Who but Paul's sister! named of course like him

"Desforges;" but, mark you, in those days a queer

Custom obtained,--who knows whence grew the whim?--

That people could not read their title clear

To reverence till their own true names, made dim

By daily mouthing, pleased to disappear,

Replaced by brand-new bright ones: Arouet,

For instance, grew Voltaire; Desforges--Malcrais.

XCIX

"Demoiselle Malcrais de la Vigne"--because

The family possessed at Brederac

A vineyard,--few grapes, many hips-and-haws,--

Still a nice Breton name. As breast and back

Of this vivacious beauty gleamed through gauze,

So did her sprightly nature nowise lack

Lustre when draped, the fashionable way,

In "Malcrais de la Vigne,"--more short, "Malcrais."

C

Out from Paul's escritoire behold escape

The hoarded treasure! verse falls thick and fast,

Sonnets and songs of every size and shape.

The lady ponders on her prize; at last

Selects one which--O angel and yet ape!--

Her malice thinks is probably surpassed

In badness by no fellow of the flock,

Copies it fair, and "Now for my La Roque!"

CI

So, to him goes, with the neat manuscript,

The soft petitionary letter. "Grant

A fledgeling novice that with wing unclipt

She soar her little circuit, habitant

Of an old manor; buried in which crypt,

How can the youthful châtelaine but pant

For disemprisonment by one _ad hoc_

Appointed 'Mercury's' Editor, La Roque?"

CII

'T was an epistle that might move the Turk!

More certainly it moved our middle-aged

Pen-driver drudging at his weary work,

Raked the old ashes up and disengaged

The sparks of gallantry which always lurk

Somehow in literary breasts, assuaged

In no degree by compliments on style;

Are Forty wagging beards worth one girl's smile?

CIII

In trips the lady's poem, takes its place

Of honor in the gratified Gazette,

With due acknowledgment of power and grace;

Prognostication, too, that higher yet

The Breton Muse will soar: fresh youth, high race.

Beauty and wealth have amicably met

That Demoiselle Malcrais may fill the chair

Left vacant by the loss of Deshoulières.

CIV

"There!" cried the lively lady. "Who was right--

You in the dumps, or I the merry maid

Who know a trick or two can baffle spite

Tenfold the force of this old fool's? Afraid

Of Editor La Roque? But come! next flight

Shall outsoar--Deshoulières alone? My blade,

Sappho herself shall you confess outstript!

Quick, Paul, another dose of manuscript!"

CV

And so, once well a-foot, advanced the game:

More and more verses, corresponding gush

On gush of praise, till everywhere acclaim

Rose to the pitch of uproar. "Sappho? Tush!

Sure 'Malcrais on her Parrot' puts to shame

Deshoulières' pastorals, clay not worth a rush

Beside this find of treasure, gold in crock,

Unearthed in Brittany,--nay, ask La Roque!"

CVI

Such was the Paris tribute. "Yes," you sneer,

"Ninnies stock Noodledom, but folk more sage

Resist contagious folly, never fear!"

Do they? Permit me to detach one page

From the huge Album which from far and near

Poetic praises blackened in a rage

Of rapture! and that page shall be--who stares

Confounded now, I ask you?--just Voltaire's!

CVII

Ay, sharpest shrewdest steel that ever stabbed

To death Imposture through the armor-joints!

How did it happen that gross Humbug grabbed

Thy weapons, gouged thine eyes out? Fate appoints

That pride shall have a fall, or I had blabbed

Hardly that Humbug, whom thy soul aroints,

Could thus cross-buttock thee caught unawares,

And dismalest of tumbles proved--Voltaire's!

CVIII

See his epistle extant yet, wherewith

"Henri" in verse and "Charles" in prose he sent

To do her suit and service! Here 's the pith

Of half a dozen stanzas--stones which went

To build that simulated monolith--

Sham love in due degree with homage blent

As sham--which in the vast of volumes scares

The traveller still: "That stucco-heap--Voltaire's?"

CIX

"O thou, whose clarion-voice has overflown

The wilds to startle Paris that 's one ear!

Thou who such strange capacity hast shown

For joining all that 's grand with all that 's dear,

Knowledge with power to please--Deshoulières grown

Learned as Dacier in thy person! mere

Weak fruit of idle hours, these crabs of mine

I dare lay at thy feet, O Muse divine!

CX

"Charles was my task-work only; Henri trod

My hero erst, and now, my heroine--she

Shall be thyself! True--is it true, great God!

Certainly love henceforward must not be!

Yet all the crowd of Fine Arts fail--how odd!--

Tried turn by turn, to fill a void in me!

There 's no replacing love with these, alas!

Yet all I can I do to prove no ass.

CXI

"I labor to amuse my freedom; but

Should any sweet young creature slavery preach,

And--borrowing thy vivacious charm, the slut!--

Make me, in thy engaging words, a speech,

Soon should I see myself in prison shut

With all imaginable pleasure." Reach

The washhand-basin for admirers! There 's

A stomach-moving tribute--and Voltaire's!

CXII

Suppose it a fantastic billet-doux,

Adulatory flourish, not worth frown!

What say you to the Fathers of Trévoux?

These in their Dictionary have her down

Under the heading "Author:" "Malcrais, too,

Is 'Author' of much verse that claims renown."

While Jean-Baptiste Rousseau ... but why proceed?

Enough of this--something too much, indeed!

CXIII

At last La Roque, unwilling to be left

Behindhand in the rivalry, broke bounds

Of figurative passion hilt and heft,

Plunged his huge downright love through what surrounds

The literary female bosom; reft

Away its veil of coy reserve with "Zounds!

I love thee, Breton Beauty! All 's no use!

Body and soul I love,--the big word 's loose!"

CXIV

_He 's greatest now and to de-struc-ti-on_

_Nearest._ Attend the solemn word I quote,

O Paul! _There 's no pause at per-fec-ti-on._

Thus knolls thy knell the Doctor's bronzèd throat!

_Greatness a period hath, no sta-ti-on!_

Better and truer verse none ever wrote

(Despite the antique outstretched _a-i-on_)

Than thou, revered and magisterial Donne!

CXV

Flat on his face, La Roque, and--pressed to heart

His dexter hand--Voltaire with bended knee!

Paul sat and sucked-in triumph; just apart

Leaned over him his sister. "Well?" smirks he,

And "Well?" she answers, smiling--woman's art

To let a man's own mouth, not hers, decree

What shall be next move which decides the game:

Success? She said so. Failure? His the blame.

CXVI

"Well!" this time forth affirmatively comes

With smack of lip, and long-drawn sigh through teeth

Close clenched o'er satisfaction, as the gums

Were tickled by a sweetmeat teased beneath

Palate by lubricating tongue: "Well! crumbs

Of comfort these, undoubtedly! no death

Likely from famine at Fame's feast! 't is clear

I may put claim in for my pittance, Dear!

CXVII

"La Roque, Voltaire, my lovers? Then disguise

Has served its turn, grows idle; let it drop!

I shall to Paris, flaunt there in men's eyes

My proper manly garb and mount a-top

The pedestal that waits me, take the prize

Awarded Hercules. He threw a sop

To Cerberus who let him pass, you know,

Then, following, licked his heels: exactly so!

CXVIII

"I like the prospect--their astonishment,

Confusion: wounded vanity, no doubt,

Mixed motives; how I see the brows quick bent!

'What, sir, yourself, none other, brought about

This change of estimation? Phœbus sent

His shafts as from Diana?' Critic pout

Turns courtier smile: 'Lo, him we took for her!

Pleasant mistake! You bear no malice, sir?'

CXIX

"Eh, my Diana?" But Diana kept

Smilingly silent with fixed needle-sharp

Much-meaning eyes that seemed to intercept

Paul's very thoughts ere they had time to warp

From earnest into sport the words they leapt

To life with--changed as when maltreated harp

Renders in tinkle what some player-prig

Means for a grave tune though it proves a jig.

CXX

"What, Paul, and are my pains thus thrown away,

My lessons end in loss?" at length fall slow

The pitying syllables, her lips allay

The satire of by keeping in full flow,

Above their coral reef, bright smiles at play:

"Can it be, Paul thus fails to rightly know

And altogether estimate applause

As just so many asinine hee-haws?

CXXI

"I thought to show you" ... "Show me," Paul inbroke,

"My poetry is rubbish, and the world

That rings with my renown a sorry joke!

What fairer test of worth than that, form furled,

I entered the arena? Yet you croak

Just as if Phœbé and not Phœbus hurled

The dart and struck the Python! What, he crawls

Humbly in dust before your feet, not Paul's?

CXXII

"Nay, 't is no laughing matter though absurd

If there 's an end of honesty on earth!

La Roque sends letters, lying every word!

Voltaire makes verse, and of himself makes mirth

To the remotest age! Rousseau's the third

Who, driven to despair amid such dearth

Of people that want praising, finds no one

More fit to praise than Paul the simpleton!

CXXIII

"Somebody says--if a man writes at all

It is to show the writer's kith and kin

He was unjustly thought a natural;

And truly, sister, I have yet to win

Your favorable word, it seems, for Paul

Whose poetry you count not worth a pin

Though well enough esteemed by these Voltaires,

Rousseaus and such-like: let them quack, who cares?"

CXXIV

"--To Paris with you, Paul! Not one word's waste

Further: my scrupulosity was vain!

Go triumph! Be my foolish fears effaced

From memory's record! Go, to come again

With glory crowned,--by sister re-embraced,

Cured of that strange delusion of her brain

Which led her to suspect that Paris gloats

On male limbs mostly when in petticoats!"

CXXV

So laughed her last word, with the little touch

Of malice proper to the outraged pride

Of any artist in a work too much

Shorn of its merits. "By all means, be tried

The opposite procedure! Cast your crutch

Away, no longer crippled, nor divide

The credit of your march to the World's Fair

With sister Cherry-cheeks who helped you there!"

CXXVI

Crippled, forsooth! What courser sprightlier pranced

Paris-ward than did Paul? Nay, dreams lent wings:

He flew, or seemed to fly, by dreams entranced.

Dreams? wide-awake realities: no things

Dreamed merely were the missives that advanced

The claim of Malcrais to consort with kings

Crowned by Apollo--not to say with queens

Cinctured by Venus for Idalian scenes.

CXXVII

Soon he arrives, forthwith is found before

The outer gate of glory. Bold tic-toc

Announces there's a giant at the door.

"Ay, sir, here dwells the Chevalier La Roque."

"Lackey! Malcrais--mind, no word less nor more!--

Desires his presence. I've unearthed the brock:

Now, to transfix him!" There stands Paul erect,

Inched out his uttermost, for more effect.

CXXVIII

A bustling entrance: "Idol of my flame!

Can it be that my heart attains at last

Its longing? that you stand, the very same

As in my visions?... Ha! hey, how?" aghast

Stops short the rapture. "Oh, my boy's to blame!

You merely are the messenger! Too fast

My fancy rushed to a conclusion. Pooh!

Well, sir, the lady's substitute is--who?"

CXXIX

Then Paul's smirk grows inordinate. "Shake hands!

Friendship not love awaits you, master mine,

Though nor Malcrais nor any mistress stands

To meet your ardor! So, you don't divine

Who wrote the verses wherewith ring the land's

Whole length and breadth? Just he whereof no line

Had ever leave to blot your Journal--eh?

Paul Desforges Maillard--otherwise Malcrais!"

CXXX

And there the two stood, stare confronting smirk,

A while uncertain which should yield the _pas_.

In vain the Chevalier beat brain for quirk

To help in this conjuncture; at length, "Bah!

Boh! Since I've made myself a fool, why shirk

The punishment of folly? Ha, ha, ha,

Let me return your handshake!" Comic sock

For tragic buskin prompt thus changed La Roque.

CXXXI

"I'm nobody--a wren-like journalist;

You've flown at higher game and winged your bird,

The golden eagle! That's the grand acquist!

Voltaire's sly Muse, the tiger-cat, has purred.

Prettily round your feet; but if she missed

Priority of stroking, soon were stirred

The dormant spitfire. To Voltaire! away,

Paul Desforges Maillard, otherwise Malcrais!"

CXXXII

Whereupon, arm in arm, and head in air,

The two begin their journey. Need I say,

La Roque had felt the talon of Voltaire,

Had a long-standing little debt to pay,

And pounced, you may depend, on such a rare

Occasion for its due discharge? So, gay

And grenadier-like, marching to assault,

They reach the enemy's abode, there halt.

CXXXIII

"I'll be announcer!" quoth La Roque: "I know,

Better than you, perhaps, my Breton bard,

How to procure an audience! He's not slow

To smell a rat, this scamp Voltaire! Discard

The petticoats too soon,--you'll never show

Your _haut-de-chausses_ and all they've made or marred

In your true person. Here's his servant. Pray,

Will the great man see Demoiselle Malcrais?"

CXXXIV

Now, the great man was also, no whit less,

The man of self-respect,--more great man he!

And bowed to social usage, dressed the dress,

And decorated to the fit degree

His person; 't was enough to bear the stress

Of battle in the field, without, when free

From outside foes, inviting friends' attack

By--sword in hand? No,--ill-made coat on back.

CXXXV

And, since the announcement of his visitor

Surprised him at his toilet,--never glass

Had such solicitation! "Black, now--or

Brown be the killing wig to wear? Alas,

Where's the rouge gone, this cheek were better for

A tender touch of? Melted to a mass,

All my pomatum! There 's at all events

A devil--for he's got among my scents!"

