Never the time and the place

And the loved one all together!

This path--how soft to pace!

This May--what magic weather!

Where is the loved one's face?

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,

But the house is narrow, the place is bleak

Where, outside, rain and wind combine

With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak,

With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,

With a malice that marks each word, each sign!

O enemy sly and serpentine,

Uncoil thee from the waking man!

Do I hold the Past

Thus firm and fast

Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?

This path so soft to pace shall lead

Through the magic of May to herself indeed!

Or narrow if needs the house must be,

Outside are the storms and strangers: we--

Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,

--I and she!

PAMBO

Suppose that we part (work done, comes play)

With a grave tale told in crambo

--As our hearty sires were wont to say--

Whereof the hero is Pambo?

Do you happen to know who Pambo was?

Nor I--but this much have heard of him:

He entered one day a college-class,

And asked--was it so absurd of him?--

"May Pambo learn wisdom ere practise it?

In wisdom I fain would ground me:

Since wisdom is centred in Holy Writ,

Some psalm to the purpose expound me!"

"That psalm," the Professor smiled, "shall be

Untroubled by doubt which dirtieth

Pellucid streams when an ass like thee

Would drink there--the Nine-and-thirtieth.

"Verse First: _I said I will look to my ways_

_That I with my tongue offend not._

How now? Why stare? Art struck in amaze?

Stop, stay! The smooth line hath an end knot!

"He's gone!--disgusted my text should prove

Too easy to need explaining?

Had he waited, the blockhead might find I move

To matter that pays remaining!"

Long years went by, when--"Ha, who's this?

Do I come on the restive scholar

I had driven to Wisdom's goal, I wis,

But that he slipped the collar?

"What? Arms crossed, brow bent, thought-immersed?

A student indeed! Why scruple

To own that the lesson proposed him first

Scarce suited so apt a pupil?

"Come back! From the beggarly elements

To a more recondite issue

We pass till we reach, at all events,

Some point that may puzzle.... Why 'pish' you?"

From the ground looked piteous up the head:

"Daily and nightly, Master,

Your pupil plods through that text you read,

Yet gets on never the faster.

"At the selfsame stand,--now old, then young!

_I will look to my ways_--were doing

As easy as saying!--_that I with my tongue_

_Offend not_--and 'scape pooh-poohing

"From sage and simple, doctor and dunce?

Ah, nowise! Still doubts so muddy

The stream I would drink at once,--but once!

That--thus I resume my study!"

Brother, brother, I share the blame,

_Arcades sumus ambo!_

Darkling, I keep my sunrise-aim,

Lack not the critic's flambeau,

And _look to my ways_, yet, much the same,

_Offend with my tongue_--like Pambo!

FERISHTAH'S FANCIES

His genius was jocular, but, when disposed, he could be very

serious.--Article "Shakespear," JEREMY COLLIER'S _Historical etc.

Dictionary_, 2d edition, 1701.

You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred; only, I do not

like the fashion of your garments: you will say they are Persian:

but let them be changed.--_King Lear_, Act III. Sc. 6.

There is a loose connection between this group of poems and certain

forms of Oriental literature, notably _The Fables of Bidpai_ or Pilpay,

Firdausi's _Sháh-Námeh_, and the _Book of Job;_ specific instances may

easily be noted; but Browning himself said in a letter to a friend,

written soon after the publication of _Ferishtah's Fancies:_ "I hope

and believe that one or two careful readings of the Poem will make its

sense clear enough. Above all, pray allow for the Poet's inventiveness

in any case, and do not suppose there is more than a thin disguise

of a few Persian names and allusions. There was no such person as

Ferishtah--the stories are all inventions.... The Hebrew quotations are

put in for a purpose, as a direct acknowledgment that certain doctrines

may be found in the Old Book, which the Concoctors of Novel Schemes of

Morality put forth as discoveries of their own."

PROLOGUE

Pray, Reader, have you eaten ortolans

Ever in Italy?

Recall how cooks there cook them: for my plan 's

To--Lyre with Spit ally.

They pluck the birds,--some dozen luscious lumps,

Or more or fewer,--

Then roast them, heads by heads and rumps by rumps,

Stuck on a skewer.

But first,--and here 's the point I fain would press,--

Don't think I 'm tattling!--

They interpose, to curb its lusciousness,

--What, 'twixt each fatling?

First comes plain bread, crisp, brown, a toasted square:

Then, a strong sage-leaf:

(So we find books with flowers dried here and there

Lest leaf engage leaf.)

First, food--then, piquancy--and last of all

Follows the thirdling:

Through wholesome hard, sharp soft, your tooth must bite

Ere reach the birdling.

Now, were there only crust to crunch, you 'd wince:

Unpalatable!

Sage-leaf is bitter-pungent--so 's a quince:

Eat each who 's able!

But through all three bite boldly--lo, the gust!

Flavor--no fixture--

Flies permeating flesh and leaf and crust

In fine admixture.

So with your meal, my poem: masticate

Sense, sight, and song there!

Digest these, and I praise your peptics' state,

Nothing found wrong there.

Whence springs my illustration who can tell?

--The more surprising

That here eggs, milk, cheese, fruit suffice so well

For gormandizing.

A fancy-freak by contrast born of thee,

Delightful Gressoney!

Who laughest "Take what is, trust what may be!"

That 's Life's true lesson,--eh?

MAISON DELAPIERRE,

Gressoney St. Jean, Val d'Aosta,

_September 12, '83_.

I. THE EAGLE

This poem is drawn quite closely from _The Fables of Bidpai_.

Dervish--(though yet un-dervished, call him so

No less beforehand: while he drudged our way,

Other his worldly name was: when he wrote

Those versicles we Persians praise him for,

--True fairy-work--Ferishtah grew his style)--

Dervish Ferishtah walked the woods one eve,

And noted on a bough a raven's nest

Whereof each youngling gaped with callow beak

Widened by want; for why? beneath the tree

Dead lay the mother-bird. "A piteous chance!

How shall they 'scape destruction?" sighed the sage

--Or sage about to be, though simple still.

Responsive to which doubt, sudden there swooped

An eagle downward, and behold he bore

(Great-hearted) in his talons flesh wherewith

He stayed their craving, then resought the sky.

"Ah, foolish, faithless me!" the observer smiled,

"Who toil and moil to eke out life, when, lo,

Providence cares for every hungry mouth!"

To profit by which lesson, home went he,

And certain days sat musing,--neither meat

Nor drink would purchase by his handiwork.

Then--for his head swam and his limbs grew faint--

Sleep overtook the unwise one, whom in dream

God thus admonished: "Hast thou marked my deed?

Which part assigned by providence dost judge

Was meant for man's example? Should he play

The helpless weakling, or the helpful strength

That captures prey and saves the perishing?

Sluggard, arise: work, eat, then feed who lack!"

Waking, "I have arisen, work I will,

Eat, and so following. Which lacks food the more,

Body or soul in me? I starve in soul:

So may mankind: and since men congregate

In towns, not woods,--to Ispahan forthwith!"

* * * * *

Round us the wild creatures, overhead the trees,

Underfoot the moss-tracks,--life and love with these!

I to wear a fawn-skin, thou to dress in flowers:

All the long lone summer-day, that greenwood life of ours!

Rich-pavilioned, rather,--still the world without,--

Inside--gold-roofed silk-walled silence round about!

Queen it thou on purple,--I, at watch, and ward

Couched beneath the columns, gaze, thy slave, love's guard!

So, for us no world? Let throngs press thee to me!

Up and down amid men, heart by heart fare we!

Welcome squalid vesture, harsh voice, hateful face!

God is soul, souls I and thou: with souls should souls have place.

II. THE MELON-SELLER

Going his rounds one day in Ispahan,--

Halfway on Dervishhood, not wholly there,--

Ferishtah, as he crossed a certain bridge,

Came startled on a well-remembered face.

"Can it be? What, turned melon-seller--thou?

Clad in such sordid garb, thy seat yon step

Where dogs brush by thee and express contempt?

Methinks, thy head-gear is some scooped-out gourd!

Nay, sunk to slicing up, for readier sale,

One fruit whereof the whole scarce feeds a swine?

Wast thou the Shah's Prime Minister, men saw

Ride on his right-hand while a trumpet blew

And Persia hailed the Favorite? Yea, twelve years

Are past, I judge, since that transcendency,

And thou didst peculate and art abased;

No less, twelve years since, thou didst hold in hand

Persia, couldst halve and quarter, mince its pulp

As pleased thee, and distribute--melon-like--

Portions to whoso played the parasite,

Or suck--thyself--each juicy morsel. How

Enormous thy abjection,--hell from heaven,

Made tenfold hell by contrast! Whisper me!

Dost thou curse God for granting twelve years' bliss

Only to prove this day 's the direr lot?"

Whereon the beggar raised a brow, once more

Luminous and imperial, from the rags.

"Fool, does thy folly think my foolishness

Dwells rather on the fact that God appoints

A day of woe to the unworthy one,

Than that the unworthy one, by God's award,

Tasted joy twelve years long? Or buy a slice,

Or go to school!"

To school Ferishtah went;

And, schooling ended, passed from Ispahan

To Nishapur, that Elburz looks above

--Where they dig turquoise: there kept school himself,

The melon-seller's speech, his stock in trade.

Some say a certain Jew adduced the word

Out of their book, it sounds so much the same.

אח־הטוב נקבל מאח האלהים

ואח־הדע לא נקבל ׃ In Persian phrase,

"Shall we receive good at the hand of God

And evil not receive?" But great wits jump.

* * * * *

Wish no word unspoken, want no look away!

What if words were but mistake, and looks--too sudden, say!

Be unjust for once, Love! Bear it--well I may!

Do me justice always? Bid my heart--their shrine--

Render back its store of gifts, old looks and words of thine

--Oh, so all unjust--the less deserved, the more divine?

III. SHAH ABBAS

Anyhow, once full Dervish, youngsters came

To gather up his own-words, 'neath a rock

Or else a palm, by pleasant Nishapur.

Said some one, as Ferishtah paused abrupt,

Reading a certain passage from the roll

Wherein is treated of Lord Ali's life:

"Master, explain this incongruity!

