave ajar
Bosom's gate--no jot nor tittle
Grow we nearer than we are.
Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked,--
Should I give my woes an airing,--
Where 's one plague that claims respect?
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I saved and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I 'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
What, like you, he proved--your Pilgrim--
This our world a wilderness,
Earth still gray and heaven still grim,
Not a hand there his might press,
Not a heart his own might throb to,
Men all rogues and women--say,
Dolls which boys' heads duck and bob to,
Grown folk drop or throw away?
My experience being other,
How should I contribute verse
Worthy of your king and brother?
Balaam-like I bless, not curse.
I find earth not gray but rosy,
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
Do I stand and stare? All 's blue.
Doubtless I am pushed and shoved by
Rogues and fools enough: the more
Good luck mine, I love, am loved by
Some few honest to the core.
Scan the near high, scout the far low!
"But the low come close:" what then?
Simpletons? My match is Marlowe;
Sciolists? My mate is Ben.
Womankind--"the cat-like nature,
False and fickle, vain and weak"--
What of this sad nomenclature
Suits my tongue, if I must speak?
Does the sex invite, repulse so,
Tempt, betray, by fits and starts?
So becalm but to convulse so,
Decking heads and breaking hearts?
Well may you blaspheme at fortune!
I "threw Venus" (Ben, expound!)
Never did I need importune
Her, of all the Olympian round.
Blessings on my benefactress!
Cursings suit--for aught I know--
Those who twitched her by the back tress,
Tugged and thought to turn her--so!
Therefore, since no leg to stand on
Thus I 'm left with,--joy or grief
Be the issue,--I abandon
Hope or care you name me Chief!
Chief and king and Lord's anointed,
I?--who never once have wished
Death before the day appointed:
Lived and liked, not poohed and pished!
"Ah, but so I shall not enter,
Scroll in hand, the common heart--
Stopped at surface: since at centre
Song should reach _Welt-schmerz_, world-smart!"
"Enter in the heart?" Its shelly
Cuirass guard mine, fore and aft!
Such song "enters in the belly
And is cast out in the draught."
Back then to our sherris-brewage!
"Kingship" quotha? I shall wait--
Waive the present time: some new age ...
But let fools anticipate!
Meanwhile greet me--"friend, good fellow,
Gentle Will," my merry men!
As for making Envy yellow
With "Next Poet"--(Manners, Ben!)
HOUSE
Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?
Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
"Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?"
Invite the world, as my betters have done?
"Take notice: this building remains on view,
Its suites of reception every one,
Its private apartment and bedroom too;
"For a ticket, apply to the Publisher."
No: thanking the public, I must decline.
A peep through my window, if folk prefer;
But, please you, no foot over threshold of mine!
I have mixed with a crowd and heard free talk
In a foreign land where an earthquake chanced
And a house stood gaping, naught to balk
Man's eye wherever he gazed or glanced.
The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
The inside gaped: exposed to day,
Right and wrong and common and queer,
Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!
"Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth!
What a parcel of musty old books about!
He smoked,--no wonder he lost his health!
"I doubt if he bathed before he dressed.
A brasier?--the pagan, he burned perfumes!
You see it is proved, what the neighbors guessed:
His wife and himself had separate rooms."
Friends, the goodman of the house at least
Kept house to himself till an earthquake came:
'T is the fall of its frontage permits you feast
On the inside arrangement you praise or blame.
Outside should suffice for evidence:
And whoso desires to penetrate
Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense--
No optics like yours, at any rate!
"Hoity-toity! A street to explore,
Your house the exception! '_With this same key_
_Shakespeare unlocked his heart_,' once more!"
Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
SHOP
So, friend, your shop was all your house!
Its front, astonishing the street,
Invited view from man and mouse
To what diversity of treat
Behind its glass--the single sheet!
What gimcracks, genuine Japanese:
Gape-jaw and goggle-eye, the frog;
Dragons, owls, monkeys, beetles, geese;
Some crush-nosed human-hearted dog:
Queer names, too, such a catalogue!
I thought "And he who owns the wealth
Which blocks the window's vastitude,
--Ah, could I peep at him by stealth
Behind his ware, pass shop, intrude
On house itself, what scenes were viewed!
"If wide and showy thus the shop,
What must the habitation prove?
The true house with no name a-top--
The mansion, distant one remove,
Once get him off his traffic-groove!
"Pictures he likes, or books perhaps;
And as for buying most and best,
Commend me to these city chaps!