CXXXVI

So, "barbered ten times o'er," as Antony

Paced to his Cleopatra, did at last

Voltaire proceed to the fair presence: high

In color, proud in port, as if a blast

Of trumpet bade the world "Take note! draws nigh

To Beauty, Power! Behold the Iconoclast,

The Poet, the Philosopher, the Rod

Of iron for imposture! Ah my God!"

CXXXVII

For there stands smirking Paul, and--what lights fierce

The situation as with sulphur flash--

There grinning stands La Roque! No carte-and-tierce

Observes the grinning fencer, but, full dash

From breast to shoulder-blade, the thrusts transpierce

That armor against which so idly clash

The swords of priests and pedants! Victors there,

Two smirk and grin who have befooled--Voltaire!

CXXXVIII

A moment's horror; then quick turn-about

On high-heeled shoe,--flurry of ruffles, flounce

Of wig-ties and of coat-tails,--and so out

Of door banged wrathfully behind, goes--bounce--

Voltaire in tragic exit! vows, no doubt,

Vengeance upon the couple. Did he trounce

Either, in point of fact? His anger's flash

subsided if a culprit craved his cash.

CXXXIX

As for La Roque, he having laughed his laugh

To heart's content,--the joke defunct at once,

Dead in the birth, you see,--its epitaph

Was sober earnest. "Well, sir, for the nonce,

You 've gained the laurel; never hope to graff

A second sprig of triumph there! Ensconce

Yourself again at Croisic: let it be

Enough you mastered both Voltaire and--me!

CXL

"Don't linger here in Paris to parade

Your victory, and have the very boys

Point at you! 'There 's the little mouse which made

Believe those two big lions that its noise,

Nibbling away behind the hedge, conveyed

Intelligence that--portent which destroys

All courage in the lion's heart, with horn

That's fable--there lay couched the unicorn!'

CXLI

"Beware us, now we 've found who fooled us! Quick

To cover! 'In proportion to men's fright,

Expect their fright's revenge!' quoth politic

Old Macchiavelli. As for me,--all's right:

I'm but a journalist. But no pin's prick

The tooth leaves when Voltaire is roused to bite!

So, keep your counsel, I advise! Adieu!

Good journey I Ha, ha, ha, Malcrais was--you!"

CXLII

"--Yes, I 'm Malcrais, and somebody beside,

You snickering monkey!" thus winds up the tale

Our hero, safe at home, to that black-eyed

Cherry-cheeked sister, as she soothes the pale

Mortified poet. "Let their worst be tried,

I'm their match henceforth--very man and male!

Don't talk to me of knocking-under! man

And male must end what petticoats began!

CXLIII

"How woman-like it is to apprehend

The world will eat its words! why, words transfixed

To stone, they stare at you in print,--at end,

Each writer's style and title! Choose betwixt

Fool and knave for his name, who should intend

To perpetrate a baseness so unmixed

With prospect of advantage! What is writ

Is writ: they've praised me, there's an end of it!

CXLIV

"No, Dear, allow me! I shall print these same

Pieces, with no omitted line, as Paul's.

Malcrais no longer, let me see folk blame

What they--praised simply?--placed on pedestals,

Each piece a statue in the House of Fame!

Fast will they stand there, though their presence galls

The envious crew: such show their teeth, perhaps,

And snarl, but never bite! I know the chaps!"

CXLV

O Paul, oh, piteously deluded! Pace

Thy sad sterility of Croisic flats,

Watch, from their southern edge, the foamy race

Of high-tide as it heaves the drowning mats

Of yellow-berried web-growth from their place,

The rock-ridge, when, rolling as far as Batz,

One broadside crashes on it, and the crags,

That needle under, stream with weedy rags!

CXLVI

Or, if thou wilt, at inland Bergerac,

Rude heritage but recognized domain,

Do as two here are doing: make hearth crack

With logs until thy chimney roar again

Jolly with fire-glow! Let its angle lack

No grace of Cherry-cheeks thy sister, fain

To do a sister's office and laugh smooth

Thy corrugated brow--that scowls forsooth!

CXLVII

Wherefore? Who does not know how these La Roques,

Voltaires, can say and unsay, praise and blame,

Prove black white, white black, play at paradox

And, when they seem to lose it, win the game?

Care not thou what this badger, and that fox,

His fellow in rascality, call "fame!"

Fiddlepin's end! Thou hadst it,--quack, quack, quack!

Have quietude from geese at Bergerac!

CXLVIII

Quietude! For, be very sure of this!

A twelvemonth hence, and men shall know or care

As much for what to-day they clap or hiss

As for the fashion of the wigs they wear,

Then wonder at. There's fame which, bale or bliss,--

Got by no gracious word of great Voltaire

Or not-so-great La Roque,--is taken back

By neither, any more than Bergerac!

CXLIX

Too true! or rather, true as ought to be!

No more of Paul the man, Malcrais the maid,

Thenceforth forever! One or two, I see,

Stuck by their poet: who the longest stayed

Was Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, and even he

Seemingly saddened as perforce he paid

A rhyming tribute: "After death, survive--

He hoped he should: and died while yet alive!"

CL

No, he hoped nothing of the kind, or held

His peace and died in silent good old age.

Him it was, curiosity impelled

To seek if there were extant still some page

Of his great predecessor, rat who belled

The cat once, and would never deign engage

In after-combat with mere mice,--saved from

More sonneteering.--René Gentilhomme.

CLI

Paul's story furnished forth that famous play

Of Piron's "Métromanie:" there you 'll find

He 's Francaleu, while Demoiselle Malcrais

Is Demoiselle No-end-of-names-behind!

As for Voltaire, he's Damis. Good and gay

The plot and dialogue, and all 's designed

To spite Voltaire: at "Something" such the laugh

Of simply "Nothing!" (see his epitaph).

CLII

But truth, truth, that's the gold! and all the good

I find in fancy is, it serves to set

Gold's inmost glint free, gold which comes up rude

And rayless from the mine. All fume and fret

Of artistry beyond this point pursued

Brings out another sort of burnish: yet

Always the ingot has its very own

Value, a sparkle struck from truth alone.

CLIII

Now, take this sparkle and the other spirt

Of fitful flame,--twin births of our gray brand

That 's sinking fast to ashes! I assert,

As sparkles want but fuel to expand

Into a conflagration no mere squirt

Will quench too quickly, so might Croisic strand,

Had Fortune pleased posterity to chowse,

Boast of her brace or beacons luminous.

CLIV

Did earlier Agamemnons lack their bard?

But later bards lacked Agamemnon too!

How often frustrate they of fame's award

Just because Fortune, as she listed, blew

Some slight bark's sails to bellying, mauled and marred

And forced to put about the First-rate True,

Such tacks but for a time: still--small-craft ride

At anchor, rot while Beddoes breasts the tide!

CLV

Dear, shall I tell you? There 's a simple test

Would serve, when people take on them to weigh

The worth of poets. "Who was better, best,

This, that, the other bard?" (Bards none gainsay

As good, observe! no matter for the rest.)

"What quality preponderating may

Turn the scale as it trembles?" End the strife

By asking "Which one led a happy life?"

CLVI

If one did, over his antagonist

That yelled or shrieked or sobbed or wept or wailed

Or simply had the dumps,--dispute who list,--

I count him victor. Where his fellow failed,

Mastered by his own means of might,--acquist

Of necessary sorrows,--he prevailed,

A strong since joyful man who stood distinct

Above slave-sorrows to his chariot linked.

CLVII

Was not his lot to feel more? What meant "feel"

Unless to suffer! Not, to see more? Sight--

What helped it but to watch the drunken reel

Of vice and folly round him, left and right,

One dance of rogues and idiots! Not, to deal

More with things lovely? What provoked the spite

Of filth incarnate, like the poet's need

Of other nutriment than strife and greed!

CLVIII

Who knows most, doubts most; entertaining hope,

Means recognizing fear; the keener sense

Of all comprised within our actual scope

Recoils from aught beyond earth's dim and dense.

Who, grown familiar with the sky, will grope

Henceforward among groundlings? That's offence

Just as indubitably: stars abound

O'erhead, but then--what flowers make glad the ground!

CLIX

So, force is sorrow, and each sorrow, force:

What then? since Swiftness gives the charioteer

The palm, his hope be in the vivid horse

Whose neck God clothed with thunder, not the steer

Sluggish and safe! Yoke Hatred, Crime, Remorse,

Despair: but ever 'mid the whirling fear,

Let, through the tumult, break the poet's face

Radiant, assured his wild slaves win the race!

CLX

Therefore I say ... no, shall not say, but think,

And save my breath for better purpose. White

From gray our log has burned to: just one blink

That quivers, loth to leave it, as a sprite

The outworn body. Ere your eyelids' wink

Punish who sealed so deep into the night

Your mouth up, for two poets dead so long,--

Here pleads a live pretender: right your wrong!

* * * * *

What a pretty tale you told me

Once upon a time

--Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)

Was it prose or was it rhyme,

Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,

While your shoulder propped my head.

Anyhow there 's no forgetting

This much if no more,

That a poet (pray, no petting!)

Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,

Went where suchlike used to go,

Singing for a prize, you know.

Well, he had to sing, nor merely

Sing but play the lyre;

Playing was important clearly

Quite as singing: I desire,

Sir, you keep the fact in mind

For a purpose that 's behind.

There stood he, while deep attention

Held the judges round,

--Judges able, I should mention,

To detect the slightest sound

Sung or played amiss: such ears

Had old judges, it appears!

None the less he sang out boldly,

Played in time and tune,

Till the judges, weighing coldly

Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon,

Sure to smile "In vain one tries

Picking faults out: take the prize!"

When, a mischief! Were they seven

Strings the lyre possessed?

Oh, and afterwards eleven,

Thank you! Well, sir,--who had guessed

Such ill luck in store?--it happed

One of those same seven strings snapped.

All was lost, then! No! a cricket

(What "cicada"? Pooh!)

--Some mad thing that left its thicket

For mere love of music--flew

With its little heart on fire,

Lighted on the crippled lyre.

So that when (Ah, joy!) our singer

For his truant string

Feels with disconcerted finger,

What does cricket else but fling

Fiery heart forth, sound the note

Wanted by the throbbing throat?

Ay and, ever to the ending,

Cricket chirps at need,

Executes the hand's intending,

Promptly, perfectly,--indeed

Saves the singer from defeat

With her chirrup low and sweet.

Till, at ending, all the judges

Cry with one assent

"Take the prize--a prize who grudges

Such a voice and instrument?

Why, we took your lyre for harp,

So it shrilled us forth F sharp!"

Did the conqueror spurn the creature,

Once its service done?

That's no such uncommon feature

In the case when Music's son

Finds his Lotte's power too spent

For aiding soul-development.

No! This other, on returning

Homeward, prize in hand,

Satisfied his bosom's yearning:

(Sir, I hope you understand!)

--Said "Some record there must be

Of this cricket's help to me!"

So, he made himself a statue:

Marble stood, life-size;

On the lyre, he pointed at you,

Perched his partner in the prize;

Never more apart you found

Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.

That 's the tale: its application?

Somebody I know

Hopes one day for reputation

Through his poetry that 's--Oh,

All so learned and so wise

And deserving of a prize!

If he gains one, will some ticket,

When his statue 's built,

Tell the gazer "'T was a cricket

Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt

Sweet and low, when strength usurped

Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?

"For as victory was nighest,

While I sang and played,--

With my lyre at lowest, highest,

Right alike,--one string that made

'Love' sound soft was snapt in twain,

Never to be heard again,--

"Had not a kind cricket fluttered,

Perched upon the place

Vacant left, and duly uttered

'Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bass

Asked the treble to atone

For its somewhat sombre drone."

But you don't know music! Wherefore

Keep on casting pearls

To a--poet? All I care for

Is--to tell him that a girl's

"Love" comes aptly in when gruff

Grows his singing. (There, enough!)

OH LOVE! LOVE

Translation of a lyric in the _Hyppolytus_ of Euripides, and printed

by J. P. Mahaffy in his _Euripides_, 1879. Mr. Mahaffy writes: "Mr.

Browning has honored me with the following translation of these

stanzas, so that the general reader may not miss the meaning or the

spirit of the ode. The English metre, though not a strict reproduction,

gives an excellent idea of the original."

I

Oh Love! Love, thou that from the eyes diffusest

Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest--

Souls against whom thy hostile march is made--

Never to me be manifest in ire,

Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade!

Since neither from the fire--

No, nor from the stars--is launched a bolt more mighty

Than that of Aphrodité

Hurled from the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire.

II

Idly, how idly, by the Alpheian river

And in the Pythian shrines of Phœbus, quiver

Blood-offerings from the bull, which Hellas heaps:

While Love we worship not--the Lord of men!

Worship not him, the very key who keeps

Of Aphrodité, when

She closes up her dearest chamber-portals:

--Love, when he comes to mortals,

Wide-wasting, through those deeps of woes beyond the deep!

DRAMATIC IDYLS

FIRST SERIES

The _Dramatic Idyls_, a group of poems which indicated a return to

Browning's earlier manner, furnished the title for two successive

volumes, the first series published in 1879, the second the year

following. The poems in the first series were composed while Browning

and his sister were sojourning in a mountain hotel near the summit of

the Splügen Pass in the summer of 1878. So stimulated was Browning by

the mountain air that he composed with extraordinary rapidity, even for

him, bringing down upon himself his sister's determined caution.

MARTIN RELPH

_My grandfather says he remembers he saw, when a youngster long ago,_

_On a bright May day, a strange old man, with a beard as white as

snow,_

_Stand on the hill outside our town like a monument of woe,_

_And, striking his bare bald head the while, sob out the

reason--so!_

If I last as long as Methuselah I shall never forgive myself:

But--God forgive me, that I pray, unhappy Martin Relph,

As coward, coward I call him--him, yes, him! Away from me!