When I dared question 'It is beautiful,

But is it true?'--thy answer was 'In truth

Lives beauty.' I persisting--'Beauty--yes,

In thy mind and in my mind, every mind

That apprehends: but outside--so to speak--

Did beauty live in deed as well as word,

Was this life lived, was this death died--not dreamed?'

'Many attested it for fact,' saidst thou.

'Many!' but mark, Sir! Half as long ago

As such things were,--supposing that they were,--

Reigned great Shah Abbas: he too lived and died

--How say they? Why, so strong of arm, of foot

So swift, he stayed a lion in his leap

On a stag's haunch,--with one hand grasped the stag,

With one struck down the lion: yet, no less,

Himself, that same day, feasting after sport.

Perceived a spider drop into his wine,

Let fall the flagon, died of simple fear.

So all say,--so dost thou say?"

"Wherefore not?"

Ferishtah smiled: "though strange, the story stands

Clear-chronicled: none tells it otherwise:

The fact's eye-witness bore the cup, beside."

"And dost thou credit one cup-bearer's tale,

False, very like, and futile certainly,

Yet hesitate to trust what many tongues

Combine to testify was beautiful

In deed as well as word? No fool's report,

Of lion, stag and spider, but immense

With meaning for mankind, thy race, thyself?"

Whereto the Dervish: "First amend, my son,

Thy faulty nomenclature, call belief

Belief indeed, nor grace with such a name

The easy acquiescence of mankind

In matters nowise worth dispute, since life

Lasts merely the allotted moment. Lo--

That lion-stag-and-spider tale leaves fixed

The fact for us that somewhen Abbas reigned,

Died, somehow slain,--a useful registry,--

Which therefore we--'believe'? Stand forward, thou,

My Yakub, son of Yusuf, son of Zal!

I advertise thee that our liege, the Shah

Happily regnant, hath become assured,

By opportune discovery, that thy sires,

Son by the father upwards, track their line

To--whom but that same bearer of the cup

Whose inadvertency was chargeable

With what therefrom ensued, disgust and death

To Abbas Shah, the over-nice of soul?

Whence he appoints thee,--such his clemency,--

Not death, thy due, but just a double tax

To pay, on thy particular bed of reeds

Which flower into the brush that makes a broom

Fit to sweep ceilings clear of vermin. Sure,

Thou dost believe the story nor dispute

That punishment should signalize its truth?

Down therefore with some twelve dinars! Why start,

--The stag's way with the lion hard on haunch?

'Believe the story?'--how thy words throng fast!--

'Who saw this, heard this, said this, wrote down this,

That and the other circumstance to prove

So great a prodigy surprised the world?

Needs must thou prove me fable can be fact

Or ere thou coax one piece from out my pouch!'"

"There we agree, Sir: neither of us knows,

Neither accepts that tale on evidence

Worthy to warrant the large word--belief.

Now I get near thee! Why didst pause abrupt,

Disabled by emotion at a tale

Might match--be frank!--for credibility

The figment of the spider and the cup?

--To wit, thy roll 's concerning Ali's life,

Unevidenced--thine own word! Little boots

Our sympathy with fiction! When I read

The annals and consider of Tahmasp

And that sweet sun-surpassing star his love,

I weep like a cut vine-twig, though aware

Zurah's sad fate is fiction, since the snake

He saw devour her,--how could such exist,

Having nine heads? No snake boasts more than three!

I weep, then laugh--both actions right alike.

But thou, Ferishtah, sapiency confessed,

When at the Day of Judgment God shall ask

'Didst thou believe?'--what wilt thou plead? Thy tears?

(Nay, they fell fast and stain the parchment still.)

What if thy tears meant love? Love lacking ground

--Belief,--avails thee as it would avail

My own pretence to favor since, forsooth,

I loved the lady--I who needs must laugh

To hear a snake boasts nine heads: they have three!"

"Thanks for the well-timed help that 's born, behold,

Out of thy words, my son,--belief and love!

Hast heard of Ishak son of Absal? Ay,

The very same we heard of, ten years since,

Slain in the wars: he comes back safe and sound,--

Though twenty soldiers saw him die at Yezdt,--

Just as a single mule-and-baggage boy

Declared 't was like he some day would,--for why?

The twenty soldiers lied, he saw him stout,

Cured of all wounds at once by smear of salve,

A Mubid's manufacture: such the tale.

Now, when his pair of sons were thus apprised

Effect was twofold on them. 'Hail!' crowed This:

'Dearer the news than dayspring after night!

The cure-reporting youngster warrants me

Our father shall make glad our eyes once more,

For whom, had outpoured life of mine sufficed

To bring him back, free broached were every vein!'

'Avaunt, delusive tale-concocter, news

Cruel as meteor simulating dawn!'

Whimpered the other: 'Who believes this boy,

Must disbelieve his twenty seniors: no,

Return our father shall not! Might my death

Purchase his life, how promptly would the dole

Be paid as due!' Well, ten years pass,--aha,

Ishak is marching homeward,--doubts, not he,

Are dead and done with! So, our townsfolk straight

Must take on them to counsel. 'Go thou gay,

Welcome thy father, thou of ready faith!

Hide thee, contrariwise, thou faithless one,

Expect paternal frowning, blame and blows!'

So do our townsfolk counsel: dost demur?"

"Ferishtah like those simpletons--at loss

In what is plain as pikestaff? Pish! Suppose

The trustful son had sighed 'So much the worse!

Returning means--retaking heritage

Enjoyed these ten years, who should say me nay?'

How would such trust reward him? Trustlessness

--O' the other hand--were what procured most praise

To him who judged return impossible,

Yet hated heritage procured thereby.

A fool were Ishak if he failed to prize

Mere head's work less than heart's work: no fool he!"

"Is God less wise? Resume the roll!" They did.

* * * * *

You groped your way across my room i' the drear dark dead of night;

At each fresh step a stumble was: but, once your lamp alight,

Easy and plain you walked again: so soon all wrong grew right!

What lay on floor to trip your foot? Each object, late awry,

Looked fitly placed, nor proved offence to footing free--for why?

The lamp showed all, discordant late, grown simple symmetry.

Be love your light and trust your guide, with these explore my

heart!

No obstacle to trip you then, strike hands and souls apart!

Since rooms and hearts are furnished so,--light shows you,--needs

love start?

IV. THE FAMILY

A certain neighbor lying sick to death,

Ferishtah grieved beneath a palm-tree, whence

He rose at peace: whereat objected one

"Gudarz our friend gasps in extremity.

Sure, thou art ignorant how close at hand

Death presses, or the cloud, which fouled so late

Thy face, had deepened down not lightened off."

"I judge there will be respite, for I prayed."

"Sir, let me understand, of charity!

Yestereve, what was thine admonishment?

'All-wise, all-good, all-mighty--God is such!'

How then should man, the all-unworthy, dare

Propose to set aside a thing ordained?

To pray means--substitute man's will for God's:

Two best wills cannot be: by consequence,

What is man bound to but--assent, say I?

Rather to rapture of thanksgiving; since

That which seems worst to man to God is best,

So, because God ordains it, best to man.

Yet man--the foolish, weak, and wicked--prays!

Urges 'My best were better, didst Thou know'!"

"List to a tale, A worthy householder

Of Shiraz had three sons, beside a spouse

Whom, cutting gourds, a serpent bit, whereon

The offended limb swelled black from foot to fork.

The husband called in aid a leech renowned

World-wide, confessed the lord of surgery,

And bade him dictate--who forthwith declared

'Sole remedy is amputation.' Straight

The husband sighed 'Thou knowest: be it so!'

His three sons heard their mother sentenced: 'Pause!'

Outbroke the elder: 'Be precipitate

Nowise, I pray thee! Take some gentler way,

Thou sage of much resource! I will not doubt

But science still may save foot, leg, and thigh!'

The next in age snapped petulant: 'Too rash!

No reason for this maiming! What, Sir Leech,

Our parent limps henceforward while we leap?

Shame on thee! Save the limb thou must and shalt!'

'Shame on yourselves, ye bold ones!' followed up

The brisk third brother, youngest, pertest too:

'The leech knows all things, we are ignorant;

What he proposes, gratefully accept!

For me, had I some unguent bound to heal

Hurts in a twinkling, hardly would I dare

Essay its virtue and so cross the sage

By cure his skill pronounces folly. Quick!

No waiting longer! There the patient lies:

Out then with implements and operate!'"

"Ah, the young devil!"

"Why, his reason chimed

Right with the Hakim's."

"Hakim's, ay--but chit's?

How? what the skilled eye saw and judged of weight

To overbear a heavy consequence,

That--shall a sciolist affect to see?

All he saw--that is, all such oaf should see,

Was just the mother's suffering."

"In my tale,

Be God the Hakim: in the husband's case,

Call ready acquiescence--aptitude

Angelic, understanding swift and sure:

Call the first son--a wise humanity,

Slow to conceive but duteous to adopt:

See in the second son--humanity,

Wrong-headed yet right-hearted, rash but kind.

Last comes the cackler of the brood, our chit

Who, aping wisdom all beyond his years,

Thinks to discard humanity itself:

Fares like the beast which should affect to fly

Because a bird with wings may spurn the ground,

So, missing heaven and losing; earth--drops how

But hell-ward? No, be man and nothing more--

Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears,

And craves and deprecates, and loves, and loathes,

And bids God help him, till death touch his eyes

And show God granted most, denying all."

* * * * *

Man I am and man would be, Love--merest man and nothing more.

Bid me seem no other! Eagles boast of pinions--let them soar!

I may put forth angel's plumage, once unmanned, but not before.

Now on earth, to stand suffices,--nay, if kneeling serves, to kneel:

Here you front me, here I find the all of heaven that earth can

feel:

Sense looks straight,--not over, under,--perfect sees beyond appeal.

Good you are and wise, full circle: what to me were more outside?

Wiser wisdom, better goodness? Ah, such want the angel's wide

Sense to take and hold and keep them! Mine at least has never

tried.