Or else he 's social, takes his rest
On Sundays, with a Lord for guest.
"Some suburb-palace, parked about
And gated grandly, built last year:
The four-mile walk to keep off gout;
Or big seat sold by bankrupt peer:
But then he takes the rail, that 's clear.
"Or, stop! I wager, taste selects
Some out-o'-the-way, some all-unknown
Retreat: the neighborhood suspects
Little that he who rambles lone
Makes Rothschild tremble on his throne!"
Nowise! Nor Mayfair residence
Fit to receive and entertain,--
Nor Hampstead villa's kind defence
From noise and crowd, from dust and drain,--
Nor country-box was soul's domain!
Nowise! At back of all that spread
Of merchandise, woe 's me, I find
A hole i' the wall where, heels by head,
The owner couched, his ware behind,
--In cupboard suited to his mind.
For why? He saw no use of life
But, while he drove a roaring trade,
To chuckle "Customers are rife!"
To chafe "So much hard cash outlaid,
Yet zero in my profits made!
"This novelty costs pains, but--takes?
Cumbers my counter! Stock no more!
This article, no such great shakes,
Fizzes like wildfire? Underscore
The cheap thing--thousands to the fore!"
'T was lodging best to live most nigh
(Cramp, coffinlike as crib might be)
Receipt of Custom; ear and eye
Wanted no outworld: "Hear and see
The bustle in the shop!" quoth he.
My fancy of a merchant-prince
Was different. Through his wares we groped
Our darkling way to--not to mince
The matter--no black den where moped
The master if we interloped!
Shop was shop only: household-stuff?
What did he want with comforts there?
"Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,
So goods on sale show rich and rare!
'_Sell and scud home_,' be shop's affair!"
What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!
Since somehow business must be done
At cost of trouble,--see, he throws
You choice of jewels, every one,
Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun!
Which lies within your power of purse?
This ruby that would tip aright
Solomon's sceptre? Oh, your nurse
Wants simply coral, the delight
Of teething baby,--stuff to bite!
Howe'er your choice fell, straight you took
Your purchase, prompt your money rang
On counter,--scarce the man forsook
His study of the "Times," just swang
Till-ward his hand that stopped the clang,--
Then off made buyer with a prize,
Then seller to his "Times" returned;
And so did day wear, wear, till eyes
Brightened apace, for rest was earned:
He locked door long ere candle burned.
And whither went he? Ask himself,
Not me! To change of scene, I think.
Once sold the ware and pursed the pelf,
Chaffer was scarce his meat and drink,
Nor all his music--money-chink.
Because a man has shop to mind
In time and place, since flesh must live,
Needs spirit lack all life behind,
All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive,
All loves except what trade can give?
I want to know a butcher paints,
A baker rhymes for his pursuit,
Candlestick-maker much acquaints
His soul with song, or, haply mute,
Blows out his brains upon the flute!
But--shop each day and all day long!
Friend, your good angel slept, your star
Suffered eclipse, fate did you wrong!
From where these sorts of treasures are,
There should our hearts be--Christ, how far!
PISGAH-SIGHTS
When sanctioning a volume of _Selections_ from his poems, Browning made
a third of _Pisgah-Sights_ to consist of the _Proem_ to _La Saisiaz_.
I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.
Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, ne'er disjointed
One from the other.
All 's lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!
"Which things must--_why_ be?"
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
"Such things should so be!"
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed--man's existence!
Man--wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish--
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
There 's the life lying,
And I see all of it,
Only, I 'm dying!
II
Could I but live again
Twice my life over,
Would I once strive again?
Would not I cover
Quietly all of it--
Greed and ambition--
So, from the pall of it,
Pass to fruition?
"Soft!" I 'd say, "Soul mine!
Three-score and ten years,
Let the blind mole mine
Digging out deniers!
Let the dazed hawk soar,
Claim the sun's rights too!
Turf 't is thy walk 's o'er,
Foliage thy flight 's to."
Only a learner,
Quick one or slow one,
Just a discerner,
I would teach no one.
I am earth's native:
No rearranging it!
I be creative,
Chopping and changing it?
March, men, my fellows!
Those who, above me,
(Distance so mellows)
Fancy you love me:
Those who, below me,
(Distance makes great so)
Free to forego me,
Fancy you hate so!
Praising, reviling,
Worst head and best head,
Past me defiling,
Never arrested,
Wanters, abounders,
March, in gay mixture,
Men, my surrounders!