Get you behind the man I am now, you man that I used to be!

What can have sewed my mouth up, set me a-stare, all eyes, no

tongue?

People have urged, "You visit a scare too hard on a lad so young!

You were taken aback, poor boy," they urge, "no time to regain your

wits:

Besides it had maybe cost your life." Ay, there is the cap which

fits!

So, cap me, the coward,--thus! No fear! A cuff on the brow does

good:

The feel of it hinders a worm inside which bores at the brain for

food.

See now, there certainly seems excuse: for a moment, I trust, dear

friends,

The fault was but folly, no fault of mine, or if mine, I have made

amends!

For, every day that is first of May, on the hill-top, here stand I,

Martin Relph, and I strike my brow, and publish the reason why,

When there gathers a crowd to mock the fool. No fool, friends, since

the bite

Of a worm inside is worse to bear: pray God I have balked him quite!

I 'll tell you. Certainly much excuse! It came of the way they

cooped

Us peasantry up in a ring just here, close huddling because

tight-hooped

By the red-coats round us villagers all: they meant we should see

the sight

And take the example,--see, not speak, for speech was the Captain's

right.

"You clowns on the slope, beware!" cried he: "This woman about to

die

Gives by her fate fair warning to such acquaintance as play the spy.

Henceforth who meddle with matters of state above them perhaps will

learn

That peasants should stick to their ploughtail, leave to the King

the King's concern.

"Here 's a quarrel that sets the land on fire, between King George

and his foes:

What call has a man of your kind--much less, a woman--to interpose?

Yet you needs must be meddling, folk like you, not foes--so much the

worse!

The many and loyal should keep themselves unmixed with the few

perverse.

"Is the counsel hard to follow? I gave it you plainly a month ago,

And where was the good? The rebels have learned just all that they

need to know.

Not a month since in we quietly marched: a week, and they had the

news,

From a list complete of our rank and file to a note of our caps and

shoes.

"All about all we did and all we were doing and like to do!

Only, I catch a letter by luck, and capture who wrote it, too.

Some of you men look black enough, but the milk-white face demure

Betokens the finger foul with ink: 't is a woman who writes, be

sure!

"Is it 'Dearie, how much I miss your mouth!'--good natural stuff,

she pens?

Some sprinkle of that, for a blind, of course: with talk about cocks

and hens,

How 'robin has built on the apple-tree, and our creeper which came

to grief

Through the frost, we feared, is twining afresh round casement in

famous leaf.'

"But all for a blind! She soon glides frank into 'Horrid the place

is grown

With Officers here and Privates there, no nook we may call our own:

And Farmer Giles has a tribe to house, and lodging will be to seek

For the second Company sure to come ('t is whispered) on Monday

week.'

'And so to the end of the chapter! There! The murder, you see, was

out:

Easy to guess how the change of mind in the rebels was brought

about!

Safe in the trap would they now lie snug, had treachery made no

sign:

But treachery meets a just reward, no matter if fools malign!

"That traitors had played us false, was proved--sent news which

fell so pat:

And the murder was out--this letter of love, the sender of this sent

that!

'T is an ugly job, though, all the same--a hateful, to have to deal

With a case of the kind, when a woman 's in fault: we soldiers need

nerves of steel!

"So, I gave her a chance, despatched post-haste a message to Vincent

Parkes

Whom she wrote to; easy to find he was, since one of the King's own

clerks,

Ay, kept by the King's own gold in the town close by where the

rebels camp:

A sort of a lawyer, just the man to betray our sort--the scamp!

"'If her writing is simple and honest and only the lover-like stuff

it looks,

And if you yourself are a loyalist, nor down in the rebels' books,

Come quick,' said I, 'and in person prove you are each of you clear

of crime,

Or martial law must take its course: this day next week 's the

time!'

"Next week is now: does he come? Not he! Clean gone, our clerk, in a

trice!

He has left his sweetheart here in the lurch: no need of a warning

twice!

His own neck free, but his partner's fast in the noose still, here

she stands

To pay for her fault. 'T is an ugly job: but soldiers obey commands.

"And hearken wherefore I make a speech! Should any acquaintance

share

The folly that led to the fault that is now to be punished, let

fools beware!

Look black, if you please, but keep hands white: and, above all

else, keep wives--

Or sweethearts or what they may be--from ink! Not a word now, on

your lives!"

Black? but the Pit's own pitch was white to the Captain's face--the

brute

With the bloated cheeks and the bulgy nose and the bloodshot eyes to

suit!

He was muddled with wine, they say: more like, he was out of his

wits with fear;

He had but a handful of men, that 's true,--a riot might cost him

dear.

And all that time stood Rosamund Page, with pinioned arms and face

Bandaged about, on the turf marked out for the party's firing-place.

I hope she was wholly with God: I hope 't was his angel stretched a

hand

To steady her so, like the shape of stone you see in our

church-aisle stand.

I hope there was no vain fancy pierced the bandage to vex her eyes,

No face within which she missed without, no questions and no

replies--

"Why did you leave me to die?"--"Because" ... Oh, fiends, too soon

you grin

At merely a moment of hell, like that--such heaven as hell ended in!

Let mine end too! He gave the word, up went the guns in a line.

Those heaped on the hill were blind as dumb,--for, of all eyes, only

mine

Looked over the heads of the foremost rank. Some fell on their knees

in prayer,

Some sank to the earth, but all shut eyes, with a sole exception

there.

That was myself, who had stolen up last, had sidled behind the

group:

I am highest of all on the hill-top, there stand fixed while the

others stoop!

From head to foot in a serpent's twine am I tightened: _I_ touch

ground?

No more than a gibbet's rigid corpse which the fetters rust around!

Can I speak, can I breathe, can I burst--aught else but see, see,

only see?

And see I do--for there comes in sight--a man, it sure must be!--

Who staggeringly, stumblingly rises, falls, rises, at random flings

his weight

On and on, anyhow onward--a man that's mad he arrives too late!

Else why does he wave a something white high-flourished above his

head?

Why does not he call, cry,--curse the fool!--why throw up his arms

instead?

O take this fist in your own face, fool! Why does not yourself shout

"Stay!

Here's a man comes rushing, might and main, with something he 's mad

to say"?

And a minute, only a moment, to have hell-fire boil up in your

brain,

And ere you can judge things right, choose heaven,--time 's over,

repentance vain!

They level: a volley, a smoke and the clearing of smoke: I see no

more

Of the man smoke hid, nor his frantic arms, nor the something white

he bore.

But stretched on the field, some half-mile off, is an object. Surely

dumb,

Deaf, blind were we struck, that nobody heard, not one of us saw him

come!

Has he fainted through fright? One may well believe! What is it he

holds so fast?

Turn him over, examine the face! Heyday! What, Vincent Parkes at

last?

Dead! dead as she, by the selfsame shot: one bullet has ended both,

Her in the body and him in the soul. They laugh at our plighted

troth.

"Till death us do part?" Till death us do join past parting--that

sounds like

Betrothal indeed! O Vincent Parkes, what need has my fist to strike?

I helped you: thus were you dead and wed: one bound, and your soul

reached hers!

There is clenched in your hand the thing, signed, sealed, the paper

which plain avers

She is innocent, innocent, plain as print, with the King's Arms

broad engraved:

No one can hear, but if any one high on the hill can see, she 's

saved!

And torn his garb and bloody his lips with heart-break--plain it

grew

How the week's delay had been brought about: each guess at the end

proved true.

It was hard to get at the folk in power: such waste of time! and

then

Such pleading and praying, with, all the while, his lamb in the

lions' den!

And at length when he wrung their pardon out, no end to the stupid

forms--

The license and leave: I make no doubt--what wonder if passion warms

The pulse in a man if you play with his heart?--he was something

hasty in speech;

Anyhow, none would quicken the work: he had to beseech, beseech!

And the thing once signed, sealed, safe in his grasp,--what followed

but fresh delays?

For the floods were out, he was forced to take such a roundabout of

ways!

And 't was "Halt there!" at every turn of the road, since he had to

cross the thick

Of the redcoats: what did they care for him and his "Quick, for

God's sake, quick!"

Horse? but he had one: had it how long? till the first knave smirked

"You brag

Yourself a friend of the King's? then lend to a King's friend here

your nag!"

Money to buy another? Why, piece by piece they plundered him still,

With their "Wait you must,--no help: if aught can help you, a guinea

will!"

And a borough there was--I forget the name--whose Mayor must have

the bench

Of Justices ranged to clear a doubt: for "Vincent," thinks he,

sounds French!

It well may have driven him daft, God knows! all man can certainly

know

Is--rushing and falling and rising, at last he arrived in a

horror--so!

When a word, cry, gasp, would have rescued both! Ay, bite me! The

worm begins

At his work once more. Had cowardice proved--that only--my sin of

sins!

Friends, look you here! Suppose ... suppose ... But mad I am, needs

must be!

Judas the Damned would never have dared such a sin as I dream! For,

see!

Suppose I had sneakingly loved her myself, my wretched self, and

dreamed

In the heart of me "She were better dead than happy and his!"--while

gleamed

A light from hell as I spied the pair in a perfectest embrace,

He the savior and she the saved,--bliss born of the very

murder-place!

No! Say I was scared, friends! Call me fool and coward, but nothing

worse!

Jeer at the fool and gibe at the coward! 'T was ever the coward's

curse

That fear breeds fancies in such: such takes their shadow for

substance still,

--A fiend at their back. I liked poor Parkes,--loved Vincent, if you

will!

And her--why, I said "Good morrow" to her, "Good even," and nothing

more:

The neighborly way! She was just to me as fifty had been before.

So, coward it is and coward shall be! There's a friend, now! Thanks!

A drink

Of water I wanted: and now I can walk, get home by myself, I think.

PHEIDIPPIDES

Χαίρετε, νικῶμεν.

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!

Gods of my birthplace, dæmons and heroes, honor to all!

Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal in praise

--Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the ægis and spear!

Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be, your peer.

Now, henceforth and forever,--O latest to whom I upraise

Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock!

Present to help, potent to save, Pan--patron I call!

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return!

See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks!

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you,

"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!

Persia has come, we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed,

Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,

Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn

Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.

Into their midst I broke: breath served but for "Persia has come!

Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth;

Razed to the ground is Eretria--but Athens, shall Athens sink,

Drop into dust and die--the flower of Hellas utterly die,

Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the

stander-by?

Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch o'er

destruction's brink?

How,--when? No care for my limbs!--there's lightning in all and

some--

Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it birth!"

O my Athens--Sparta love thee? Did Sparta respond?

Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust,

Malice,--each eye of her gave me its glitter of gratified hate!

Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses. I stood

Quivering,--the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch from dry

wood:

"Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they debate?

Thunder, thou Zeus! Athene, are Spartans a quarry beyond

Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang them 'Ye must'!"

No bolt launched from Olumpos! Lo, their answer at last!

"Has Persia come,--does Athens ask aid,--may Sparta befriend?

Nowise precipitate judgment--too weighty the issue at stake!

Count we no time lost time which lags through respect to the gods!

Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds

In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take

Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast:

Athens must wait, patient as we--who judgment suspend."

Athens,--except for that sparkle,--thy name, I had mouldered to ash!

That sent a blaze through my blood; off, off and away was I back,

--Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile!

Yet "O gods of my land!" I cried, as each hillock and plain,

Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again,

"Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we paid you erewhile?

Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rash

Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack!

"Oak and olive and bay,--I bid you cease to enwreathe

Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian's foot,

You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave!

Rather I hail thee, Parnes,--trust to thy wild waste tract!

Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked

My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave

No deity deigns to drape with verdure? at least I can breathe,

Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!"

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge;

Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar

Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way.

Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across:

"Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse?

Athens to aid? Though the dive were through Erebos, thus I obey--

Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge

Better!"--when--ha! what was it I came on, of wonders that are?

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he--majestical Pan!

Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned his hoof:

All the great god was good in the eyes grave-kindly--the curl

Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe,

As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I saw.

"Halt, Pheidippides!"--halt I did, my brain of a whirl:

"Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?" he gracious began:

"How is it,--Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof?

"Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no feast!

Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more helpful of old?

Ay, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, trust me!

Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faith

In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, 'The Goat-God saith:

When Persia--so much as strews not the soil--is cast in the sea,

Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most and least,

Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the free and the

bold!'

"Say Pan saith: 'Let this, foreshowing the place, be the pledge!'"

(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear

--Fennel--I grasped it a-tremble with dew--whatever it bode)

"While, as for thee" ... But enough! He was gone. If I ran

hitherto--

Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but flew.

Parnes to Athens--earth no more, the air was my road:

Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the razor's edge!

Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon rare!

Then spoke Miltiades. "And thee, best runner of Greece,

Whose limbs did duty indeed,--what gift is promised thyself?

Tell it us straightway,--Athens the mother demands of her son!"

Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but, lifting at length

His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his

strength

Into the utterance--"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done

Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release

From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!'

"I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to my mind!

Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel may grow,--

Pound--Pan helping us--Persia to dust, and, under the deep,

Whelm her away forever; and then,--no Athens to save,--

Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave,--

Hie to my house and home: and, when my children shall creep

Close to my knees,--recount how the God was awful yet kind,

Promised their sire reward to the full--rewarding him--so!"

Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:

So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Akropolis!

Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!

'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung down his shield,

Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field

And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,

Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine through clay,

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died--the bliss!

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute

Is still "Rejoice!"--his word which brought rejoicing indeed.

So is Pheidippides happy forever,--the noble strong man

Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god loved

so well;

He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to

tell

Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began,

So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter be mute:

"Athens is saved!"--Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed.