V. THE SUN

"And what might that bold man's announcement be"--

Ferishtah questioned--"which so moved thine ire

That thou didst curse, nay, cuff and kick--in short,

Confute the announcer? Wipe those drops away

Which start afresh upon thy face at mere

Mention of such enormity: now, speak!"

"He scrupled not to say--(thou warrantest,

O patient Sir, that I unblamed repeat

Abominable words which blister tongue?)

God once assumed on earth a human shape:

(Lo, I have spitten!) Dared I ask the grace,

Fain would I hear, of thy subtility,

From out what hole in man's corrupted heart

Creeps such a maggot: fancies verminous

Breed in the clots there, but a monster born

Of pride and folly like this pest--thyself

Only canst trace to egg-shell it hath chipped."

The sun rode high. "During our ignorance"--

Began Ferishtah--"folk esteemed as God

Yon orb: for argument, suppose him so,--

Be it the symbol, not the symbolized,

I and thou safelier take upon our lips.

Accordingly, yon orb that we adore

--What is he? Author of all light and life:

Such one must needs be somewhere: this is he.

Like what? If I may trust my human eyes,

A ball composed of spirit-fire, whence springs

--What, from this ball, my arms could circle round?

All I enjoy on earth. By consequence,

Inspiring me with--what? Why, love and praise.

I eat a palatable fig--there's love

In little: who first planted what I pluck,

Obtains my little praise, too: more of both

Keeps due proportion with more cause for each:

So, more and ever more, till most of all

Completes experience, and the orb, descried

Ultimate giver of all good, perforce

Gathers unto himself all love, all praise,

Is worshipped--which means loved and praised at height.

Back to the first good: 'twas the gardener gave

Occasion to my palate's pleasure: grace,

Plain on his part, demanded thanks on mine.

Go up above this giver,--step by step,

Gain a conception of what--(how and why,

Matters not now)--occasioned him to give,

Appointed him the gardener of the ground,--

I mount by just progression slow and sure

To some prime giver--here assumed yon orb--

Who takes my worship. Whom have I in mind,

Thus worshipping, unless a man, my like

Howe'er above me? Man, I say--how else,

I being man who worship? Here's my hand

Lifts first a mustard-seed, then weight on weight

Greater and ever greater, till at last

It lifts a melon, I suppose, then stops--

Hand-strength expended wholly: so, my love

First lauds the gardener for the fig his gift,

Then, looking higher, loves and lauds still more,

Who hires the ground, who owns the ground, Sheikh, Shah,

On and away, away and ever on,

Till, at the last, it loves and lauds the orb

Ultimate cause of all to laud and love.

Where is the break, the change of quality

In hand's power, soul's impulsion? Gift was grace,

The greatest as the smallest. Had I stopped

Anywhere in the scale, stayed love and praise

As so far only fit to follow gift,

Saying, 'I thanked the gardener for his fig,

But now that, lo, the Shah has filled my purse

With tomans which avail to purchase me

A fig-tree forest, shall I pay the same

With love and praise, the gardener's proper fee?'

Justly would whoso bears a brain object,

'Giving is giving, gift claims gift's return,

Do thou thine own part, therefore: let the Shah

Ask more from one has more to pay.' Perchance

He gave me from his treasure less by much

Than the soil's servant: let that be! My part

Is plain--to meet and match the gift and gift

With love and love, with praise and praise, till both

Cry 'All of us is thine, we can no more!'

So shall I do man's utmost--man to man:

For as our liege the Shah's sublime estate

Merely enhaloes, leaves him man the same,

So must I count that orb I call a fire

(Keep to the language of our ignorance)

Something that 's fire and more beside: mere fire

--Is it a force which, giving, knows it gives,

And wherefore, so may look for love and praise

From me, fire's like so far, however less

In all beside? Prime cause this fire shall be,

Uncaused, all-causing: hence begin the gifts,

Thither must go my love and praise--to what?

Fire? Symbol fitly serves the symbolized

Herein,--that this same object of my thanks,

While to my mind nowise conceivable

Except as mind no less than fire, refutes

Next moment mind's conception: fire is fire--

While what I needs must thank, must needs include

Purpose with power,--humanity like mine,

Imagined, for the dear necessity,

One moment in an object which the next

Confesses unimaginable. Power!

--What need of will, then? Naught opposes power:

Why, purpose? any change must be for worse:

And what occasion for beneficence

When all that is, so is and so must be?

Best being best now, change were for the worse.

Accordingly discard these qualities

Proper to imperfection, take for type

Mere fire, eject the man, retain the orb,--

The perfect and, so, inconceivable,--

And what remains to love and praise? A stone

Fair-colored proves a solace to my eye,

Rolled by my tongue brings moisture curing drouth,

And struck by steel emits a useful spark:

Shall I return it thanks, the insentient thing?

No,--man once, man forever--man in soul

As man in body: just as this can use

Its proper senses only, see and hear,

Taste, like or loathe according to its law

And not another creature's,--even so

Man's soul is moved by what, if it in turn

Must move, is kindred soul: receiving good

--Man's way--must make man's due acknowledgment,

No other, even while he reasons out

Plainly enough that, were the man unmanned,

Made angel of, angelic every way,

The love and praise that rightly seek and find

Their man-like object now,--instructed more,

Would go forth idly, air to emptiness.

Our human flower, sun-ripened, proffers scent

Though reason prove the sun lacks nose to feed

On what himself made grateful: flower and man,

Let each assume that scent and love alike

Being once born, must needs have use! Man's part

Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps:

No matter, he has done his part."

"Wherefrom

What is to follow--if I take thy sense--

But that the sun--the inconceivable

Confessed by man--comprises, all the same,

Man's every-day conception of himself--

No less remaining unconceived!"

"Agreed!"

"Yet thou, insisting on the right of man

To feel as man, not otherwise,--man, bound

By man's conditions neither less nor more,

Obliged to estimate as fair or foul,

Right, wrong, good, evil, what man's faculty

Adjudges such,--how canst thou,--plainly bound

To take man's truth for truth and only truth,--

Dare to accept, in just one case, as truth

Falsehood confessed? Flesh simulating fire--

Our fellow-man whom we his fellows know

For dust--instinct with fire unknowable!

Where 's thy man-needed truth--its proof, nay print

Of faintest passage on the tablets traced

By man, termed knowledge? 'T is conceded thee,

We lack such fancied union--fire with flesh:

But even so, to lack is not to gain

Our lack's suppliance: where 's the trace of such

Recorded?"

"What if such a tracing were?

If some strange story stood,--whate'er its worth,--

That the immensely yearned-for, once befell,

--The sun was flesh once?--(keep the figure!)"

"How?

An union inconceivable was fact?"

"Son, if the stranger have convinced himself

Fancy is fact--the sun, besides a fire,

Holds earthly substance somehow fire pervades

And yet consumes not,--earth, he understands,

With essence he remains a stranger to,--

Fitlier thou saidst 'I stand appalled before

Conception unattainable by me

Who need it most'--than this--'What? boast he holds

Conviction where I see conviction's need,

Alas,--and nothing else? then what remains

But that I straightway curse, cuff, kick the fool!'"

* * * * *

Fire is in the flint: true, once a spark escapes,

Fire forgets the kinship, soars till fancy shapes

Some befitting cradle where the babe had birth--

Wholly heaven 's the product, unallied to earth.

Splendors recognized as perfect in the star!--

In out flint their home was, housed as now they are.

VI. MIHRAB SHAH

Quoth an inquirer, "Praise the Merciful!

My thumb which yesterday a scorpion nipped--

(It swelled and blackened)--lo, is sound again!

By application of a virtuous root

The burning has abated: that is well.

But now methinks I have a mind to ask,--

Since this discomfort came of culling herbs

Nor meaning harm,--why needs a scorpion be?

Yea, there began, from when my thumb last throbbed,

Advance in question-framing, till I asked

Wherefore should any evil hap to man--

From ache of flesh to agony of soul--

Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?

Nay, why permits he evil to himself--

Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world

Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant--

Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed--

Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?

Too good result? But he is wholly good!

Hard to effect? Ay, were he impotent!

Teach me, Ferishtah!"

Said the Dervish: "Friend,

My chance, escaped to-day, was worse than thine:

I, as I woke this morning, raised my head,

Which never tumbled but stuck fast on neck.

Was not I glad and thankful!"

"How could head

Tumble from neck, unchopped--inform me first!

Unless we take Firdausi's tale for truth,

Who ever heard the like?"

"The like might hap

By natural law: I let my staff fall thus--

It goes to ground, I know not why. Suppose,

Whene'er my hold was loosed, it skyward sprang

As certainly, and all experience proved

That, just as staves when unsupported sink,

So, unconfined, they soar?"

"Let such be law--

Why, a new chapter of sad accidents

Were added to humanity's mischance,

No doubt at all, and as a man's false step

Now lays him prone on earth, contrariwise,

Removal from his shoulder o£ a weight

Might start him upwards to perdition. Ay!

But, since such law exists in just thy brain,

I shall not hesitate to doff my cap

For fear my head take flight."

"Nor feel relief

Finding it firm on shoulder. Tell me, now!

What were the bond 'twixt man and man, dost judge,

Pain once abolished? Come, be true! Our Shah--

How stands he in thy favor? Why that shrug?

Is not he lord and ruler?"

"Easily!

His mother bore him, first of those four wives

Provided by his father, such his luck:

Since when his business simply was to breathe

And take each day's new bounty. There he stands--

Where else had I stood, were his birth-star mine?

No, to respect men's power, I needs must see

Men's bare hands seek, find, grasp and wield the sword

Nobody else can brandish! Bless his heart,

'Tis said, he scarcely counts his fingers right!"

"Well, then--his princely doles! from every feast

Off go the feasted with the dish they ate

And cup they drank from,--nay, a change besides

Of garments" ...

"Sir, put case, for service done,--

Or best, for love's sake,--such and such a slave

Sold his allowance of sour lentil-soup

To herewith purchase me a pipe-stick,--nay,

If he, by but one hour, cut short his sleep

To clout my shoe,--that were a sacrifice!"

"All praise his gracious bearing."

"All praise mine--

Or would praise did they never make approach

Except on all-fours, crawling till I bade,

'Now that with eyelids thou hast touched the earth,

Come close and have no fear, poor nothingness!'