I am the fixture.
So shall I fear thee,
Mightiness yonder!
Mock-sun--more near thee,
What is to wonder?
So shall I love thee,
Down in the dark,--lest
Glowworm I prove thee,
Star that now sparklest!
FEARS AND SCRUPLES
In answer to a letter of inquiry, addressed to him by Mr. W. G.
Kingsland, Browning wrote the following in regard to the meaning of
this poem: "I think, that the point I wanted to illustrate was this:
Where there is a genuine love of the 'letters' and 'actions' of the
invisible 'friend,'--however these may be disadvantaged by an inability
to meet the objections to their authenticity or historical value urged
by 'experts' who assume the privilege of learning over ignorance,--it
would indeed be a wrong to the wisdom and goodness of the 'friend' if
he were supposed capable of overlooking the actual 'love' and only
considering the 'ignorance' which, failing to in any degree affect
'love,' is really the highest evidence that 'love' exists. So I
_meant_, whether the result be clear or no."
Here's my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,--
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.
Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;
Present, he would find me at his side.
Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.
"Some day" proving--no day! Here 's the puzzle.
Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He 's so busied! If I could but muzzle
People's foolish mouths that give me pain!
"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts! How they shake the head
O'er these characters, your friend's inditing--
Call them forgery from A to Z!
"Actions? Where 's your certain proof" (they bother)
"He, of all you find so great and good,
He, he only, claims this, that, the other
Action--claimed by men, a multitude?"
I can simply-wish. I might refute you,
Wish my friend would,--by a word, a wink,--
Bid me stop that foolish mouth,--you brute you!
He keeps absent,--why, I cannot think.
Never mind! Though foolishness may flout me,
One thing 's sure enough: 't is neither frost,
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
Thanks for truth--though falsehood, gained--though lost.
All my days, I 'll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier
Lives my friend because I love him still!"
Ah, but there 's a menace some one utters!
"What and if your friend at home play tricks?
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters?
Mean your eyes should pierce through solid bricks?
"What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy?
Lay on you the blame that bricks--conceal?
Say '_At least I saw who did not see me,_
_Does see now, and presently shall feel_'?"
"Why, that makes your friend a monster!" say you:
"Had his house no window? At first nod,
Would you not have hailed him?" Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happened to be--God?
NATURAL MAGIC
All I can say is--I saw it!
The room was as bare as your hand.
I locked in the swarth little lady,--I swear,
From the head to the foot of her--well, quite as bare!
"No Nautch shall cheat me," said I, "taking my stand
At this bolt which I draw!" And this bolt--I withdraw it,
And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered
With--who knows what verdure, o'erfruited, o'erflowered?
Impossible! Only--I saw it!
All I can sing is--I feel it!
This life was as blank as that room;
I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed?
Walls, ceiling and floor,--not a chance for a weed!
Wide opens the entrance; where 's cold now, where 's gloom?
No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it,
Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,
These fruits of your bearing--nay, birds of your winging!
A fairy-tale! Only--I feel it!
MAGICAL NATURE
Flower--I never fancied, jewel--I profess you!
Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a flower.
Save but glow inside and--jewel, I should guess you,
Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is the dower.
You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a jewel--
Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime!
Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time or cruel,
Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at time!
BIFURCATION
We were two lovers; let me lie by her,
My tomb beside her tomb. On hers inscribe--
"I loved him; but my reason bade prefer
Duty to love, reject the tempter's bribe
Of rose and lily when each path diverged,
And either I must pace to life's far end
As love should lead me, or, as duty urged,
Plod the worn causeway arm-in-arm with friend.
So, truth turned falsehood: '_How I loathe a flower,_
_How prize the pavement!_' still caressed his ear--
The deafish friend's--through life's day, hour by hour,
As he laughed (coughing) '_Ay, it would appear!_'
But deep within my heart of hearts there hid
Ever the confidence, amends for all,
That heaven repairs what wrong earth's journey did,
When love from life-long exile comes at call.
Duty and love, one broad way, were the best--
Who doubts? But one or other was to choose,
I chose the darkling half, and wait the rest
In that new world where light and darkness fuse."
Inscribe on mine--"I loved her: love's track lay
O'er sand and pebble, as all travellers know.
Duty led through a smiling country, gay
With greensward where the rose and lily blow.