HALBERT AND HOB

Here is a thing that happened. Like wild beasts whelped, for den,

In a wild part of North England, there lived once two wild men

Inhabiting one homestead, neither a hovel nor hut,

Time out of mind their birthright: father and son, these--but--

Such a son, such a father! Most wildness by degrees

Softens away: yet, last of their line, the wildest and worst were

these.

Criminals, then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob;

But, give them a word, they returned a blow--old Halbert as young

Hob:

Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed,

Hated or feared the more--who knows?--the genuine wild-beast breed.

Thus were they found by the few sparse folk of the countryside;

But how fared each with other? E'en beasts couch, hide by hide,

In a growling, grudged agreement: so, father and son aye curled

The closelier up in their den because the last of their kind in the

world.

Still, beast irks beast on occasion. One Christmas night of snow,

Came father and son to words--such words! more cruel because the

blow

To crown each word was wanting, while taunt matched gibe, and curse

Competed with oath in wager, like pastime in hell,--nay, worse:

For pastime turned to earnest, as up there sprang at last

The son at the throat of the father, seized him and held him fast.

"Out of this house you go!" (there followed a hideous oath)--

"This oven where now we bake, too hot to hold us both!

If there's snow outside, there's coolness: out with you, bide a

spell

In the drift and save the sexton the charge of a parish shell!"

Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak

Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its seventy

broke

One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade

Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a feather

weighed.

Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,

Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms and

thighs

All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,

Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.

Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn

Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:

And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!

Trundle, log!

If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a

dog!"

Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor

Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--

Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until

A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the

house-door-sill.

Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--

Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand

linked,--

He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,

They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck lay

all the same.

"Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,

For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--

My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard

A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word,

"For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod

Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!

I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame

Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"

Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.

They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note

Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last

As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.

At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the selfsame place,

With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:

But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.

When he went to the burial, some one's staff he borrowed,--tottered

and leaned.

But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.

"There!

At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders

thought "In prayer."

A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.

So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.

"Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,

That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!

IVÀN IVÀNOVITCH

"They tell me, your carpenters," quoth I to my friend the Russ,

"Make a simple hatchet serve as a tool-box serves with us.

Arm but each man with his axe, 'tis a hammer and saw and plane

And chisel, and--what know I else? We should imitate in vain

The mastery wherewithal, by a flourish of just the adze,

He cleaves, clamps, dovetails in,--no need of our nails and brads,--

The manageable pine: 'tis said he could shave himself

With the axe,--so all adroit, now a giant and now an elf,

Does he work and play at once!"

Quoth my friend the Russ to me,

"Ay, that and more beside on occasion! It scarce may be

You never heard tell a tale told children, time out of mind,

By father and mother and nurse, for a moral that's behind,

Which children quickly seize. If the incident happened at all,

We place it in Peter's time when hearts were great not small,

Germanized, Frenchified. I wager 'tis old to you

As the story of Adam and Eve, and possibly quite as true."

* * * * *

In the deep of our land, 't is said, a village from out the woods

Emerged on the great main-road 'twixt two great solitudes.

Through forestry right and left, black verst and verst of pine,

From village to village runs the road's long wide bare line.

Clearance and clearance break the else-unconquered growth

Of pine and all that breeds and broods there, leaving loth

Man's inch of masterdom,--spot of life, spirt of fire,--

To star the dark and dread, lest right and rule expire

Throughout the monstrous wild, a-hungered to resume

Its ancient sway, suck back the world into its womb:

Defrauded by man's craft which clove from North to South

This highway broad and straight e'en from the Neva's mouth

To Moscow's gates of gold. So, spot of life and spirt

Of fire aforesaid, burn, each village death-begirt

By wall and wall of pine--unprobed undreamed abyss.

Early one winter morn, in such a village as this,

Snow-whitened everywhere except the middle road

Ice-roughed by track of sledge, there worked by his abode

Ivàn Ivànovitch, the carpenter, employed

On a huge shipmast trunk; his axe now trimmed and toyed

With branch and twig, and now some chop athwart the hole

Changed bole to billets, bared at once the sap and soul.

About him, watched the work his neighbors sheepskin-clad;

Each bearded mouth puffed steam, each gray eye twinkled glad

To see the sturdy arm which, never stopping play,

Proved strong man's blood still boils, freeze winter as he may.

Sudden, a burst of bells. Out of the road, on edge

Of the hamlet--horse's hoofs galloping. "How, a sledge?

What's here?" cried all as--in, up to the open space,

Workyard and market-ground, folk's common meeting-place,--

Stumbled on, till he fell, in one last bound for life,

A horse: and, at his heels, a sledge held--"Dmìtri's wife!

Back without Dmitri too! and children--where are they?

Only a frozen corpse!"

They drew it forth: then--"Nay,

Not dead, though like to die! Gone hence a month ago:

Home again, this rough jaunt--alone through night and snow--

What can the cause be? Hark--Droug, old horse, how he groans:

His day's done! Chafe away, keep chafing, for she moans:

She's coming to! Give here: see, motherkin, your friends!

Cheer up, all safe at home! Warm inside makes amends

For outside cold,--sup quick! Don't look as we were bears!

What is it startles you? What strange adventure stares

Up at us in your face? You know friends--which is which?

I'm Vàssili, he's Sergeì, Ivàn Ivànovitch"--

At the word, the woman's eyes, slow-wandering till they neared

The blue eyes o'er the bush of honey-colored beard,

Took in full light and sense and--torn to rags, some dream

Which hid the naked truth--O loud and long the scream

She gave, as if all power of voice within her throat

Poured itself wild away to waste in one dread note!

Then followed gasps and sobs, and then the steady flow

Of kindly tears: the brain was saved, a man might know.

Down fell her face upon the good friend's propping knee;

His broad hands smoothed her head, as fain to brush it free

From fancies, swarms that stung like bees unhived. He soothed--

"Loukèria, Loùscha!"--still he, fondling, smoothed and smoothed.

At last her lips formed speech.

"Ivàn, dear--you indeed!

You, just the same dear you! While I ... Oh, intercede,

Sweet Mother, with thy Son Almighty--let his might

Bring yesterday once more, undo all done last night!

But this time yesterday, Ivàn, I sat like you,

A child on either knee, and, dearer than the two,

A babe inside my arms, close to my heart--that's lost

In morsels o'er the snow! Father, Son, Holy Ghost,

Cannot you bring again my blessed yesterday?"

When no more tears would flow, she told her tale: this way.

"Maybe, a month ago,--was it not?--news came here,

They wanted, deeper down, good workmen fit to rear

A church and roof it in. 'We'll go,' my husband said:

'None understands like me to melt and mould their lead.'

So, friends here helped us off--Ivàn, dear, you the first!

How gay we jingled forth, all five--(my heart will burst)--

While Dmìtri shook the reins, urged Droug upon his track!

"Well, soon the month ran out, we just were coming back,

When yesterday--behold, the village was on fire!

Fire ran from house to house. What help, as, nigh and nigher,

The flames came furious? 'Haste,' cried Dmìtri, 'men must do

The little good man may: to sledge and in with you,

You and our three! We check the fire by laying flat

Each building in its path,--I needs must stay for that,--

But you ... no time for talk! Wrap round you every rug,

Cover the couple close,--you'll have the babe to hug.

No care to guide old Droug, he knows his way, by guess,

Once start him on the road: but chirrup, none the less!

The snow lies glib as glass and hard as steel, and soon

You'll have rise, fine and full, a marvel of a moon.

Hold straight up, all the same, this lighted twist of pitch!

Once home and with our friend Ivàn Ivànovitch,

All's safe: I have my pay in pouch, all's right with me,

So I but find as safe you and our precious three!

Off, Droug!'--because the flames had reached us, and the men

Shouted 'But lend a hand, Dmìtri--as good as ten!'

"So, in we bundled--I, and those God gave me once;

Old Droug, that's stiff at first, seemed youthful for the nonce:

He understood the case, galloping straight ahead.

Out came the moon: my twist soon dwindled, feebly red

In that unnatural day--yes, daylight, bred between

Moonlight and snow-light, lamped those grotto-depths which screen

Such devils from God's eye. Ah, pines, how straight you grow,

Nor bend one pitying branch, true breed of brutal snow!

Some undergrowth had served to keep the devils blind

While we escaped outside their border!

"Was that--wind?

Anyhow, Droug starts, stops, back go his ears, he snuffs,

Snorts,--never such a snort! then plunges, knows the sough's

Only the wind: yet, no--our breath goes up too straight!

Still the low sound,--less low, loud, louder, at a rate

There's no mistaking more! Shall I lean out--look--learn

The truth whatever it be? Pad, pad! At last, I turn--

"'T is the regular pad of the wolves in pursuit of the life in the

sledge!

An army they are: close-packed they press like the thrust of a

wedge:

They increase as they hunt: for I see, through the pine-trunks

ranged each side,

Slip forth new fiend and fiend, make wider and still more wide

The four-footed steady advance. The foremost--none may pass:

They are elders and lead the line, eye and eye--green-glowing brass!

But a long way distant still. Droug, save us! He does his best:

Yet they gain on us, gain, till they reach,--one reaches ... How

utter the rest?

O that Satan-faced first of the band! How he lolls out the length of

his tongue,

How he laughs and lets gleam his white teeth! He is on me, his paws

pry among

The wraps and the rags! O my pair, my twin-pigeons, lie still and

seem dead!

Stepàn, he shall never have you for a meal,--here's your mother

instead!

No, he will not be counselled--must cry, poor Stiòpka, so foolish!

though first

Of my boy-brood, he was not the best: nay, neighbors have called him

the worst:

He was puny, an undersized slip,--a darling to me, all the same!

But little there was to be praised in the boy, and a plenty to

blame.

I loved him with heart and soul, yes---but deal him a blow for a

fault,

He would sulk for whole days. 'Foolish boy! lie still or the villain

will vault,

Will snatch you from over my head!' No use! he cries, screams,--who

can hold

Fast a boy in a frenzy of fear! It follows--as I foretold!

The Satan-face snatched and snapped: I tugged, I tore--and then

His brother too needs must shriek! If one must go, 't is men

The Tsar needs, so we hear, not ailing boys! Perhaps

My hands relaxed their grasp, got tangled in the wraps:

God, he was gone! I looked: there tumbled the cursed crew,

Each fighting for a share: too busy to pursue!

That's so far gain at least: Droug, gallop another verst

Or two, or three--God sends we beat them, arrive the first!

A mother who boasts two boys was ever accounted rich:

Some have not a boy: some have, but lose him,--God knows which

Is worse: how pitiful to see your weakling pine

And pale and pass away! Strong brats, this pair of mine!

"O misery! for while I settle to what near seems

Content, I am 'ware again of the tramp, and again there gleams--

Point and point--the line, eyes, levelled green brassy fire!

So soon is resumed your chase? Will nothing appease, naught tire

The furies? And yet I think--I am certain the race is slack,

And the numbers are nothing like. Not a quarter of the pack!

Feasters and those full-fed are staying behind ... Ah, why?

We'll sorrow for that too soon! Now,--gallop, reach home, and die,

Nor ever again leave house, to trust our life in the trap

For life--we call a sledge! Teriòscha, in my lap!

Yes, I'll lie down upon you, tight-tie you with the strings

Here--of my heart! No fear, this time, your mother flings ...

Flings? I flung? Never! But think!--a woman, after all,

Contending with a wolf! Save you I must and shall,

Terentiì!

"How now? What, you still head the race,

Your eyes and tongue and teeth crave fresh food, Satan-face?

There and there! Plain I struck green fire out! Flash again?

All a poor fist can do to damage eyes proves vain!

My fist--why not crunch that? He is wanton for ... O God,

Why give this wolf his taste? Common wolves scrape and prod

The earth till out they scratch some corpse--mere putrid flesh!

Why must this glutton leave the faded, choose the fresh?

Terentiì--God, feel!--his neck keeps fast thy bag

Of holy things, saints' bones, this Satan-face will drag

Forth, and devour along with him, our Pope declared

The relics were to save from danger!

"Spurned, not spared!

'Twas through my arms, crossed arms, he--nuzzling now with snout,

Now ripping, tooth and claw--plucked, pulled Terentiì out,

A prize indeed! I saw--how could I else but see?--

My precious one--I bit to hold back--pulled from me!

Up came the others, fell to dancing--did the imps!--

Skipped as they scampered round. There's one is gray, and limps:

Who knows but old bad Màrpha--she always owed me spite

And envied me my births--skulks out of doors at night

And turns into a wolf, and joins the sisterhood,

And laps the youthful life, then slinks from out the wood,

Squats down at door by dawn, spins there demure as erst

--No strength, old crone,--not she!--to crawl forth half a verst!

"Well, I escaped with one: 'twixt one and none there lies

The space 'twixt heaven and hell. And see, a rose-light dyes

The endmost snow: 'tis dawn, 'tis day, 'tis safe at home!

We have outwitted you! Ay, monsters, snarl and foam,

Fight each the other fiend, disputing for a share,--

Forgetful, in your greed, our finest off we hear,

Tough Droug and I,--my babe, my boy that shall be man,

My man that shall be more, do all a hunter can

To trace and follow and find and catch and crucify

Wolves, wolfkins, all your crew! A thousand deaths shall die

The whimperingest cub that ever squeezed the teat!

'Take that!' we'll stab you with,--'the tenderness we met

When, wretches, you danced round,--not this, thank God--not this!

Hellhounds, we balk you!'

"But--Ah, God above!--Bliss, bliss,--

Not the band, no! And yet--yes, for Droug knows him! One--

This only of them all has said 'She saves a son!'