What wonder that the lady-rose I woo

And palisade about from every wind,

Holds herself handsomely? The wilding, now,

Ruffled outside at pleasure of the blast,

That still lifts up with something of a smile

Its poor attempt at bloom" ...

"A blameless life,

Where wrong might revel with impunity--

Remember that!"

"The falcon on his fist--

Reclaimed and trained and belled and beautified

Till she believes herself the Simorgh's match--

She only deigns destroy the antelope,

Stoops at no carrion-crow: thou marvellest?

"So be it, then! He wakes no love in thee

For any one of divers attributes

Commonly deemed love-worthy. All the same,

I would he were not wasting, slow but sure,

With that internal ulcer" ...

"Say'st thou so?

How should I guess? Alack, poor soul! But stay--

Sure in the reach of art some remedy

Must lie to hand: or if it lurk,--that leech

Of fame in Tebriz, why not seek his aid?

Couldst not thou, Dervish, counsel in the case?"

"My counsel might be--what imports a pang

The more or less, which puts an end to one

Odious in spite of every attribute

Commonly deemed love-worthy?"

"Attributes?

Faugh!--nay, Ferishtah,--'tis an ulcer, think!

Attributes, quotha? Here 's poor flesh and blood,

Like thine and mine and every man's, a prey

To hell-fire! Hast thou lost thy wits for once?"

"Friend, here they are to find and profit by!

Put pain from out the world, what room were left

For thanks to God, for love to Man? Why thanks,--

Except for some escape, whatever the style,

From pain that might be, name it as thou mayst?

Why love,--when all thy kind, save me, suppose,

Thy father, and thy son, and ... well, thy dog,

To eke the decent number out--we few

Who happen--like a handful of chance stars

From the unnumbered host--to shine o'erhead

And lend thee light,--our twinkle all thy store,--

We only take thy love! Mankind, forsooth?

Who sympathizes with their general joy

Foolish as undeserved? But pain--see God's

Wisdom at work!--man's heart is made to judge

Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh

Our birthright,--bad and good deserve alike

No pain, to human apprehension! Lust,

Greed, cruelty, injustice crave (we hold)

Due punishment from somebody, no doubt:

But ulcer in the midriff! that brings flesh

Triumphant from the bar whereto arraigned

Soul quakes with reason. In the eye of God

Pain may have purpose and be justified:

Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,

A hateful chance no man but would avert

Or, failing, needs must pity. Thanks to God

And love to man,--from man take these away,

And what is man worth? Therefore, Mihrab Shah,

Tax me my bread and salt twice over, claim

Laila my daughter for thy sport,--go on!

Slay my son's self, maintain thy poetry

Beats mine,--thou meritest a dozen deaths!

But--ulcer in the stomach,--ah, poor soul,

Try a fig-plaster: may it ease thy pangs!"

* * * * *

So, the head aches and the limbs are faint!

Flesh is a burden--even to you!

Can I force a smile with a fancy quaint?

Why are my ailments none or few?

In the soul of me sits sluggishness;

Body so strong and will so weak:

The slave stands fit for the labor--yes,

But the master's mandate is still to seek.

You, now--what if the outside clay

Helped, not hindered the inside flame?

My dim to-morrow--your plain to-day,

Yours the achievement, mine the aim?

So were it rightly, so shall it be!

Only, while earth we pace together

For the purpose apportioned you and me,

Closer we tread for a common tether.

You shall sigh, "Wait for his sluggish soul!

Shame he should lag, not lamed as I!"

May not I smile, "Ungained her goal:

Body may reach her--by and by"?

VII. A CAMEL-DRIVER

"How of his fate, the Pilgrims' soldier-guide

Condemned" (Ferishtah questioned), "for he slew

The merchant whom he convoyed with his bales

--A special treachery?"

"Sir, the proofs were plain:

Justice was satisfied: between two boards

The rogue was sawn asunder, rightly served."

"With all wise men's approval--mine at least."

"Himself, indeed, confessed as much. 'I die

Justly' (groaned he) 'through over-greediness

Which tempted me to rob: but grieve the most

That he who quickened sin at slumber,--ay,

Prompted and pestered me till thought grew deed,--

The same is fled to Syria and is safe,

Laughing at me thus left to pay for both.

My comfort is that God reserves for him

Hell's hottest'" ...

"Idle words."

"Enlighten me!

Wherefore so idle? Punishment by man

Has thy assent,--the word is on thy lips.

By parity of reason, punishment

By God should likelier win thy thanks and praise."

"Man acts as man must: God, as God beseems.

A camel-driver, when his beast will bite,

Thumps her athwart the muzzle; why?"

"How else

Instruct the creature--mouths should munch not bite?"

"True, he is man, knows but man's trick to teach.

Suppose some plain word, told her first of all,

Had hindered any biting?"

"Find him such,

And fit the beast with understanding first!

No understanding animals like Rakhsh

Nowadays, Master! Till they breed on earth,

For teaching--blows must serve."

"Who deals the blow--

What if by some rare method,--magic, say,--

He saw into the biter's very soul,

And knew the fault was so repented of

It could not happen twice?"

"That 's something: still,

I hear, methinks, the driver say, 'No less

Take thy fault's due! Those long-necked sisters, see,

Lean all a-stretch to know if biting meets

Punishment or enjoys impunity.

For their sakes--thwack!'"

"The journey home at end,

The solitary beast safe-stabled now,

In comes the driver to avenge a wrong

Suffered from six months since,--apparently

With patience, nay, approval: when the jaws

Met i' the small o' the arm. 'Ha, Ladykin,

Still at thy frolics, girl of gold?' laughed he:

'Eat flesh? Rye-grass content thee rather with,

Whereof accept a bundle!' Now,--what change!

Laughter by no means! Now 't is, 'Fiend, thy frisk

Was fit to find thee provender, didst judge?

Behold this red-hot twy-prong, thus I stick

To hiss i' the soft of thee!'"

"Behold? behold

A craxy noddle, rather! Sure the brute

Might wellnigh have plain speech coaxed out of tongue,

And grow as voluble as Rakhsh himself

At such mad outrage. 'Could I take thy mind,

Guess thy desire? If biting was offence,

Wherefore the rye-grass bundle, why each day's

Patting and petting, but to intimate

My playsomeness had pleased thee? Thou endowed

With reason, truly!'"

"Reason aims to raise

Some makeshift scaffold-vantage midway, whence

Man dares, for life's brief moment, peer below:

But ape omniscience? Nay! The ladder lent

To climb by, step and step, until we reach

The little foothold-rise allowed mankind

To mount on and thence guess the sun's survey--

Shall this avail to show us world-wide truth

Stretched for the sun's descrying? Reason bids,

'Teach, Man, thy beast his duty first of all

Or last of all, with blows if blows must be,--

How else accomplish teaching?' Reason adds,

'Before man's First, and after man's poor Last,

God operated and will operate.'

--Process of which man merely knows this much,--

That nowise it resembles man's at all,

Teaching or punishing."

"It follows, then,

That any malefactor I would smite

With God's allowance, God himself will spare

Presumably. No scapegrace? Then, rejoice

Thou snatch-grace safe in Syria!"

"Friend, such view

Is but man's-wonderful and wide mistake.

Man lumps his kind i' the mass: God singles thence

Unit by unit. Thou and God exist--

So think!--for certain: think the mass--mankind--

Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone!

Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee,--

Thee and no other,--stand or fall by them!

That is the part for thee: regard all else

For what it may be--Time's illusion. This

Be sure of--ignorance that sins, is safe.

No punishment like knowledge! Instance, now!

My father's choicest treasure was a book

Wherein he, day by day and year by year,

Recorded gains of wisdom for my sake

When I should grow to manhood. While a child,

Coming upon the casket where it lay

Unguarded,---what did I but toss the thing

Into a fire to make more flame therewith,

Meaning no harm? So acts man three-years-old!

I grieve now at my loss by witlessness,

But guilt was none to punish. Man mature--

Each word of his I lightly held, each look

I turned from--wish that wished in vain--nay, will

That willed and yet went all to waste--'t is these

Rankle like fire. Forgiveness? rather grant

Forgetfulness! The past is past and lost.

However near I stand in his regard,

So much the nearer had I stood by steps

Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help

That I call Hell; why further punishment?"

* * * * *

When I vexed you and you chid me,

And I owned my fault and turned

My cheek the way you bid me,

And confessed the blow well earned,--

My comfort all the while was

--Fault was faulty--near, not quite!

Do you wonder why the smile was?

O'erpunished wrong grew right.

But faults, you ne'er suspected,

Nay, praised, no faults at all,--

Those would you had detected--

Crushed eggs whence snakes could crawl!

VIII. TWO CAMELS

Quoth one: "Sir, solve a scruple! No true sage

I hear of, but instructs his scholar thus:

'Wouldst thou be wise? Then mortify thyself!

Balk of its craving every bestial sense!

Say, "If I relish melons--so do swine!

Horse, ass, and mule consume their provender

Nor leave a pea-pod: fasting feeds the soul."'

Thus they admonish: while thyself, I note,

Eatest thy ration with an appetite,

Nor fallest foul of whoso licks his lips

And sighs--'Well-saffroned was that barley-soup!'

Can wisdom coexist with--gorge-and-swill,

I say not,--simply sensual preference

For this or that fantastic meat and drink?

Moreover, wind blows sharper than its wont

This morning, and thou hast already donned

Thy sheepskin over-garment: sure the sage

Is busied with conceits that soar above

A petty change of season and its chance

Of causing ordinary flesh to sneeze?

I always thought, Sir" ...

"Son," Ferishtah said,

"Truth ought to seem as never thought before.

How if I give it birth in parable?

A neighbor owns two camels, beasts of price

And promise, destined each to go, next week,

Swiftly and surely with his merchandise

From Nishapur to Sebzevar, no truce

To tramp, but travel, spite of sands and drouth,

In days so many, lest they miss the Fair.

Each falls to meditation o'er his crib

Piled high with provender before the start.

Quoth this: 'My soul is set on winning praise

From goodman lord and master,--hump to hoof,

I dedicate me to his service. How?