'_Our roads are diverse: farewell, love!_' said she:
'_'T is duty I abide by: homely sward_
_And not the rock-rough picturesque for me!_
_Above, where both roads join, I wait reward._
_Be you as constant to the path whereon_
_I leave you planted!_' But man needs must move,
Keep moving--whither, when the star is gone
Whereby he steps secure nor strays from love?
No stone but I was tripped by, stumbling-block
But brought me to confusion. Where I fell,
There I lay flat, if moss disguised the rock,
Thence, if flint pierced, I rose and cried '_All's well!_
_Duty be mine to tread in that high sphere_
_Where love from duty ne'er disparts, I trust,_
_And two halves make that whole, whereof--since here_
_One must suffice a man--why, this one must!_'"
Inscribe each tomb thus: then, some sage acquaint
The simple--which holds sinner, which holds saint!
NUMPHOLEPTOS
The Browning Society became so puzzled over the interpretation of
this poem that through Dr. Furnivall it applied to the poet for an
explanation and he replied: "Is not the key to the meaning of the poem
in its title νυμφόληπτος [caught or rapt by a nymph] not
γυναικεραστής [a woman lover]? An allegory, that is, of
an impossible ideal object of love, accepted conventionally as such
by a man who, all the while, cannot quite blind himself to the
demonstrable fact that the possessor of knowledge and purity obtained
without the natural consequences of obtaining them by achievement--not
inheritance,--such a being is imaginary, not real, a nymph and no
woman; and only such an one would be ignorant of and surprised at
the results of a lover's endeavor to emulate the qualities which the
beloved is entitled to consider as pre-existent to earthly experience,
and independent of its inevitable results. I had no particular woman
in my mind; certainly never intended to personify wisdom, philosophy,
or any other abstraction; and the orb, raying color out of whiteness,
was altogether a fancy of my own. The 'seven spirits' are in the
Apocalypse, also in Coleridge and Byron,--a common image."
Still you stand, still you listen, still you smile!
Still melts your moonbeam through me, white awhile,
Softening, sweetening, till sweet and soft
Increase so round this heart of mine, that oft
I could believe your moonbeam-smile has past
The pallid limit, lies, transformed at last
To sunlight and salvation--warms the soul
It sweetens, softens! Would you pass that goal,
Gain love's birth at the limit's happier verge,
And, where an iridescence lurks, but urge
The hesitating pallor on to prime
Of dawn!--true blood-streaked, sun-warmth, action-time,
By heart-pulse ripened to a ruddy glow
Of gold above my clay--I scarce should know
From gold's self, thus suffused! For gold means love.
What means the sad slow silver smile above
My clay but pity, pardon?--at the best,
But acquiescence that I take my rest,
Contented to be clay, while in your heaven
The sun reserves love for the Spirit-Seven
Companioning God's throne they lamp before,
--Leaves earth a mute waste only wandered o'er
By that pale soft sweet disempassioned moon
Which smiles me slow forgiveness! Such, the boon
I beg? Nay, dear, submit to this--just this
Supreme endeavor! As my lips now kiss
Your feet, my arms convulse your shrouding robe,
My eyes, acquainted with the dust, dare probe
Your eyes above for--what, if born, would blind
Mine with redundant bliss, as flash may find
The inert nerve, sting awake the palsied limb,
Bid with life's ecstasy sense overbrim
And suck back death in the resurging joy--
Love, the love whole and sole without alloy!
Vainly! The promise withers! I employ
Lips, arms, eyes, pray the prayer which finds the word,
Make the appeal which must be felt, not heard,
And none the more is changed your calm regard:
Rather, its sweet and soft grow harsh, and hard--
Forbearance, then repulsion, then disdain.
Avert the rest! I rise, see!--make, again
Once more, the old departure for some track
Untried, yet through a world which brings me back
Ever thus fruitlessly to find your feet,
To fix your eyes, to pray the soft and sweet
Which smile there--take from his new pilgrimage
Your outcast, once your inmate, and assuage
With love--not placid pardon now--his thirst
For a mere drop from out the ocean erst
He drank at! Well, the quest shall be renewed.
Fear nothing! Though I linger, unembued
With any drop, my lips thus close. I go!
So did I leave you, I have found you so,
And doubtlessly, if fated to return,
So shall my pleading persevere and earn
Pardon--not love--in that same smile, I learn,
And lose the meaning of, to learn once more,
Vainly!
What fairy track do I explore?
What magic hall return to, like the gem
Centuply-angled o'er a diadem?