His fellows disbelieve such luck: but he believes,

He lets them pick the bones, laugh at him in their sleeves:

He 's off and after us,--one speck, one spot, one ball

Grows bigger, bound on bound,--one wolf as good as all!

Oh, but I know the trick! Have at the snaky tongue!

That 's the right way with wolves! Go, tell your mates I wrung

The panting morsel out, left you to howl your worst!

Now for it--now! Ah me! I know him--thrice-accurst

Satan-face,--him to the end my foe!

"All fight 's in vain:

This time the green brass points pierce to my very brain.

I fall--fall as I ought--quite on the babe I guard:

I overspread with flesh the whole of him. Too hard

To die this way, torn piecemeal? Move hence? Not I--one inch!

Gnaw through me, through and through: flat thus I lie nor flinch!

O God, the feel of the fang furrowing my shoulder!--see!

It grinds--it grates the bone. O Kìrill under me,

Could I do more? Besides he knew wolf's way to win:

I clung, closed round like wax: yet in he wedged and in,

Past my neck, past my breasts, my heart, until ... how feels

The onion-bulb your knife parts, pushing through its peels,

Till out you scoop its clove wherein lie stalk and leaf

And bloom and seed unborn?

"That slew me: yes, in brief,

I died then, dead I lay doubtlessly till Droug stopped

Here, I suppose. I come to life, I find me propped

Thus,--how or when or why--I know not. Tell me, friends,

All was a dream: laugh quick and say the nightmare ends!

Soon I shall find my house: 't is over there: in proof,

Save for that chimney heaped with snow, you 'd see the roof

Which holds my three--my two--my one--not one?

"Life 's mixed

With misery, yet we live--must live. The Satan fixed

His face on mine so fast, I took its print as pitch

Takes what it cools beneath. Ivàn Ivànovitch,

'T is you unharden me, you thaw, disperse the thing!

Only keep looking kind, the horror will not cling.

Your face smooths fast away each print of Satan. Tears

--What good they do! Life 's sweet, and all its after-years,

Ivàn Ivànovitch, I owe you! Yours am I!

May God reward you, dear!"

Down she sank. Solemnly

Ivàn rose, raised his axe,--for fitly, as she knelt,

Her head lay: well-apart, each side, her arms hung,--dealt

Lightning-swift thunder-strong one blow--no need of more!

Headless she knelt on still: that pine was sound at core

(Neighbors were used to say)--cast-iron-kernelled--which

Taxed for a second stroke Ivàn Ivànovitch.

The man was scant of words as strokes. "It had to be:

I could no other: God it was, bade 'Act for me!'"

Then stooping, peering round--what is it now he lacks?

A proper strip of bark wherewith to wipe his axe.

Which done, he turns, goes in, closes the door behind.

The others mute remain, watching the blood-snake wind

Into a hiding-place among the splinter-heaps.

At length, still mute, all move: one lifts--from where it steeps

Redder each ruddy rag of pine--the head: two more

Take up the dripping body: then, mute still as before,

Move in a sort of march, march on till marching ends

Opposite to the church; where halting,--who suspends,

By its long hair, the thing, deposits in its place

The piteous head: once more the body shows no trace

Of harm done: there lies whole the Loùscha, maid and wife

And mother, loved until this latest of her life.

Then all sit on the bank of snow which bounds a space

Kept free before the porch of judgment: just the place!

Presently all the souls, man, woman, child, which make

The village up, are found assembling for the sake

Of what is to be done. The very Jews are there:

A Gypsy-troop, though bound with horses for the Fair,

Squats with the rest. Each heart with its conception seethes

And simmers, but no tongue speaks: one may say,--none breathes.

Anon from out the church totters the Pope--the priest--

Hardly alive, so old, a hundred years at least.

With him, the Commune's head, a hoary senior too,

Stàrosta, that 's his style,--like Equity Judge with you,--

Natural Jurisconsult: then, fenced about with furs,

Pomeschìk,--Lord of the Land, who wields--and none demurs--

A power of life and death. They stoop, survey the corpse.

Then, straightened on his staff, the Stàrosta--the thorpe's

Sagaciousest old man--hears what you just have heard,

From Droug's first inrush, all, up to Ivàn's last word--

"God bade me act for him: I dared not disobey!"

Silence--the Pomeschìk broke with "A wild wrong way

Of righting wrong--if wrong there were, such wrath to rouse!

Why was not law observed? What article allows

Whoso may please to play the judge, and, judgment dealt,

Play executioner, as promptly as we pelt

To death, without appeal, the vermin whose sole fault

Has been--it dared to leave the darkness of its vault,

Intrude upon our day! Too sudden and too rash!

What was this woman's crime? Suppose the church should crash

Down where I stand, your lord: bound are my serfs to dare

Their utmost that I 'scape: yet, if the crashing scare

My children--as you are,--if sons fly, one and all,

Leave father to his fate,--poor cowards though I call

The runaways, I pause before I claim their life

Because they prized it more than mine. I would each wife

Died for her husband's sake, each son to save his sire:

'T is glory, I applaud--scarce duty, I require.

Ivàn Ivànovitch has done a deed that 's named

Murder by law and me: who doubts, may speak unblamed!"

All turned to the old Pope. "Ay, children, I am old--

How old, myself have got to know no longer. Rolled

Quite round, my orb of life, from infancy to age,

Seems passing back again to youth. A certain stage

At least I reach, or dream I reach, where I discern

Truer truths, laws behold more lawlike than we learn

When first we set our foot to tread the course I trod

With man to guide my steps: who leads me now is God.

'Your young men shall see visions:' and in my youth I saw

And paid obedience to man's visionary law:

'Your old men shall dream dreams:' and, in my age, a hand

Conducts me through the cloud round law to where I stand

Firm on its base,--know cause, who, before, knew effect.

"The world lies under me: and nowhere I detect

So great a gift as this--God's own--of human life.

'Shall the dead praise thee?' No! 'The whole live world is rife,

God, with thy glory,' rather! Life then, God's best of gifts,

For what shall man exchange? For life--when so he shifts

The weight and turns the scale, lets life for life restore

God's balance, sacrifice the less to gain the more,

Substitute--for low life, another's or his own--

Life large and liker God's who gave it: thus alone

May life extinguish life that life may trulier be!

How low this law descends on earth, is not for me

To trace: complexed becomes the simple, intricate

The plain, when I pursue law's winding. 'T is the straight

Outflow of law I know and name: to law, the fount

Fresh from God's footstool, friends, follow while I remount.

"A mother bears a child: perfection is complete

So far in such a birth. Enabled to repeat

The miracle of life,--herself was born so just

A type of womankind, that God sees fit to trust

Her with the holy task of giving life in turn.

Crowned by this crowning pride, how say you, should she spurn

Regality--discrowned, unchilded, by her choice

Of barrenness exchanged for fruit which made rejoice

Creation, though life's self were lost in giving birth

To life more fresh and fit to glorify God's earth?

How say you, should the hand God trusted with life's torch

Kindled to light the world--aware of sparks that scorch,

Let fall the same? Forsooth, her flesh a fire-flake stings:

The mother drops the child! Among what monstrous things

Shall she he classed? Because of motherhood, each male

Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:

His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--fear,

Beside the female proved male's mistress--only here.

The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire

Who dares assault her whelp: the beaver, stretched on fire,

Will die-without a groan: no pang avails to wrest

Her young from where they hide--her sanctuary breast.

What 's here then? Answer me, thou dead one, as, I trow,

Standing at God's own bar, he bids thee answer now!

Thrice crowned wast thou--each crown of pride, a child--thy charge!

Where are they? Lost? Enough: no need that thou enlarge

On how or why the loss: life left to utter 'lost'

Condemns itself beyond appeal. The soldier's post

Guards from the foe's attack the camp he sentinels:

That he no traitor proved, this and this only tells--

Over the corpse of him trod foe to foe's success.

Yet--one by one thy crowns torn from thee--thou no less

To scare the world, shame God,--livedst! I hold he saw

The unexampled sin, ordained the novel law,

Whereof first instrument was first intelligence

Found loyal here. I hold that, failing human sense,

The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface

Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace.

Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt was found

A man and mar enough, head-sober and heart-sound,

Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey.

Ivàn Ivànovitch, I hold, has done, this day,

No otherwise than did, in ages long ago,

Moses when he made known the purport of that flow

Of fire athwart the law's twain-tables! I proclaim

Ivàn Ivànovitch God's servant!"

At which name

Uprose that creepy whisper from out the crowd, is wont,

To swell and surge and sink when fellow-men confront

A punishment that falls on fellow flesh and blood,

Appallingly beheld--shudderingly understood,

No less, to be the right, the just, the merciful.

"God's servant!" hissed the crowd.

When the Amen grew dull

And died away and left acquittal plain adjudged,

"Amen!" last sighed the lord. "There 's none shall say I grudged

Escape from punishment in such a novel case.

Deferring to old age and holy life,--be grace

Granted! say I. No less, scruples might shake a sense

Firmer than I boast mine. Law 's law, and evidence

Of breach therein lies plain,--blood-red-bright,--all may see!

Yet all absolve the deed: absolved the deed must be!

"And next--as mercy rules the hour--methinks 't were well

You signify forthwith its sentence, and dispel

The doubts and fears, I judge, which busy now the head

Law puts a halter round--a halo--you, instead!

Ivàn Ivànovitch--what think you he expects

Will follow from his feat? Go, tell him--law protects

Murder, for once: no need he longer keep behind

The Sacred Pictures--where skulks Innocence enshrined,

Or I missay! Go, some! You others, haste and hide

The dismal object there: get done, whate'er betide!"

So, while the youngers raised the corpse, the elders trooped

Silently to the house: where halting, some one stooped,

Listened beside the door; all there was silent too.

Then they held counsel; then pushed door and, passing through,

Stood in the murderer's presence.

Ivàn Ivànovitch

Knelt, building on the floor that Kremlin rare and rich

He deftly cut and carved on lazy winter nights.

Some five young faces watched, breathlessly, as, to rights,

Piece upon piece, he reared the fabric nigh complete.

Stèscha, Ivàn's old mother, sat spinning by the heat

Of the oven where his wife Kàtia stood baking bread.

Ivàn's self, as he turned his honey-colored head,

Was just in act to drop, 'twixt fir-cones,--each a dome,--

The scooped-out yellow gourd presumably the home

Of Kolokol the Big: the bell, therein to hitch,

--An acorn-cup--was ready: Ivàn Ivànovitch

Turned with it in his mouth.

They told him he was free

As air to walk abroad. "How otherwise?" asked he.

TRAY

This poem describes an actual incident witnessed in Paris by a friend

of Browning's, and with accuracy of detail. The poem was written as

a protest against vivisection, which the poet called "an infamous

practice." He was early associated with Miss Frances Power Cobbe in

her efforts to prevent vivisection; and he was a vice-president of the

"Victoria Street Society for the Protection of Animals." Dr. Berdoe

says, "He always expressed the utmost abhorrence of the practices which

it opposes." To Miss Cobbe he wrote in 1874: "You have heard, 'I take

an equal interest with yourself in the effort to suppress vivisection.'

I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a

moment beside your noble acts; but this I know, I would rather submit

to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or

cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two." He goes

even so far as to say that the person not willing to sign the petition

against vivisection certainly could not be numbered among his friends.

To Miss Stackpoole he wrote in April, 1883: "I despise and abhor the

pleas on behalf of that infamous practice, vivisection." G. W. COOKE.

Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst

Of soul, ye bards!

Quoth Bard the first:

"Sir Olaf, the good knight, did don

His helm and eke his habergeon" ...

Sir Olaf and his bard ----!

"That sin-scathed brow" (quoth Bard the second),

"That eye wide ope as though Fate beckoned

My hero to some steep, beneath

Which precipice smiled tempting death" ...

You too without your host have reckoned!

"A beggar-child" (let 's hear this third!)

"Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird

Sang to herself at careless play,

And fell into the stream. 'Dismay!

Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.

"Bystanders reason, think of wives

And children ere they risk their lives.

Over the balustrade has bounced

A mere instinctive dog, and pounced

Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!

"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight

In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite

A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet!

Good dog! What, off again? There 's yet

Another child to save? All right!'

"How strange we saw no other fall!

It 's instinct in the animal.

Good dog! But he 's a long while under:

If he got drowned I should not wonder--

Strong current, that against the wall!

"'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time

--What may the thing be? Well, that 's prime!

Now, did you ever? Reason reigns

In man alone, since all Tray's pains

Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'

"And so, amid the laughter gay,

Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,--

Till somebody, prerogatived

With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,

His brain would show us, I should say.

"'John, go and catch--or, if needs be,

Purchase--that animal for me!

By vivisection, at expense

Of half-an-hour and eighteenpence,

How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"

NED BRATTS

Written from memory of Bunyan's story of old Tod in _The Life and Death

of Mr. Badman_.

'T was Bedford Special Assize, one daft Midsummer's Day:

A broiling blasting June,--was never its like, men say.

Corn stood sheaf-ripe already, and trees looked yellow as that;

Ponds drained dust-dry, the cattle lay foaming around each flat.

Inside town, dogs went mad, and folk kept bibbing beer,

While the parsons prayed for rain. 'T was horrible, yes--but queer:

Queer--for the sun laughed gay, yet nobody moved a hand

To work one stroke at his trade: as given to understand

That all was come to a stop, work and such worldly ways,

And the world's old self about to end in a merry blaze,

Midsummer's day moreover was the first of Bedford Fair;

With Bedford Town's tag-rag and bobtail a-bowsing there.