Grass, purslane, lupines, and I know not what,

Crammed in my manger? Ha, I see--I see!

No, master, spare thy money! I shall trudge

The distance and yet cost thee not a doit

Beyond my supper on this mouldy bran.'

'Be magnified, O master, for the meal

So opportunely liberal!' quoth that.

'What use of strength in me but to surmount

Sands and simooms, and bend beneath thy bales

No knee until I reach the glad bazaar?

Thus I do justice to thy fare: no sprig

Of toothsome chervil must I leave unchewed!

Too bitterly should I reproach myself

Did I sink down in sight of Sebzevar,

Remembering how the merest mouthful more

Had heartened me to manage yet a mile!'

And so it proved: the too-abstemious brute

Midway broke down, his pack rejoiced the thieves,

His carcass fed the vultures: not so he

The wisely thankful, who, good market-drudge,

Let down his lading in the market-place,

No damage to a single pack. Which beast,

Think ye, had praise and patting and a brand

Of good-and-faithful-servant fixed on flank?

So, with thy squeamish scruple. What imports

Fasting or feasting? Do thy day's work, dare

Refuse no help thereto, since help refused

Is hindrance sought and found. Win but the race--

Who shall object 'He tossed three wine-cups off,

And, just at starting, Lilith kissed his lips'?

"More soberly,--consider this, my Son!

Put case I never have myself enjoyed,

Known by experience what enjoyment means,

How shall I--share enjoyment?--no, indeed!--

Supply it to my fellows,--ignorant,

As so I should be of the thing they crave,

How it affects them, works for good or ill.

Style my enjoyment self-indulgence--sin--

Why should I labor to infect my kind

With sin's occasion, bid them too enjoy,

Who else might neither catch nor give again

Joy's plague, but live in righteous misery?

Just as I cannot, till myself convinced,

Impart conviction, so, to deal forth joy

Adroitly, needs must I know joy myself.

Renounce joy for my fellows' sake? That 's joy

Beyond joy; but renounced for mine, not theirs?

Why, the physician called to help the sick,

Cries 'Let me, first of all, discard my health!'

No, Son: the richness hearted in such joy

Is in the knowing what are gifts we give,

Not in a vain endeavor not to know!

Therefore, desire joy and thank God for it!

The Adversary said,--a Jew reports,--

החנם רא איוב אלהים ׃

In Persian phrase, 'Does Job fear God for naught?'

Job's creatureship is not abjured, thou fool!

He nowise isolates himself and plays

The independent equal, owns no more

Than himself gave himself, so why thank God?

A proper speech were this מאלהים

'Equals we are, Job, labor for thyself,

Nor bid me help thee: bear, as best flesh may,

Pains I inflict not nor avail to cure:

Beg of me nothing thou thyself mayst win

By work, or waive with magnanimity,

Since we are peers acknowledged,--scarcely peers,

Had I implanted any want of thine

Only my power could meet and gratify.'

No: rather hear, at man's indifference--

'Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear

Hungry for music, and direct thine eye

To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,

Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?'"

* * * * *

Once I saw a chemist take a pinch of powder

--Simple dust it seemed--and half-unstop a phial:

--Out dropped harmless dew. "Mixed nothings make" (quoth he)

"Something!" So they did: a thunderclap, but louder--

Lightning-flash, but fiercer--put spectators' nerves to trial:

Sure enough, we learned what was, imagined what might be.

Had I no experience how a lip's mere tremble,

Look's half hesitation, cheek's just change of color,

These effect a heartquake,--how should I conceive

What a heaven there may be? Let it but resemble

Earth myself have known! No bliss that's finer, fuller,

Only--bliss that lasts, they say, and fain would I believe.

IX. CHERRIES

"What, I disturb thee at thy morning-meal:

Cherries so ripe already? Eat apace!

I recollect thy lesson yesterday.

Yet--thanks, Sir, for thy leave to interrupt" ...

"Friend, I have finished my repast, thank God!"

"There now, thy thanks for breaking fast on fruit!--

Thanks being praise, or tantamount thereto.

Prithee consider, have not things degree,

Lofty and low? Are things not great and small.

Thence claiming praise and wonder more or less?

Shall we confuse them, with thy warrant too,

Whose doctrine otherwise begins and ends

With just this precept, 'Never faith enough

In man as weakness, God as potency'?

When I would pay soul's tribute to that same,

Why not look up in wonder, bid the stars

Attest my praise of the All-mighty One?

What are man's puny members and as mean

Requirements weighed with Star-King Mushtari?

There is the marvel!"

"Not to man--that 's me.

List to what happened late, in fact or dream.

A certain stranger, bound from far away,

Still the Shah's subject, found himself before

Ispahan palace-gate. As duty bade,

He enters in the courts, will, if he may,

See so much glory as befits a slave

Who only comes, of mind to testify

How great and good is shown our lord the Shah.

In he walks, round he casts his eye about,

Looks up and down, admires to heart's content,

Ascends the gallery, tries door and door,

None says his reverence nay: peeps in at each,

Wonders at all the unimagined use,

Gold here and jewels there,--so vast, that hall--

So perfect yon pavilion!--lamps above

Bidding look up from luxuries below,--

Evermore wonder topping wonder,--last--

Sudden he comes upon a cosy nook,

A nest-like little chamber, with his name,

His own, yea, his and no mistake at all,

Plain o'er the entry,--what, and he descries

Just those arrangements inside,--oh, the care!--

Suited to soul and body both,--so snug

The cushion--nay, the pipe-stand furnished so!

Whereat he cries aloud,--what think'st thou, Friend?

'That these my slippers should be just my choice,

Even to the color that I most affect,

Is nothing: ah, that lamp, the central sun,

What must it light within its minaret

I scarce dare guess the good of! Who lives there?

That let me wonder at,--no slipper toys

Meant for the foot, forsooth, which kicks them--thus!'

"Never enough faith in omnipotence,--

Never too much, by parity, of faith

In impuissance, man's--which turns to strength

When once acknowledged weakness every way.

How? Hear the teaching of another tale.

"Two men once owed the Shah a mighty sum,

Beggars they both were: this one crossed his arms

And bowed his head,--'whereof,' sighed he, 'each hair

Proved it a jewel, how the host's amount

Were idly strewn for payment at thy feet!'

'Lord, here they lie, my havings poor and scant!

All of the berries on my currant-bush,

What roots of garlic have escaped the mice,

And some five pippins from the seedling tree,--

Would they were half-a-dozen! Anyhow,

Accept my all, poor beggar that I am!'

'Received in full of all demands!' smiled back

The apportioner of every lot of ground

From inch to acre. Littleness of love

Befits the littleness of loving thing.

What if he boasted 'Seeing I am great,

Great must my corresponding tribute be'?

Mushtari,--well, suppose him seven times seven

The sun's superior, proved so by some sage:

Am I that sage? To me his twinkle blue

Is all I know of him and thank him for,

And therefore I have put the same in verse--

'Like yon blue twinkle, twinks thine eye, my Love!'

Neither shalt thou be troubled overmuch

Because thy offering--littleness itself--

Is lessened by admixture sad and strange

Of mere man's motives,--praise with fear, and love

With looking after that same love's reward.

Alas, Friend, what was free from this alloy,--

Some smatch thereof,--in best and purest love

Proffered thy earthly father? Dust thou art,

Dust shalt be to the end. Thy father took

The dust, and kindly called the handful--gold,

Nor cared to count what sparkled here and there

Sagely unanalytic. Thank, praise, love

(Sum up thus) for the lowest favors first,

The commonest of comforts! aught beside

Very omnipotence had overlooked

Such needs, arranging for thy little life.

Nor waste thy power of love in wonderment

At what thou wiselier lettest shine unsoiled

By breath of word. That this last cherry soothes

A roughness of my palate, that I know:

His Maker knows why Mushtari was made."

* * * * *

Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with despair

Wealth that never yet was but might be--all that verse-making were

If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare.

So I said "To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse"--

And made verse.

Love-making,--how simple a matter! No depths to explore,

No heights in a life to ascend! No disheartening Before,

No affrighting Hereafter,--love now will be love evermore.

So I felt "To keep silence were folly:"--all language above,

I made love.

X. PLOT-CULTURE

"Ay, but, Ferishtah,"--a disciple smirked,--

"That verse of thine 'How twinks thine eye, my Love,

Blue as yon star-beam!' much arrides myself

Who haply may obtain a kiss therewith

This eve from Laila where the palms abound--

My youth, my warrant--so the palms be close!

Suppose when thou art earnest in discourse

Concerning high and holy things,--abrupt

I out with--'Laila's lip, how honey-sweet!'--

What say'st thou, were it scandalous or no?

I feel thy shoe sent flying at my mouth

For daring--prodigy of impudence--

Publish what, secret, were permissible.

Well,--one slide further in the imagined slough,--

Knee-deep therein, (respect thy reverence!)--

Suppose me well aware thy very self

Stooped prying through the palm-screen, while I dared

Solace me with caressings all the same?

Unutterable, nay--unthinkable,

Undreamable a deed of shame! Alack,

How will it fare shouldst thou impress on me

That certainly an Eye is over all

And each, to mark the minute's deed, word, thought,

As worthy of reward or punishment?

Shall I permit my sense an Eye-viewed shame,

Broad daylight perpetration,--so to speak,--

I had not dared to breathe within the Ear,

With black night's help about me? Yet I stand

A man, no monster, made of flesh not cloud:

Why made so, if my making prove offence

To Maker's eye and ear?"

"Thou wouldst not stand

Distinctly Man,"--Ferishtah made reply,

"Not the mere creature,--did no limit-line

Round thee about, apportion thee thy place

Clean-cut from out and off the illimitable,--

Minuteness severed from immensity.

All of thee for the Maker,--for thyself,

Workings inside the circle that evolve

Thine all,--the product of thy cultured plot.