You dwell there, hearted; from your midmost home
Rays forth--through that fantastic world I roam
Ever--from centre to circumference,
Shaft upon colored shaft: this crimsons thence,
That purples out its precinct through the waste.
Surely I had your sanction when I faced,
Fared forth upon that untried yellow ray
Whence I retrack my steps? They end to-day
Where they began, before your feet, beneath
Your eyes, your smile: the blade is shut in sheath,
Fire quenched in flint; irradiation, late
Triumphant through the distance, finds its fate,
Merged in your blank pure soul, alike the source
And tomb of that prismatic glow: divorce
Absolute, all-conclusive! Forth I fared,
Treading the lambent flamelet: little cared
If now its flickering took the topaz tint,
If now my dull-caked path gave sulphury hint
Of subterranean rage--no stay nor stint
To yellow, since you sanctioned that I bathe,
Burnish me, soul and body, swim and swathe
In yellow license. Here I reek suffused
With crocus, saffron, orange, as I used
With scarlet, purple, every dye o' the bow
Born of the storm-cloud. As before, you show
Scarce recognition, no approval, some
Mistrust, more wonder at a man become
Monstrous in garb, nay--flesh disguised as well,
Through his adventure. Whatsoe'er befell,
I followed, wheresoe'er it wound, that vein
You authorized should leave your whiteness, stain
Earth's sombre stretch beyond your midmost place
Of vantage,--trode that tinct whereof the trace
On garb and flesh repel you! Yes, I plead
Your own permission--your command, indeed,
That who would worthily retain the love
Must share the knowledge shrined those eyes above,
Go boldly on adventure, break through bounds
O' the quintessential whiteness that surrounds
Your feet, obtain experience of each tinge
That bickers forth to broaden out, impinge
Plainer his foot its pathway all distinct
From every other. Ah, the wonder, linked
With fear, as exploration manifests
What agency it was first tipped the crests
Of unnamed wildflower, soon protruding grew
Portentous 'mid the sands, as when his hue
Betrays him and the burrowing snake gleams through;
Till, last ... but why parade more shame and pain?
Are not the proofs upon me? Here again
I pass into your presence, I receive
Your smile of pity, pardon, and I leave ...
No, not this last of times I leave you, mute,
Submitted to my penance, so my foot
May yet again adventure, tread, from source
To issue, one more ray of rays which course
Each other, at your bidding, from the sphere
Silver and sweet, their birthplace, down that drear
Dark of the world,--you promise shall return
Your pilgrim jewelled as with drops o' the urn
The rainbow paints from, and no smatch at all
Of ghastliness at edge of some cloud-pall
Heaven cowers before, as earth awaits the fall
O' the bolt and flash of doom. Who trusts your word
Tries the adventure: and returns--absurd
As frightful--in that sulphur-steeped disguise
Mocking the priestly cloth-of-gold, sole prize
The arch-heretic was wont to bear away
Until he reached the burning. No, I say:
No fresh adventure! No more seeking love
At end of toil, and finding, calm above
My passion, the old statuesque regard,
The sad petrific smile!
O you--less hard
And hateful than mistaken and obtuse
Unreason of a she-intelligence!
You very woman with the pert pretence
To match the male achievement! Like enough!
Ay, you were easy victors, did the rough
Straightway efface itself to smooth, the gruff
Grind down and grow a whisper,--did man's truth
Subdue, for sake of chivalry and ruth,
Its rapier-edge to suit the bulrush-spear
Womanly falsehood fights with! O that ear
All fact pricks rudely, that thrice-superfine
Feminity of sense, with right divine
To waive all process, take result stain-free
From out the very muck wherein ...
Ah me!
The true slave's querulous outbreak! All the rest
Be resignation! Forth at your behest
I fare. Who knows but this--the crimson-quest--
May deepen to a sunrise, not decay
To that cold sad sweet smile?--which I obey.
APPEARANCES
And so you found that poor room dull,
Dark, hardly to your taste, my dear?
Its features seemed unbeautiful:
But this I know--'t was there, not here,
You plighted troth to me, the word
Which--ask that poor room how it heard.
And this rich room obtains your praise
Unqualified,--so bright, so fair,
So all whereat perfection stays?
Ay, but remember--here, not there,
The other word was spoken!--Ask
This rich room how you dropped the mask!
ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER
No protesting, dearest!
Hardly kisses even!
Don't we both know how it ends?
How the greenest leaf turns serest,
Bluest outbreak--blankest heaven,
Lovers--friends?