But the Court House, Quality crammed: through doors ope, windows

wide,

High on the Bench you saw sit Lordships side by side.

There frowned Chief Justice Jukes, fumed learned Brother Small,

And fretted their fellow Judge: like threshers, one and all,

Of a reek with laying down the law in a furnace. Why?

Because their lungs breathed flame--the regular crowd forbye--

From gentry pouring in--quite a nosegay, to be sure!

How else could they pass the time, six mortal hours endure

Till night should extinguish day, when matters might haply mend?

Meanwhile no bad resource was--watching begin and end

Some trial for life and death, in a brisk five minutes' space,

And betting which knave would 'scape, which hang, from his sort of

face.

So, their Lordships toiled and moiled, and a deal of work was done

(I warrant) to justify the mirth of the crazy sun,

As this and t' other lout, struck dumb at the sudden show

Of red robes and white wigs, boggled nor answered "Boh!"

When asked why he, Tom Styles, should not--because Jack Nokes

Had stolen the horse--be hanged: for Judges must have their jokes,

And louts must make allowance--let 's say, for some blue fly

Which punctured a dewy scalp where the frizzles stuck awry--

Else Tom had fleered scot-free, so nearly over and done

Was the main of the job. Full-measure, the gentles enjoyed their

fun,

As a twenty-five were tried, rank puritans caught at prayer

In a cow-house and laid by the heels,--have at 'em, devil may

care!--

And ten were prescribed the whip, and ten a brand on the cheek,

And five a slit of the nose--just leaving enough to tweak.

Well, things at jolly high-tide, amusement steeped in fire,

While noon smote fierce the roof's red tiles to heart's desire,

The Court a-simmer with smoke, one ferment of oozy flesh,

One spirituous humming musk mount-mounting until its mesh

Entoiled all heads in a fluster, and Serjeant Postlethwayte

--Dashing the wig oblique as he mopped his oily pate--

Cried "Silence, or I grow grease! No loophole lets in air?

Jurymen,--Guilty, Death! Gainsay me if you dare!"

--Things at this pitch, I say,--what hubbub without the doors?

What laughs, shrieks, hoots and yells, what rudest of uproars?

Bounce through the barrier throng a bulk comes rolling vast!

Thumps, kicks,--no manner of use!--spite of them rolls at last

Into the midst a ball, which, bursting, brings to view

Publican Black Ned Bratts and Tabby his big wife too:

Both in a muck-sweat, both ... were never such eyes uplift

At the sight of yawning hell, such nostrils--snouts that sniffed

Sulphur, such mouths agape ready to swallow flame!

Horrified, hideous, frank fiend-faces! yet, all the same,

Mixed with a certain ... eh? how shall I dare style--mirth

The desperate grin of the guess that, could they break from earth,

Heaven was above, and hell might rage in impotence

Below the saved, the saved!

"Confound you! (no offence!)

Out of our way,--push, wife! Yonder their Worships be!"

Ned Bratts has reached the bar, and "Hey, my Lords," roars he,

"A Jury of life and death, Judges the prime of the land,

Constables, javelineers,--all met, if I understand,

To decide so knotty a point as whether 't was Jack or Joan

Robbed the henroost, pinched the pig, hit the King's Arms with a

stone,

Dropped the baby down the well, left the tithesman in the lurch,

Or, three whole Sundays running, not once attended church!

What a pother--do these deserve the parish-stocks or whip,

More or less brow to brand, much or little nose to snip,--

When, in our Public, plain stand we--that 's we stand here

I and my Tab, brass-bold, brick-built of beef and beer,

--Do not we, slut? Step forth and show your beauty, jade!

Wife of my bosom--that 's the word now! What a trade

We drove! None said us nay: nobody loved his life

So little as wag a tongue against us,--did they, wife?

Yet they knew us all the while, in their hearts, for what we are

--Worst couple, rogue and quean, unhanged--search near and far!

Eh, Tab? The peddler, now--o'er his noggin--who warned a mate

To cut and run, nor risk his pack where its loss of weight

Was the least to dread,--aha, how we two laughed a-good

As, stealing round the midden, he came on where I stood

With billet poised and raised,--you, ready with the rope,--

Ah, but that 's past, that 's sin repented of, we hope!

Men knew us for that same, yet safe and sound stood we!

The lily-livered knaves knew too (I 've balked a d----)

Our keeping the 'Pied Bull' was just a mere pretence:

Too slow the pounds make food, drink, lodging, from out the pence!

There 's not a stoppage to travel has chanced, this ten long year,

No break into hall or grange, no lifting of nag or steer,

Not a single roguery, from the clipping of a purse

To the cutting of a throat, but paid us toll. Od's curse!

When Gypsy Smouch made bold to cheat us of our due,

--Eh, Tab? the Squire's strong-box we helped the rascal to--

I think he pulled a face, next Sessions' swinging-time!

He danced the jig that needs no floor,--and, here 's the prime,

'T was Scroggs that houghed the mare! Ay, those were busy days!

"Well, there we flourished brave, like scripture-trees called bays,

Faring high, drinking hard, in money up to head

--Not to say, boots and shoes, when ... Zounds, I nearly said--

Lord, to unlearn one's language! How shall we labor, wife?

Have you, fast hold, the Book? Grasp, grip it, for your life!

See, sirs, here 's life, salvation! Here 's--hold but out my

breath--

When did I speak so long without once swearing? 'Sdeath,

No, nor unhelped by ale since man and boy! And yet

All yesterday I had to keep my whistle wet

While reading Tab this Book: book? don't say 'book'--they 're plays,

Songs, ballads, and the like: here 's no such strawy blaze,

But sky wide ope, sun, moon, and seven stars out full-flare!

Tab, help and tell! I 'm hoarse. A mug! or --no, a prayer!

Dip for one out of the Book! Who wrote it in the Jail

--He plied his pen unhelped by beer, sirs, I 'll be bail!

"I 've got my second wind. In trundles she--that 's Tab.

'Why, Gammer, what 's come now, that--bobbing like a crab

On Yule-tide bowl--your head 's a-work and both your eyes

Break loose? Afeard, you fool? As if the dead can rise!

Say--Bagman Dick was found last May with fuddling-cap

Stuffed in his month: to choke 's a natural mishap!'

'Gaffer, be--blessed,' cries she, 'and Bagman Dick as well!

I, you, and he are damned: this Public is our hell:

We live in fire: live coals don't feel!--once quenched, they learn--

Cinders do, to what dust they moulder while they burn!'

"'If you don't speak straight out,' says I--belike I swore--

'A knobstick, well you know the taste of, shall, once more,

Teach you to talk, my maid!' She ups with such a face,

Heart sunk inside me. 'Well, pad on, my prate-apace!'

"'I 've been about those laces we need for ... never mind!

If henceforth they tie hands, 't is mine they 'll have to bind.

You know who makes them best--the Tinker in our cage,

Pulled-up for gospelling, twelve years ago: no age

To try another trade,--yet, so he scorned to take

Money he did not earn, he taught himself the make

Of laces, tagged and tough--Dick Bagman found them so!

Good customers were we! Well, last week, you must know,

His girl,--the blind young chit, who hawks about his wares,--

She takes it in her head to come no more--such airs

These hussies have! Yet, since we need a stoutish lace,--

"I 'll to the jail-bird father, abuse her to his face!"

So, first I filled a jug to give me heart, and then,

Primed to the proper pitch, I posted to their den--

_Patmore_, they style their prison! I tip the turnkey, catch

My heart up, fix my face, and fearless lift the latch--

Both arms akimbo, in bounce with a good round oath

Ready for rapping out: no "Lawks" nor "By my troth!"

"'There sat my man, the father. He looked up: what one feels

When heart that leapt to mouth drops down again to heels!

He raised his hand ... Hast seen, when drinking out the night,

And in, the day, earth grow another something quite

Under the sun's first stare? I stood a very stone.

"'"Woman!" (a fiery tear he put in every tone),

"How should my child frequent your house where lust is sport,

Violence--trade? Too true! I trust no vague report.

Her angel's hand, which stops the sight of sin, leaves clear

The other gate of sense, lets outrage through the ear.

What has she heard!--which, heard shall never be again.

Better lack food than feast, a Dives in the--wain

Or reign or train--of Charles!" (His language was not ours:

'T is my belief, God spoke: no tinker has such powers.)

"Bread, only bread they bring--my laces: if we broke

Your lump of leavened sin, the loaf's first crumb would choke!"

"'Down on my marrow-bones! Then all at once rose he:

His brown hair burst a-spread, his eyes were suns to see:

Up went his hands: "Through flesh, I reach, I read thy soul!

So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole,

Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice-bound

With dreriment about, within may life be found,

A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before,

Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core,

Loosen the vital sap: yet where shall help be found?

Who says 'How save it?'--nor 'Why cumbers it the ground?'

Woman, that tree art thou! All sloughed about with scurf,

Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf!

Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl

Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marle

Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof!

And how deliver such? The strong men keep aloof,

Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by,

Tophet gapes wide for prey: lost soul, despair and die!

What then? 'Look unto me and be ye saved!' saith God:

'I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod![9]

Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like, --although

As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow!'"

"'There, there, there! All I seem to somehow understand

Is--that, if I reached home, 't was through the guiding hand

Of his blind girl which led and led me through the streets

And out of town and up to door again. What greets

First thing my eye, as limbs recover from their swoon?

A book--this Book she gave at parting. "Father's boon--

The Book he wrote: it reads as if he spoke himself:

He cannot preach in bonds, so,--take it down from shelf

When you want counsel,--think you hear his very voice!

"'Wicked dear Husband, first despair and then rejoice!

Dear wicked Husband, waste no tick of moment more,

Be saved like me, bald trunk! There 's greenness yet at core,

Sap under slough! Read, read!'

"Let me take breath, my lords!

I 'd like to know, are these--hers, mine, or Bunyan's words?

I 'm 'wildered--scarce with drink,--nowise with drink alone!

You 'll say, with heat: but heat 's no stuff to split a stone

Like this black boulder--this flint heart of mine: the Book--

That dealt the crashing blow! Sirs, here 's the fist that shook

His beard till Wrestler Jem howled like a just-lugged bear!

You had brained me with a feather: at once I grew aware

Christmas was meant for me. A burden at your back,

Good Master Christmas? Nay,--yours was that Joseph's sack,

--Or whose it was,--which held the cup,--compared with mine!

Robbery loads my loins, perjury cracks my chine,

Adultery ... nay, Tab, you pitched me as I flung!

One word, I 'll up with fist ... No, sweet spouse, hold your tongue!

"I 'm hasting to the end. The Book, sirs--take and read!

You have my history in a nutshell,--ay, indeed!

It must off, my burden! See,--slack straps and into pit,

Roll, reach the bottom, rest, rot there--a plague on it!

For a mountain 's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town,

'Destruction'--that 's the name, and fire shall burn it down!

Oh, 'scape the wrath in time! Time 's now, if not too late.

How can I pilgrimage up to the wicket-gate?

Next comes Despond the slough: not that I fear to pull

Through mud, and dry my clothes at brave House Beautiful--

But it 's late in the day, I reckon: had I left years ago

Town, wife, and children dear ... Well, Christmas did, you know!--

Soon I had met in the valley and tried my cudgel's strength

On the enemy horned and winged, a-straddle across its length!

Have at his horns, thwick--thwack: they snap, see! Hoof and hoof--

Bang, break the fetlock-bones! For love's sake, keep aloof

Angels! I 'm man and match,--this cudgel for my flail,--

To thresh him, hoofs and horns, bat's wing and serpent's tail!

A chance gone by! But then, what else does Hopeful ding

Into the deafest ear except--hope, hope 's the thing?

Too late i' the day for me to thrid the windings: but

There 's still a way to win the race by death's short cut!

Did Master Faithful need climb the Delightful Mounts?

No, straight to Vanity Fair,--a fair, by all accounts,

Such as is held outside,--lords, ladies, grand and gay,--

Says he in the face of them, just what you hear me say.

And the Judges brought him in guilty, and brought him out

To die in the market-place--St. Peter's Green 's about

The same thing: there they flogged, flayed, buffeted, lanced with

knives,

Pricked him with swords,--I 'll swear, he 'd full a cat's nine

lives,--

So to his end at last came Faithful,--ha, ha, he!

Who holds the highest card? for there stands hid, you see,

Behind the rabble-rout, a chariot, pair and all:

He 's in, he 's off, he 's up, through clouds, at trumpet-call,

Carried the nearest way to Heaven-gate-! Odds my life--

Has nobody a sword to spare? not even a knife?

Then hang me, draw and quarter! Tab--do the same by her!

O Master Worldly-Wiseman ... that 's Master Interpreter,

Take the will, not the deed! Our gibbet 's handy, close:

Forestall Last Judgment-Day! Be kindly, not morose!

There wants no earthly judge-and-jurying: here we stand--

Sentence our guilty selves: so, hang us out of hand!

Make haste for pity's sake! A single moment's loss

Means--Satan 's lord once more: his whisper shoots across

All singing in my heart, all praying in my brain,

'It comes of heat and beer!'--hark how he guffaws plain!

'To-morrow you 'll wake bright, and, in a safe skin, hug

Your sound selves, Tab and you, over a foaming jug!

You 've had such qualms before, time out of mind!' He 's right!

Did not we kick and cuff and curse away, that night

When home we blindly reeled, and left poor humpback Joe

I' the lurch to pay for what ... somebody did, you know!

Both of us maundered then, 'Lame humpback, --never more

Will he come limping, drain his tankard at our door!