So much of grain the ground's lord bids thee yield:

Bring sacks to granary in Autumn! spare

Daily intelligence of this manure,

That compost, how they tend to feed the soil:

There thou art master sole and absolute

--Only, remember doomsday! Twit'st thou me

Because I turn away my outraged nose

Shouldst thou obtrude thereon a shovelful

Of fertilizing kisses? Since thy sire

Wills and obtains thy marriage with the maid,

Enough! Be reticent, I counsel thee,

Nor venture to acquaint him, point by point,

What he procures thee. Is he so obtuse?

Keep thy instruction to thyself! My ass--

Only from him expect acknowledgment,

The while he champs my gift, a thistle-bunch,

How much he loves the largess: of his love

I only tolerate so much as tells

By wrinkling nose and inarticulate grunt,

The meal, that heartens him to do my work,

Tickles his palate as I meant it should."

* * * * *

Not with my Soul, Love!--bid no soul like mine

Lap thee around nor leave the poor Sense room!

Soul,--travel-worn, toil-weary,--would confine

Along with Soul, Soul's gains from glow and gloom,

Captures from soarings high and divings deep.

Spoil-laden Soul, how should such memories sleep?

Take Sense, too--let me love entire and whole--

Not with my Soul!

Eyes shall meet eyes and find no eyes between,

Lips feed on lips, no other lips to fear!

No past, no future--so thine arms but screen

The present from surprise! not there, 't is here--

Not then, 't is now:--back, memories that intrude!

Make, Love, the universe our solitude,

And, over all the rest, oblivion roll--

Sense quenching Soul!

XI. A PILLAR AT SEBZEVAR

"Knowledge deposed, then!"--groaned whom that most grieved

As foolishest of all the company.

"What, knowledge, man's distinctive attribute,

He doffs that crown to emulate an ass

Because the unknowing long-ears loves at least

Husked lupines, and belike the feeder's self

--Whose purpose in the dole what ass divines?"

"Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know

Is--I know nothing save that love I can

Boundlessly, endlessly. My curls were crowned

In youth with knowledge,--off, alas, crown slipped

Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still

Which nowise proved more constant: gain, to-day,

Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last

--Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance!

As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:

Lacquer we learn by: cast in fining-pot,

We learn, when what seemed ore assayed proves dross,--

Surelier true gold's worth, guess how purity

I' the lode were precious could one light on ore

Clarified up to test of crucible.

The prize is in the process: knowledge means

Ever-renewed assurance by defeat

That victory is somehow still to reach,

But love is victory, the prize itself:

Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust

In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,

Attainment--no delusion, whatsoe'er

The prize be: apprehended as a prize,

A prize it is. Thy child as surely grasps

An orange as he fails to grasp the sun

Assumed his capture. What if soon he finds

The foolish fruit unworthy grasping? Joy

In shape and color,--that was joy as true--

Worthy in its degree of love--as grasp

Of sun were, which had singed his hand beside.

What if he said the orange held no juice

Since it was not that sun he hoped to suck?

This constitutes the curse that spoils our life

And sets man maundering of his misery,

That there 's no meanest atom he obtains

Of what he counts for knowledge but he cries

'Hold here,--I have the whole thing,--know, this time,

Nor need search farther!' Whereas, strew his path

With pleasures, and he scorns them while he stoops:

'This fitly call'st thou pleasure, pick up this

And praise it, truly? I reserve my thanks

For something more substantial.' Fool not thus

In practising with life and its delights!

Enjoy the present gift, nor wait to know

The unknowable. Enough to say 'I feel

Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love

The love its cause behind,--I can and do!'

Nor turn to try thy brain-power on the fact,

(Apart from as it strikes thee, here and now--

Its how and why, i' the future and elsewhere)

Except to--yet once more, and ever again,

Confirm thee in thy utter ignorance:

Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality

Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,

This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed

A minute since--defies thy longing looks,

Withdrawn into the unknowable once more.

Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust

As wholly love allied to ignorance!

There lies thy truth and safety. Love is praise,

And praise is love! Refine the same, contrive

An intellectual tribute--ignorance

Appreciating ere approbative

Of knowledge that is infinite? With us,

The small, who use the knowledge of our kind

Greater than we, more wisely ignorance

Restricts its apprehension, sees and knows

No more than brain accepts in faith of sight,

Takes first what comes first, only sure so far.

By Sebzevar a certain pillar stands

So aptly that its gnomon tells the hour;

What if the townsmen said 'Before we thank

Who placed it, for his serviceable craft,

And go to dinner since its shade tells noon,

Needs must we have the craftsman's purpose clear

On half a hundred more recondite points

Than a mere summons to a vulgar meal!'

Better they say 'How opportune the help!

Be loved and praised, thou kindly-hearted sage

Whom Hudhud taught,--the gracious spirit-bird,--

How to construct the pillar, teach the time!'

So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'

But rather 'Since we love, we know enough.'

Perhaps the pillar by a spell controlled

Mushtari in his courses? Added grace

Surely I count it that the sage devised,

Beside celestial service, ministry

To all the land, by one sharp shade at noon

Falling as folk foresee. Once more, then, Friend--

(What ever in those careless ears of thine

Withal I needs must round thee)--knowledge doubt

Even wherein it seems demonstrable!

Love,--in the claim for love, that 's gratitude

For apprehended pleasure, nowise doubt!

Pay its due tribute,--sure that pleasure is,

While knowledge may be, at the most. See, now!

Eating my breakfast, I thanked God.--'For love

Shown in the cherries' flavor? Consecrate

So petty an example?' There 's the fault!

We circumscribe omnipotence. Search sand

To unearth water: if first handful scooped

Yields thee a draught, what need of digging down

Full fifty fathoms deep to find a spring

Whereof the pulse might deluge half the land?

Drain the sufficient drop, and praise what checks

The drouth that glues thy tongue,--what more would help

A brimful cistern? Ask the cistern's boon

When thou wouldst solace camels: in thy case,

Relish the drop and love the lovable!"

"And what may be unlovable?"

"Why, hate!

If out of sand comes sand and naught but sand,

Affect not to be quaffing at mirage,

Nor nickname pain as pleasure. That, belike,

Constitutes just the trial of thy wit

And worthiness to gain promotion,--hence,

Proves the true purpose of thine actual life.

Thy soul's environment of things perceived,

Things visible and things invisible,

Fact, fancy--all was purposed to evolve

This and this only--was thy wit of worth

To recognize the drop's use, love the same,

And loyally declare against mirage

Though all the world asseverated dust

Was good to drink? Say, 'what made moist my lip,

That I acknowledged moisture:' thou art saved!

For why? The creature and creator stand

Rightly related so. Consider well!

Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God

Must be ignored: love gains him by first leap.

Frankly accept the creatureship: ask good

To love for: press bold to the tether's end

Allotted to this life's intelligence!

'So we offend?' Will it offend thyself

If--impuissance praying potency--

Thy child beseech that thou command the sun

Rise bright to-morrow--thou, he thinks supreme

In power and goodness, why shouldst thou refuse?

Afterward, when the child matures, perchance

The fault were greater if, with wit full-grown,

The stripling dared to ask for a dinar,

Than that the boy cried 'Pluck Sitara down

And give her me to play with!' 'T is for him

To have no bounds to his belief in thee:

For thee it also is to let her shine

Lustrous and lonely, so best serving him!"

* * * * *

Ask not one least word of praise!

Words declare your eyes are bright?

What then meant that summer day's

Silence spent in one long gaze?

Was my silence wrong or right?

Words of praise were all to seek!

Face of you and form of you,

Did they find the praise so weak

When my lips just touched your cheek--

Touch which let my soul come through?

XII. A BEAN-STRIPE: ALSO APPLE-EATING

"Look, I strew beans" ...

(Ferishtah, we premise,

Strove this way with a scholar's cavilment

Who put the peevish question: "Sir, be frank!

A good thing or a bad thing--Life is which?

Shine and shade, happiness and misery

Battle it out there: which force beats, I ask?

If I pick beans from out a bushelful--

This one, this other,--then demand of thee

What color names each justly in the main,--

'Black' I expect, and 'White' ensues reply:

No hesitation for what speck, spot, splash

Of either color's opposite, intrudes

To modify thy judgment. Well, for beans

Substitute days,--show, ranged in order, Life--

Then, tell me its true color! Time is short,

Life's days compose a span,--as brief be speech!

Black I pronounce for, like the Indian Sage,--

Black--present, past, and future, interspersed

With blanks, no doubt, which simple folk style Good

Because not Evil: no, indeed? Forsooth,

Black's shade on White is White too! What's the worst

Of Evil but that, past, it overshades

The else-exempted, present?--memory,

We call the plague! 'Nay, but our memory fades

And leaves the past unsullied!' Does it so?

Why, straight the purpose of such breathing-space,

Such respite from past ills, grows plain enough!

What follows on remembrance of the past?

Fear of the future! Life, from birth to death,

Means--either looking back on harm escaped,

Or looking forward to that harm's return

With tenfold power of harming. Black, not White,

Never the whole consummate quietude

Life should be, troubled by no fear!--nor hope--

I 'll say, since lamplight dies in noontide, hope

Loses itself in certainty. Such lot

Man's might have been: I leave the consequence

To bolder critics or the Primal Cause;

Such am not I: but, man--as man I speak:

Black is the bean-throw: evil is the Life!")

"Look, I strew beans,"--resumed Ferishtah,--"beans

Blackish and whitish; what they figure forth

Shall be man's sum of moments, bad and good,

That make up Life,--each moment when he feels

Pleasure or pain, his poorest fact of sense,

Consciousness anyhow: there 's stand the first;

Whence next advance shall be from points to line,

Singulars to a series, parts to whole,

And moments to the Life. How look they now,

Viewed in the large, those little joys and griefs

Ranged duly all a-row at last, like beans

--These which I strew? This bean was white, this--black,

Set by itself,--but see if good and bad

Each following either in companionship,

Black have not grown less black and white less white,

Till blackish seems but dun, and whitish--gray,

And the whole line turns--well, or black to thee

Or white belike to me--no matter which:

The main result is--both are modified

According to our eye's scope, power of range

Before and after. Black dost call this bean?

What, with a whiteness in its wake, which--see--

Suffuses half its neighbor?--and, in turn,

Lowers its pearliness late absolute,

Frowned upon by the jet which follows hard--

Else wholly white my bean were. Choose a joy!

Bettered it was by sorrow gone before,

And sobered somewhat by the shadowy sense

Of sorrow which came after or might come.

Joy, sorrow,--by precedence, subsequence--

Either on each, make fusion, mix in Life

That 's both and neither wholly: gray or dun?

Dun thou decidest? gray prevails, say I:

Wherefore? Because my view is wide enough,

Reaches from first to last nor winks at all:

Motion achieves it: stop short--fast we stick,--

Probably at the bean that 's blackest.

"Since--

Son, trust me,--this I know and only this--

I am in motion, and all things beside

That circle round my passage through their midst,--

Motionless, these are, as regarding me:

--Which means, myself I solely recognize.

They too may recognize themselves, not me,

For aught I know or care: but plain they serve

This, if no other purpose--stuff to try

And test my power upon of raying light

And lending hue to all things as I go

Moonlike through vapor. Mark the flying orb!

Think'st thou the halo, painted still afresh

At each new cloud-fleece pierced and passaged through,

This was and is and will be evermore

Colored in permanence? The glory swims

Girdling the glory-giver, swallowed straight

By night's abysmal gloom, unglorified

Behind as erst before the advancer: gloom?

Faced by the onward-faring, see, succeeds

From the abandoned heaven a next surprise,

And where 's the gloom now?--silver-smitten straight,

One glow and variegation! So with me,

Who move and make--myself--the black, the white,

The good, the bad, of life's environment.

Stand still! black stays black: start again! there 's white

Asserts supremacy: the motion 's all

That colors me my moment: seen as joy?--

I have escaped from sorrow, or that was

Or might have been: as sorrow?--thence shall be

Escape as certain: white preceded black,

Black shall give way to white as duly,--so,

Deepest in black means white most imminent,

Stand still,--have no before, no after!--life

Proves death, existence grows impossible

To man like me. 'What else is blessed sleep

But death, then?' Why, a rapture of release

From toil,--that 's sleep's approach: as certainly,

The end of sleep means, toil is triumphed o'er:

These round the blank inconsciousness between

Brightness and brightness, either pushed to blaze

Just through that blank's interposition. Hence

The use of things external: man--that 's I--

Practise thereon my power of casting light,

And calling substance,--when the light I cast

Breaks into color,--by its proper name

--A truth and yet a falsity: black, white,

Names each bean taken from what lay so close

And threw such tint: pain might mean pain indeed

Seen in the passage past it,--pleasure prove

No mere delusion while I pause to look,--

Though what an idle fancy was that fear

Which overhung and hindered pleasure's hue!

While how, again, pain's shade enhanced the shine

Of pleasure, else no pleasure! Such effects

Came of such causes. Passage at an end,--

Past, present, future pains and pleasures fused

So that one glance may gather blacks and whites

Into a lifetime,--like my bean-streak there,

Why, white they whirl into, not black--for me!"

"Ay, but for me? The indubitable blacks,

Immeasurable miseries, here, there

And everywhere i' the world--world outside thine

Paled off so opportunely,--body's plague,

Torment of soul,--where 's found thy fellowship

With wide humanity all round about

Reeling beneath its burden? What 's despair?

Behold that man, that woman, child--nay, brute!

Will any speck of white unblacken life

Splashed, splotched, dyed hell-deep now from end to end

For him or her or it--who knows? Not I!"

"Nor I, Son! 'It' shall stand for bird, beast, fish,

Reptile, and insect even: take the last!

There 's the palm-aphis, minute miracle

As wondrous every whit as thou or I:

Well, and his world's the palm-frond, there he 's born,

Lives, breeds, and dies in that circumference,

An inch of green for cradle, pasture-ground,

Purlieu and grave: the palm's use, ask of him!

'To furnish these,' replies his wit: ask thine--

Who see the heaven above, the earth below,

Creation everywhere,--these, each and all

Claim certain recognition from the tree

For special service rendered branch and bole,

Top-tuft and tap-root:--for thyself, thus seen,

Palms furnish dates to eat, and leaves to shade,

--Maybe, thatch huts with,--have another use

Than strikes the aphis. So with me, my Son!

I know my own appointed patch i' the world,

What pleasures me or pains there; all outside--

How he, she, it, and even thou, Son, live,

Are pleased or pained, is past conjecture, once

I pry beneath the semblance,--all that 's fit,

To practise with,--reach where the fact may lie

Fathom-deep lower. There 's the first and last

Of my philosophy. Blacks blur thy white?

Not mine! The aphis feeds, nor finds his leaf

Untenable, because a lance-thrust, nay,

Lightning strikes sere a moss-patch close beside,

Where certain other aphids live and love.

Restriction to his single inch of white,

That's law for him, the aphis: but for me,

The man, the larger-souled, beside my stretch

Of blacks and whites, I see a world of woe

All round about me: one such burst of black

Intolerable o'er the life I count

White in the main, and, yea--white's faintest trace

Were clean abolished once and evermore.

Thus fare my fellows, swallowed up in gloom

So far as I discern: how far is that?

God's care be God's! 'T is mine--to boast no joy

Unsobered by such sorrows of my kind

As sully with their shade my life that shines."

"Reflected possibilities of pain,

Forsooth, just chasten pleasure! Pain itself,--

Fact and not fancy, does not this affect

The general color?"

"Here and there a touch

Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--

That all about, external to myself,

Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed

Demonstrably a cheat,--but half seen through,

Lest white should rule unchecked along the line

Therefore white may not triumph. All the same,

Of absolute and irretrievable

And all-subduing black,--black's soul of black

Beyond white's power to disintensify,--

Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck

My life and ruin my philosophy

To-morrow, doubtless: hence the constant shade

Cast on life's shine,--the tremor that intrudes

When firmest seems my faith in white. Dost ask

'Who is Ferishtah, hitherto exempt

From black experience? Why, if God be just,

Were sundry fellow-mortals singled out

To undergo experience for his sake,

Just that the gift of pain, bestowed on them,

In him might temper to the due degree

Joy's else-excessive largess?' Why, indeed!

Back are we brought thus to the starting-point--

Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,

These stop my answer. Aphis that I am,

How leave my inch-allotment, pass at will

Into my fellow's liberty of range,

Enter into his sense of black and white,

As either, seen by me from outside, seems

Predominatingly the color? Life,

Lived by my fellow, shall I pass into

And myself live there? No--no more than pass

From Persia, where in sun since birth I bask

Daily, to some ungracious land afar,

Told of by travellers, where the night of snow

Smothers up day, and fluids lose themselves

Frozen to marble. How I bear the sun,

Beat though he may unduly, that I know:

How blood once curdled ever creeps again,

Baffles conjecture: yet since people live

Somehow, resist a clime would conquer me,

Somehow provided for their sake must dawn

Compensative resource. 'No sun, no grapes,--

Then, no subsistence!'--were it wisely said?

Or this well-reasoned--'Do I dare feel warmth

And please my palate here with Persia's vine,

Though, over-mounts,--to trust the traveller,--

Snow, feather-thick, is falling while I feast?

What if the cruel winter force his way

Here also?' Son, the wise reply were this:

When cold from over-mounts spikes through and through

Blood, bone and marrow of Ferishtah,--then,

Time to look out for shelter--time, at least,

To wring the hands and cry 'No shelter serves!'

Shelter, of some sort, no experienced chill

Warrants that I despair to find."

"No less,

Doctors have differed here; thou say'st thy say;

Another man's experience masters thine,

Flat controverted by the sourly-Sage,

The Indian witness who, with faculty

Fine as Ferishtah's, found no white at all

Chequer the world's predominating black,

No good oust evil from supremacy,

So that Life's best was that it led to death.

How of his testimony?"

"Son, suppose

My camel told me: 'Threescore days and ten

I traversed hill and dale, yet never found

Food to stop hunger, drink to stay my drouth;

Yet, here I stand alive, which take in proof

That to survive was found impossible!'

'Nay, rather take thou, non-surviving beast,'

(Reply were prompt,) 'on flank this thwack of staff

Nowise affecting flesh that 's dead and dry!

Thou wincest? Take correction twice, amend

Next time thy nomenclature! Call white--white!'

The sourly-Sage, for whom life's best was death,

Lived out his seventy years, looked hale, laughed loud.

Liked--above all--his dinner,--lied, in short."

"Lied is a rough phrase: say he fell from truth

In climbing towards it!--sure less faulty so

Than had he sat him down and stayed content

With thy safe orthodoxy, 'White, all white,

White everywhere for certain I should see

Did I but understand how white is black,

As clearer sense than mine would.' Clearer sense,--

Whose may that be? Mere human eyes I boast,

And such distinguish colors in the main,

However any tongue, that 's human too,

Please to report the matter. Dost thou blame

A soul that strives but to see plain, speak true,

Truth at all hazards? Oh, this false for real,

This emptiness which feigns solidity,--

Ever some gray that 's white and dun that 's black,--

When shall we rest upon the thing itself

Not on its semblance?--Soul--too weak, forsooth,

To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere!

Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"

"Take one and try conclusions--this, suppose!

God is all-good, all-wise, all-powerful: truth?

Take it and rest there. What is man? Not God:

None of these absolutes therefore,--yet himself,

A creature with a creature's qualities.

Make them agree, these two conceptions! Each

Abolishes the other. Is man weak,

Foolish and bad? He must be Ahriman,

Co-equal with an Ormuzd, Bad with Good,

Or else a thing made at the Prime Sole Will,

Doing a maker's pleasure--with results

Which--call, the wide world over, 'what must be'--

But, from man's point of view, and only point

Possible to his powers, call--evidence

Of goodness, wisdom, strength? we mock ourselves

In all that 's best of us,--man 's blind but sure

Craving for these in very deed not word,

Reality and not illusions. Well,--

Since these nowhere exist--nor there where cause

Must have effect, nor here where craving means

Craving unfollowed by fit consequence

And full supply, aye sought for, never found--

These--what are they but man's own rule of right?

A scheme of goodness recognized by man,

Although by man unrealizable,--

Not God's with whom to will were to perform:

Nowise performed here, therefore never willed.