He 'll swing, while--somebody' ... Says Tab, 'No, for I 'll peach!'

'I 'm for you, Tab,' cries I, 'there 's rope enough for each!'

So blubbered we, and bussed, and went to bed upon

The grace of Tab's good thought: by morning, all was gone!

We laughed--'What 's life to him, a cripple of no account?'

Oh, waves increase around--I feel them mount and mount!

Hang us! To-morrow brings Tom Bearward with his bears:

One new black-muzzled brute beats Sackerson, he swears:

(Sackerson, for my money!) And, baiting o'er, the Brawl

They lead on Turner's Patch,--lads, lasses, up tails all,--

I 'm i' the thick o' the throng! That means the Iron Cage,

--Means the Lost Man inside! Where 's hope for such as wage

War against light? Light 's left, light 's here, I hold light still,

So does Tab--make but haste to hang us both! You will?"

I promise, when he stopped you might have heard a mouse

Squeak, such a death-like hush sealed up the old Mote House.

But when the mass of man sank meek upon his knees,

While Tab, alongside, wheezed a hoarse "Do hang us, please!"

Why, then the waters rose, no eye but ran with tears,

Hearts heaved, heads thumped, until, paying all past arrears

Of pity and sorrow, at last a regular scream outbroke

Of triumph, joy, and praise.

My Lord Chief Justice spoke,

First mopping brow and cheek, where still, for one that budged,

Another bead broke fresh: "What Judge, that ever judged

Since first the world began, judged such a case as this?

Why, Master Bratts, long since, folks smelt you out, I wis!

I had my doubts, i' faith, each time you played the fox

Convicting geese of crime in yonder witness-box--

Yea, much did I misdoubt, the thief that stole her eggs

Was hardly goosey's self at Reynard's game, i' feggs!

Yet thus much was to praise--you spoke to point, direct--

Swore you heard, saw the theft: no jury could suspect--

Dared to suspect,--I 'll say,--a spot in white so clear:

Goosey was throttled, true: but thereof godly fear

Came of example set, much as our laws intend;

And, though a fox confessed, you proved the Judge's friend.

What if I had my doubts? Suppose I gave them breath,

Brought you to bar: what work to do, ere 'Guilty, Death'

Had paid our pains! What heaps of witnesses to drag

From holes and corners, paid from out the County's bag!

Trial three dog-days long! _Amicus Curiæ_--that 's

Your title, no dispute--truth-telling Master Bratts!

Thank you, too, Mistress Tab! Why doubt one word you say?

Hanging you both deserve, hanged both shall be this day!

The tinker needs must be a proper man. I 've heard

He lies in Jail long since: if Quality's good word

Warrants me letting loose,--some householder, I mean--

Freeholder, better still,--I don't say but--between

Now and next Sessions ... Well! Consider of his case,

I promise to, at least: we owe him so much grace.

Not that--no, God forbid!--I lean to think as you,

The grace that such repent is any jail-bird's due:

I rather see the fruit of twelve years' pious reign--

Astræa Redux, Charles restored his rights again!

--Of which, another time! I somehow feel a peace

Stealing across the world. May deeds like this increase!

So, Master Sheriff, stay that sentence I pronounced

On those two dozen odd: deserving to be trounced

Soundly, and yet ... well, well, at all events dispatch

This pair of--shall I say, sinner-saints?--ere we catch

Their jail-distemper too. Stop tears, or I 'll indite

All weeping Bedfordshire for turning Bunyanite!"

So, forms were galloped through. If Justice, on the spur,

Proved somewhat expeditious, would Quality demur?

And happily hanged were they,--why lengthen out my tale?--

Where Bunyan's Statue stands facing where stood his Jail.

SECOND SERIES

"You are sick, that 's sure,"--they say:

"Sick of what?"--they disagree.

"'T is the brain,"--thinks Doctor A;

"'T is the heart,"--holds Doctor B;

"The liver--my life I 'd lay!"

"The lungs!" "The lights!"

Ah me!

So ignorant of man's whole

Of bodily organs plain to see--

So sage and certain, frank and free,

About what 's under lock and key--

Man's soul!

ECHETLOS

Here is a story, shall stir you! Stand up, Greeks dead and gone,

Who breasted, beat Barbarians, stemmed Persia rolling on,

Did the deed and saved the world, for the day was Marathon!

No man but did his manliest, kept rank and fought away

In his tribe and file: up, back, out, down--was the spear-arm play:

Like a wind-whipt branchy wood, all spear-arms a-swing that day!

But one man kept no rank, and his sole arm plied no spear,

As a flashing came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear,

Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.

Nor helmed nor shielded, he! but, a goat-skin all his wear,

Like a tiller of the soil, with a clown's limbs broad and bare,

Went he ploughing on and on: he pushed with a ploughman's share.

Did the weak mid-line give way, as tunnies on whom the shark

Precipitates his bulk? Did the right-wing halt when, stark

On his heap of slain lay stretched Kallimachos Polemarch?

Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need,

The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed,

As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede.

But the deed done, battle won,--nowhere to be descried

On the meadow, by the stream, at the marsh, --look far and wide

From the foot of the mountain, no, to the last blood-plashed

sea-side,--

Not anywhere on view blazed the large limbs thonged and brown,

Shearing and clearing still with the share before which--down

To the dust went Persia's pomp, as he ploughed for Greece, that

clown!

How spake the Oracle? "Care for no name at all!

Say but just this: 'We praise one helpful whom we call

The Holder of the Ploughshare.' The great deed ne'er grows small."

Not the great name! Sing--woe for the great name Miltiadés

And its end at Paros isle! Woe for Themistokles

--Satrap in Sardis court! Name not the clown like these!

CLIVE

Browning had this story from Mrs. Jameson as early as 1846, she in turn

having just heard Macaulay tell it. Browning's own narrative preceded

Clive's death by a week only.

I and Clive were friends--and why not? Friends! I think you laugh,

my lad.

Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives--egad,

England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak--

"Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades--" with a tongue thrust in

your cheek!

Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was

man,

I was, am, and ever shall be--mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan

Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame;

While the man Clive--he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign

game,

Conquered and annexed and Englished!

Never mind! As o'er my punch

(You away) I sit of evenings,--silence, save for biscuit crunch,

Black, unbroken,--thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old

years,

Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears

Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and

rood,

Once, and well remembered still,--I 'm startled in my solitude

Ever and anon by--what 's the sudden mocking light that breaks

On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes

While I ask--aloud, I do believe, God help me!--"Was it thus?

Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us--"

(Us,--you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)

"--One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)

"Got no end of wealth and honor,--yet I stood stock-still no less?"

--"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess

Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall

Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that

notice--call

Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,

Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says, the land 's the

Lord's:

Louts then--what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,

All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?

Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before

T' other in that dark direction, though I stand forevermore

Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By and by

Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.

Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy,

and still

Marks a man,--God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.

You 've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's

skin:

Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!

True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;

Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage--ah, the brute he was!

Why, that Clive,--that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving

clerk, in fine,--

He sustained a siege in Arcot ... But the world knows! Pass the

wine.

Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned

"fear"!

Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.

We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the

orb

Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb

Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,--friendship might, with steadier

eye

Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze--all majesty.

Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle 's new:

None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe

'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious

pile

As his scale-mail's warty iron cuirasses a crocodile.

Reels that castle thunder-smitten, storm-dismantled? From without

Scrambling up by crack and crevice, every cockney prates about

Towers--the heap he kicks now! turrets--just the measure of his

cane!

Will that do? Observe moreover--(same similitude again)--

Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer stress of cannonade:

'T is when foes are foiled and fighting 's finished that vile rains

invade,

Grass o'ergrows, o'ergrows till night-birds congregating find no

holes

Fit to build in like the topmost sockets made for banner-poles.

So Clive crumbled slow in London, crashed at last.

A week before,

Dining with him,--after trying churchyard chat of days of yore,--

Both of us stopped, tired as tombstones, headpiece, foot-piece, when

they lean

Each to other, drowsed in fog-smoke, o'er a coffined Past between.

As I saw his head sink heavy, guessed the soul's extinguishment

By the glazing eyeball, noticed how the furtive fingers went

Where a drug-box skulked behind the honest liquor,--"One more throw

Try for Clive!" thought I: "Let 's venture some good rattling

question!" So--

"Come Clive, tell us"--out I blurted--"what to tell in turn, years

hence,

When my boy--suppose I have one--asks me on what evidence

I maintain my friend of Plassy proved a warrior every whit

Worth your Alexanders, Cæsars, Marlboroughs and--what said Pitt?--

Frederick the Fierce himself! Clive told me once"--I want to say--

"Which feat out of all those famous doings bore the bell away

--In his own calm estimation, mark you, not the mob's rough guess--

Which stood foremost as evincing what Clive called courageousness!

Come! what moment of the minute, what speck-centre in the wide

Circle of the action saw your mortal fairly deified?

(Let alone that filthy sleep-stuff, swallow bold this wholesome

Port!)

If a friend has leave to question,--when were you most brave, in

short?"

Up he arched his brows o' the instant--formidably Clive again.

"When was I most brave? I 'd answer, were the instance half as plain

As another instance that 's a brain-lodged crystal --curse it!--here

Freezing when my memory touches--ugh!--the time I felt most fear.

Ugh! I cannot say for certain if I showed fear--anyhow,

Fear I felt, and, very likely, shuddered, since I shiver now."

"Fear!" smiled I. "Well, that 's the rarer: that 's a specimen to

seek,

Ticket up in one's museum, _Mind-Freaks, Lord Clive's Fear,

Unique!_"

Down his brows dropped. On the table painfully he pored as though

Tracing, in the stains and streaks there, thoughts encrusted long

ago.

When he spoke 't was like a lawyer reading word by word some will,

Some blind jungle of a statement,--beating on and on until

Out there leaps fierce life to fight with.

"This fell in my factor-days.

Desk-drudge, slaving at Saint David's, one must game, or drink, or

craze.

I chose gaming: and,--because your high-flown gamesters hardly take

Umbrage at a factor's elbow if the factor pays his stake,--

I was winked at in a circle where the company was choice,

Captain This and Major That, men high of color, loud of voice,

Yet indulgent, condescending to the modest juvenile

Who not merely risked but lost his hard-earned guineas with a smile.

"Down I sat to cards, one evening,--had for my antagonist

Somebody whose name 's a secret--you 'll know why--so, if you list,

Call him Cock o' the Walk, my scarlet son of Mars from head to heel!

Play commenced: and, whether Cocky fancied that a clerk must feel

Quite sufficient honor came of bending over one green baize,

I the scribe with him the warrior, guessed no penman dared to raise

Shadow of objection should the honor stay but playing end

More or less abruptly,--whether disinclined he grew to spend

Practice strictly scientific on a booby born to stare

At--not ask of--lace-and-ruffles if the hand they hide plays fair,--

Anyhow, I marked a movement when he bade me 'Cut!'

"I rose.

'Such the new manœuvre, Captain? I'm a novice: knowledge grows.

What, you force a card, you cheat, Sir?'

"Never did a thunder-clap

Cause emotion, startle Thyrsis locked with Chloe in his lap,

As my word and gesture (down I flung my cards to join the pack)

Fired the man of arms, whose visage, simply red before, turned

black.

When he found his voice, he stammered 'That expression once again!'

"'Well, you forced a card and cheated!'

"'Possibly a factor's brain,

Busied with his all-important balance of accounts, may deem

Weighing words superfluous trouble: _cheat_ to clerkly ears may seem

Just the joke for friends to venture: but we are not friends, you

see!

When a gentleman is joked with,--if he 's good at repartee,

He rejoins, as do I--Sirrah, on your knees, withdraw in full!

Beg my pardon, or be sure a kindly bullet through your skull

Lets in light and teaches manner to what brain it finds! Choose

quick--

Have your life snuffed out or, kneeling, pray me trim yon

candle-wick!'

"'Well, you cheated!'

"Then outbroke a howl from all the friends around.

To his feet sprang each in fury, fists were clenched and teeth were

ground.

'End it! no time like the present! Captain, yours were our disgrace!

No delay, begin and finish! Stand back, leave the pair a space!

Let civilians be instructed: henceforth simply ply the pen,

Fly the sword! This clerk 's no swordsman? Suit him with a pistol,

then!

Even odds! A dozen paces 'twixt the most and least expert

Make a dwarf a giant's equal: nay, the dwarf, if he 's alert,

Likelier hits the broader target!'

"Up we stood accordingly.

As they handed me the weapon, such was my soul's thirst to try

Then and there conclusions with this bully, tread on and stamp out

Every spark of his existence, that,--crept close to, curled about

By that toying tempting teasing fool-forefinger's middle joint,--

Don't you guess?--the trigger yielded. Gone my chance! and at the

point

Of such prime success moreover: scarce an inch above his head

Went my ball to hit the wainscot. He was living, I was dead.

"Up he marched in flaming triumph--'t was his right, mind!--up,

within

Just an arm's length. 'Now, my clerkling,' chuckled Cocky with a

grin

As the levelled piece quite touched me, 'Now, Sir Counting-House,

repeat

That expression which I told you proved bad manners! Did I cheat?'

"'Cheat you did, you knew you cheated, and, this moment, know as

well.

As for me, my homely breeding bids you--fire and go to Hell!'

"Twice the muzzle touched my forehead. Heavy barrel, flurried wrist,

Either spoils a steady lifting. Thrice: then, 'Laugh at Hell who

list,

I can't! God 's no fable either. Did this boy's eye wink once? No!

There 's no standing him and Hell and God all three against me,--so,

I did cheat!'

"And down he threw the pistol, out rushed--by the door

Possibly, but, as for knowledge if by chimney, roof or floor,

He effected disappearance--I 'll engage no glance was sent

That way by a single starer, such a blank astonishment

Swallowed up their senses: as for speaking--mute they stood as mice.

"Mute not long, though! Such reaction, such a hubbub in a trice!

'Rogue and rascal! Who 'd have thought it? What 's to be expected

next,

When His Majesty's Commission serves a sharper as pretext

For ... But where 's the need of wasting time now? Naught requires

delay:

Punishment the Service cries for: let disgrace be wiped away

Publicly, in good broad daylight! Resignation? No, indeed!

Drum and fife must play the Rogue's-March, rank and file be free to

speed

Tardy marching on the rogue's part by appliance in the rear

--Kicks administered shall right this wronged civilian,--never fear,

Mister Clive, for--though a clerk--you bore yourself--suppose we

say--

Just as would beseem a soldier?

"'Gentlemen, attention--pray!

First, one word!'

"I passed each speaker severally in review.

When I had precise their number, names and styles, and fully knew

Over whom my supervision thenceforth must extend,--why, then--

"'Some five minutes since, my life lay--as you all saw, gentlemen--

At the mercy of your friend there. Not a single voice was raised

In arrest of judgment, not one tongue--before my powder blazed--

Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark

Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark,

Guess at random,--still, for sake of fair play--what if for a freak,

In a fit of absence,--such things have been!--if our friend proved

weak

--What 's the phrase?--corrected fortune! Look into the case, at

least!"

Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest?

Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each,

To the disadvantage of the man who spared me, utters speech

--To his face, behind his back,--that speaker has to do with me:

Me who promise, if positions change and mine the chance should be,

Not to imitate your friend and waive advantage!'

"Twenty-five

Years ago this matter happened: and 't is certain," added Clive,

"Never, to my knowledge, did Sir Cocky have a single breath

Breathed against him: lips were closed throughout his life, or since

his death,

For if he be dead or living I can tell no more than you.

All I know is--Cocky had one chance more; how he used it,--grew

Out of such unlucky habits, or relapsed, and back again

Brought the late-ejected devil with a score more in his train,--

That 's for you to judge. Reprieval I procured, at any rate.

Ugh--the memory of that minute's fear makes gooseflesh rise! Why

prate

Longer? You 've my story, there 's your instance: fear I did, you

see!"

"Well"--I hardly kept from laughing--"if I see it, thanks must be

Wholly to your Lordship's candor. Not that --in a common case--

When a bully caught at cheating thrusts a pistol in one's face,

I should under-rate, believe me, such a trial to the nerve!

'T is no joke, at one-and-twenty, for a youth to stand nor swerve.

Fear I naturally look for--unless, of all men alive,

I am forced to make exception when I come to Robert Clive.

Since at Arcot, Plassy, elsewhere, he and death--the whole world

knows--

Came to somewhat closer quarters."

Quarters? Had we come to blows,

Clive and I, you had not wondered--up he sprang so, out he rapped

Such a round of oaths--no matter! I 'll endeavor to adapt

To our modern usage words he--well, 't was friendly license--flung

At me like so many fire-balls, fast as he could wag his tongue.

"You--a soldier? You--at Plassy? Yours the faculty to nick

Instantaneously occasion when your foe, if lightning-quick,

--At his mercy, at his malice,--has you, through some stupid inch

Undefended in your bulwark? Thus laid open,--not to flinch

--That needs courage, you 'll concede me. Then, look here! Suppose

the man.

Checking his advance, his weapon still extended, not a span

Distant from my temple,--curse him!--quietly had bade me, 'There!

Keep your life, calumniator!--worthless life I freely spare:

Mine you freely would have taken--murdered me and my good fame

Both at once--and all the better! Go, and thank your own bad aim

Which permits me to forgive you!' What if, with such words as these,

He had cast away his weapon? How should I have borne me, please?

Nay, I 'll spare you pains and tell you. This, and only this,

remained--

Pick his weapon up and use it on myself. If so had gained

Sleep the earlier, leaving England probably to pay on still

Rent and taxes for half India, tenant at the Frenchman's will."

"Such the turn," said I, "the matter takes with you? Then I abate

--No, by not one jot nor tittle,--of your act my estimate.

Fear--I wish I could detect there: courage fronts me, plain enough--

Call it desperation, madness--never mind! for here 's in rough

Why, had mine been such a trial, fear had overcome disgrace.

True, disgrace were hard to bear: but such a rush against God's face

--None of that for me, Lord Plassy, since I go to church at times,

Say the creed my mother taught me! Many years in foreign climes

Rub some marks away--not all, though! We poor sinners reach life's

brink,

Overlook what rolls beneath it, recklessly enough, but think

There 's advantage in what 's left us--ground to stand on, time to

call

'Lord, have mercy!' ere we topple over--do not leap, that 's all!"

Oh, he made no answer, re-absorbed into his cloud. I caught

Something like "Yes--courage: only fools will call it fear."

If aught

Comfort you, my great unhappy hero Clive, in that I heard,

Next week, how your own hand dealt you doom, and uttered just the

word

"Fearfully courageous!"--this, be sure, and nothing else I groaned.

I 'm no Clive, nor parson either: Clive's worst deed--we 'll hope

condoned.

MULÉYKEH

If a stranger passed the tent of Hóseyn, he cried "A churl's!"

Or haply "God help the man who has neither salt nor bread!"

--"Nay," would a friend exclaim, "he needs nor pity nor scorn

More than who spends small thought on the shore-sand, picking

pearls,

--Holds but in light esteem the seed-sort, bears instead

On his breast a moon-like prize, some orb which of night makes morn.

"What if no flocks and herds enrich the son of Sinán?

They went when his tribe was mulct, ten thousand camels the due,

Blood-value paid perforce for a murder done of old.

'God gave them, let them go! But never since time began,

Muléykeh, peerless mare, owned master the match of you,

And you are my prize, my Pearl: I laugh at men's land and gold!'

"So in the pride of his soul laughs Hóseyn--and right, I say.

Do the ten steeds run a race of glory? Outstripping all,

Ever Muléykeh stands first steed at the victor's staff.

Who started, the owner's hope, gets shamed and named, that day.

'Silence,' or, last but one, is 'The Cuffed,' as we use to call

Whom the paddock's lord thrusts forth. Right, Hóseyn, I say, to

laugh!"

"Boasts he Muléykeh the Pearl?" the stranger replies: "Be sure

On him I waste nor scorn nor pity, but lavish both

On Duhl the son of Sheybán, who withers away in heart

For envy of Hóseyn's luck. Such sickness admits no cure.

A certain poet has sung, and sealed the same with an oath,

'For the vulgar--flocks and herds! The Pearl is a prize apart.'"

Lo, Duhl the son of Sheyban comes riding to Hoséyn's tent,

And he casts his saddle down, and enters and "Peace!" bids he.

"You are poor, I know the cause: my plenty shall mend the wrong.

'T is said of your Pearl--the price of a hundred camels spent

In her purchase were scarce ill paid: such prudence is far from me

Who proffer a thousand. Speak! Long parley may last too long."

Said Hóseyn, "You feed young beasts a many, of famous breed,

Slit-eared, unblemished, fat, true offspring of Múzennem:

There stumbles no weak-eyed she in the line as it climbs the hill.

But I love Muléykeh's face: her forefront whitens indeed

Like a yellowish wave's cream-crest. Your camels--go gaze on them!

Her fetlock is foam-splashed too. Myself am the richer still."

A year goes by: lo, back to the tent again rides Duhl.

"You are open-hearted, ay--moist-handed, a very prince.

Why should I speak of sale? Be the mare your simple gift!

My son is pined to death for her beauty: my wife prompts 'Fool,

Beg for his sake the Pearl! Be God the rewarder, since

God pays debts seven for one: who squanders on Him shows thrift,'"

Said Hóseyn, "God gives each man one life, like a lamp, then gives

That lamp due measure of oil: lamp lighted--hold high, wave wide

Its comfort for others to share! once quench it, what help is left?

The oil of your lamp is your son: I shine while Muléykeh lives.

Would I beg your son to cheer my dark if Muléykeh died?

It is life against life: what good avails to the life-bereft?"

Another year, and--hist! What craft is it Duhl designs?

He alights not at the door of the tent as he did last time,

But, creeping behind, he gropes his stealthy way by the trench

Half-round till he finds the flap in the folding, for night combines

With the robber--and such is he: Duhl, covetous up to crime,

Must wring from Hóseyn's grasp the Pearl, by whatever the wrench.

"He was hunger-bitten, I heard: I tempted with half my store,

And a gibe was all my thanks. Is he generous like Spring dew?

Account the fault to me who chaffered with such an one!

He has killed, to feast chance comers, the creature he rode: nay,

more--

For a couple of singing-girls his robe has he torn in two:

I will beg! Yet I nowise gained by the tale of my wife and son.

"I swear by the Holy House, my head will I never wash

Till I filch his Pearl away. Fair dealing I tried, then guile,

And now I resort to force. He said we must live or die:

Let him die, then,--let me live: Be bold--but not too rash!

I have found me a peeping-place: breast, bury your breathing while

I explore for myself! Now, breathe! He deceived me not, the spy!

"As he said--there lies in peace Hóseyn--how happy! Beside

Stands tethered the Pearl: thrice winds her headstall about his

wrist:

'T is therefore he sleeps so sound--the moon through the roof

reveals.

And, loose on his left, stands too that other, known far and wide,

Buhéyseh, her sister born: fleet is she yet ever missed

The winning tail's fire-flash a-stream past the thunderous heels.

"No less she stands saddled and bridled, this second, in case some

thief

Should enter and seize and fly with the first, as I mean to do.

What then? The Pearl is the Pearl: once mount her we both escape."

Through the skirt-fold in glides Duhl,--so a serpent disturbs no

leaf

In a bush as he parts the twigs entwining a nest: clean through,

He is noiselessly at his work: as he planned, he performs the rape.

He has set the tent-door wide, has buckled the girth, has clipped

The headstall away from the wrist he leaves thrice bound as before,

He springs on the Pearl, is launched on the desert like bolt from

bow.

Up starts our plundered man: from his breast though the heart be

ripped,

Yet his mind has the mastery: behold, in a minute more,

He is out and off and away on Buhéyseh, whose worth we know!

And Hóseyn--his blood turns flame, he has learned long since to

ride,

And Buhéyseh does her part,--they gain--they are gaining fast

On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Dárraj to cross and quit,

And to reach the ridge El-Sabán,--no safety till that be spied!

And Buhéyseh is, bound by bound, but a horse-length off at last,

For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, the touch of the bit.

She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider the strange and

queer:

Buhéyseh is mad with hope--beat sister she shall and must,

Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she has to thank.

She is near now, nose by tail--they are neck by croup--joy! fear!

What folly makes Hóseyn shout "Dog Duhl, Damned son of the Dust,

Touch the right ear and press with your foot my Pearl's left flank!"

And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muléykeh as prompt perceived

Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him was to obey,

And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished forevermore.

And Hóseyn looked one long last look as who, all bereaved,

Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living may:

Then he turned Buhéyseh's neck slow homeward, weeping sore.

And, lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hóseyn upon the ground

Weeping: and neighbors came, the tribesmen of Bénu-Asád

In the vale of green Er-Rass, and they questioned him of his grief;

And he told from first to last how, serpent-like, Duhl had wound

His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an ape, so bad!

And how Buhéyseh did wonders, yet Pearl remained with the thief.

And they jeered him, one and all: "Poor Hóseyn is crazed past hope!

How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in fortune's spite?

To have simply held the tongue were a task for boy or girl,

And here were Muléykeh again, the eyed like an antelope,

The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast by night!"--

"And the beaten in speed!" wept Hóseyn. "You never have loved my

Pearl."

PIETRO OF ABANO

_Petrus Aponensis_--there was a magician!

When that strange adventure happened, which I mean to tell my

hearers,

Nearly had he tried all trades--beside physician,

Architect, astronomer, astrologer,--or worse:

How else, as the old books warrant, was he able,

All at once, through all the world, to prove the promptest of

appearers

Where was prince to cure, tower to build as high as Babel,

Star to name or sky-sign read,--yet pouch, for pains, a curse?

--Curse: for when a vagrant,--foot-sore, travel-tattered,

Now a young man, now an old man, Turk or Arab, Jew or Gypsy,--

Proffered folk in passing--Oh, for pay, what mattered?--

"I 'll be doctor, I 'll play builder, star I 'll name--sign read!"

Soon as prince was cured, tower built, and fate predicted,

"Who may you be?" came the question; when he answered "_Petrus

ipse_,"

"Just as we divined!" cried folk--"A wretch convicted

Long ago of dealing with the devil---you indeed!"

So, they cursed him roundly, all his labor's payment,

Motioned him--the convalescent prince would--to vacate the presence:

Babylonians plucked his beard and tore his raiment,

Drove him from that tower he built: while, had he peered at stars,

Town howled "Stone the quack who styles our Dog-star--Sirius!"

Country yelled "Aroint the churl who prophesies we take no pleasance

Under vine and fig-tree, since the year 's delirious,

Bears no crop of any kind,--all through the planet Mars!"

Straightway would the whilom youngster grow a grisard,

Or, as case might hap, the hoary eld drop off" and show a stripling.

Town and country groaned--indebted to a wizard!

"Curse--nay, kick and cuff him--fit requital of his pains!

Gratitude in word or deed were wasted truly!

Rather make the Church amends by crying out on, cramping, crippling

One who, on pretence of serving man, serves duly

Man's arch foe: not ours, be sure, but Satan's--his the gains!"