What follows but that God, who could the best,

Has willed the worst,--while man, with power to match

Will with performance, were deservedly

Hailed the supreme--provided ... here 's the touch

That breaks the bubble ... this concept of man's

Were man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,

His native grace, no alien gift at all.

The bubble breaks here. Will of man create?

No more than this my hand which strewed the beans

Produced them also from its finger-tips.

Back goes creation to its source, source prime

And ultimate, the single and the sole."

"How reconcile discordancy,--unite

Notion and notion--God that only can

Yet does not,--man that would indeed

But just as surely cannot,--both in one?

What help occurs to thy intelligence?"

"Ah, the beans,--or,--example better yet,--

A carpet-web I saw once leave the loom

And lie at gorgeous length in Ispahan!

The weaver plied his work with lengths of silk

Dyed each to match some jewel as it might,

And wove them, this by that. 'How comes it, friend,'--

(Quoth I)--'that while, apart, this fiery hue,

That watery dimness, either shocks the eye,

So blinding bright, or else offends again,

By dulness,--yet the two, set each by each,

Somehow produce a color born of both,

A medium profitable to the sight?'

'Such medium is the end whereat I aim,'--

Answered my craftsman: 'there 's no single tinct

Would satisfy the eye's desire to taste

The secret of the diamond: join extremes

Results a serviceable medium-ghost,

The diamond's simulation. Even so

I needs must blend the quality of man

With quality of God, and so assist

Mere human sight to understand my Life,

What is, what should be,--understand thereby

Wherefore I hate the first and love the last,--

Understand why things so present themselves

To me, placed here to prove I understand.

Thus, from beginning runs the chain to end,

And binds me plain enough. By consequence,

I bade thee tolerate,--not kick and cuff

The man who held that natures did in fact

Blend so, since so thyself must have them blend

In fancy, if it take a flight so far."

"A power, confessed past knowledge, nay, past thought,

--Thus thought thus known!"

"To know of, think about--

Is all man's sum of faculty effects

When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!

What was, what is, what may such atom be?

No answer! Still, what seems it to man's sense?

An atom with some certain properties

Known about, thought of as occasion needs,

--Man's--but occasions of the universe?

Unthinkable, unknowable to man.

Yet, since to think and know fire through and through

Exceeds man, is the warmth of fire unknown,

Its uses--are they so unthinkable?

Pass from such obvious power to powers unseen,

Undreamed of save in their sure consequence:

Take that, we spoke of late, which draws to ground

The staff my hand lets fall: it draws, at least--

Thus much man thinks and knows, if nothing more."

"Ay, but man puts no mind into such power!

He neither thanks it, when an apple drops,

Nor prays it spare his pate while underneath.

Does he thank Summer though it plumped the rind?

Why thank the other force--whate'er its name--

Which gave him teeth to bite and tongue to taste

And throat to let the pulp pass? Force and force,

No end of forces! Have they mind like man?"

"Suppose thou visit our lord Shalim-Shah,

Bringing thy tribute as appointed. 'Here

Come I to pay my due!' Whereat one slave

Obsequious spreads a carpet for thy foot,

His fellow offers sweetmeats, while a third

Prepares a pipe: what thanks or praise have they?

Such as befit prompt service. Gratitude

Goes past them to the Shah whose gracious nod

Set all the sweet civility at work;

But for his ordinance, I much suspect,

My scholar had been left to cool his heels

Uncarpeted, or warm them--likelier still--

With bastinado for intrusion. Slaves

Needs must obey their master: 'force and force,

No end of forces,' act as bids some force

Supreme o'er all and each: where find that one?

How recognize him? Simply as thou didst

The Shah--by reasoning 'Since I feel a debt,

Behooves me pay the same to one aware

I have my duty, he his privilege.'

Didst thou expect the slave who charged thy pipe

Would serve as well to take thy tribute-bag

And save thee further trouble?"

"Be it so!

The sense within me that I owe a debt

Assures me--somewhere must be somebody

Ready to take his due. All comes to this--

Where due is, there acceptance follows: find

Him who accepts the due! and why look far?

Behold thy kindred compass thee about!

Ere thou wast born and after thou shalt die,

Heroic man stands forth as Shahan-Shah.

Rustem and Gew, Gudarz and all the rest,

How come they short of lordship that 's to seek?

Dead worthies! but men live undoubtedly

Gifted as Sindokht, sage Sulayman's match,

Valiant like Kawah: ay, and while earth lasts

Such heroes shall abound there--all for thee

Who profitest by all the present, past,

And future operation of thy race.

Why, then, o'erburdened with a debt of thanks,

Look wistful for some hand from out the clouds

To take it, when, all round, a multitude

Would ease thee in a trice?"

"Such tendered thanks

Would tumble back to who craved riddance, Son!

--Who but my sorry self? See! stars are out--

Stars which, unconscious of thy gaze beneath,

Go glorifying, and glorify thee too

--Those Seven Thrones, Zurah's beauty, weird Parwin!

Whether shall love and praise to stars be paid

Or--say--some Mubid who, for good to thee

Blind at thy birth, by magic all his own

Opened thine eyes, and gave the sightless sight,

Let the stars' glory enter? Say his charm

Worked while thyself lay sleeping: as he went

Thou wakedst: 'What a novel sense have I!

Whom shall I love and praise?' 'The stars, each orb

Thou standest rapt beneath,' proposes one:

'Do not they live their life, and please themselves,

And so please thee? What more is requisite?'

Make thou this answer: 'If indeed no mage

Opened my eyes and worked a miracle,

Then let the stars thank me who apprehend

That such an one is white, such other blue!

But for my apprehension both were blank.

Cannot I close my eyes and bid my brain

Make whites and blues, conceive without stars' help,

New qualities of color? were my sight

Lost or misleading, would yon red--I judge

A ruby's benefaction--stand for aught

But green from vulgar glass? Myself appraise

Lustre and lustre: should I overlook

Fomalhaut and declare some fen-fire king,

Who shall correct me, lend me eyes he trusts

No more than I trust mine? My mage for me!

I never saw him: if he never was,

I am the arbitrator!' No, my Son!

Let us sink down to thy similitude:

I eat my apple, relish what is ripe--

The sunny side, admire its rarity

Since half the tribe is wrinkled, and the rest

Hide commonly a maggot in the core,--

And down Zerdusht goes with due smack of lips:

But--thank an apple? He who made my mouth

To masticate, my palate to approve,

My maw to further the concoction--Him

I thank,--but for whose work, the orchard's wealth

Might prove so many gall-nuts--stocks or stones

For aught that I should think, or know, or care."

* * * * *

"Why from the world," Ferishtah smiled, "should thanks

Go to this work of mine? If worthy praise,

Praised let it be and welcome: as verse ranks,

So rate my verse: if good therein outweighs

Aught faulty judged, judge justly! Justice says;

Be just to fact, or blaming or approving:

But--generous? No, nor loving!

"Loving! what claim to love has work of mine?

Concede my life were emptied of its gains

To furnish forth and fill work's strict confine,

Who works so for the world's sake--he complains

With cause when hate, not love, rewards his pains.

I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty:

Sought, found, and did my duty."

EPILOGUE

Oh, Love--no, Love! All the noise below, Love,

Groanings all and moanings--none of Life I lose!

All of Life's a cry just of weariness and woe, Love--

"Hear at least, thou happy one!" How can I, Love, but choose?

Only, when I do hear, sudden circle round me

--Much as when the moon's might frees a space from cloud--

Iridescent splendors: gloom--would else confound me--

Barriered off and banished far--bright-edged the blackest shroud!

Thronging through the cloud-rift, whose are they, the faces

Faint revealed yet sure divined, the famous ones of old?

"What"--they smile--"our names, our deeds so soon erases

Time upon his tablet where Life's glory lies enrolled?

"Was it for mere fool's-play, make-believe and mumming,

So we battled it like men, not boylike sulked or whined?

Each of us heard clang God's 'Come!' and each was coming:

Soldiers all, to forward-face, not sneaks to lag behind!

"How of the field's fortune? That concerned our Leader!

Led, we struck our stroke nor cared for doings left and right:

Each as on his sole head, failer or succeeder,

Lay the blame or lit the praise: no care for cowards: fight!"

Then the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth that 's under,

Wide our world displays its worth, man's strife and strife's

success;

All the good and beauty, wonder crowning wonder,

Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, nothing less.

Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror

Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms

All the late enchantment! What if all be error--

If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?

Palazzo Giustinian-Recanati, VENICE:

_December 1, 1883_.

RAWDON BROWN

"Tutti ga i so gusti, e mi go i mii."

(_Venetian saying._)

Mr. Rawdon Brown was an Englishman who went to Venice on some temporary

errand, and lived there for forty years, dying in that city in the

summer of 1883. He had an enthusiastic love for Venice, and is

mentioned in books of travel as one who knew the city thoroughly. The

Venetian saying means that "everybody follows his taste as I follow

mine." Toni was the gondolier and attendant of Brown. The inscription

on Brown's tomb is given in the third and fourth lines. G. W. COOKE.

Sighed Rawdon Brown: "Yes, I 'm departing, Toni!

I needs must, just this once before I die,

Revisit England: _Anglus_ Brown am I,

Although my heart 's Venetian. Yes, old crony--

Venice and London--London 's 'Death the bony'

Compared with Life--that 's Venice! What a sky,

A sea, this morning! One last look! Good-by,

Cà Pesaro! No, lion--I 'm a coney

To weep! I 'm dazzled; 't is that sun I view

Rippling the ... the ... _Cospetto_, Toni! Down

With carpet-bag, and off with valise-straps!

_Bella Venezia, non ti lascio più!_"

Nor did Brown ever leave her: well, perhaps

Browning, next week, may find himself quite Brown!

_November 28, 1883._

THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST

Inscribed in an Album presented to Mr. Arthur Chappell, of the Saint

James Hall Saturday and Monday popular concerts.

"Enter my palace," if a prince should say--

"Feast with the Painters! See, in bounteous row,

They range from Titian up to Angelo!"

Could we be silent at the rich survey?

A host so kindly, in as great a way

Invites to banquet, substitutes for show

Sound that 's diviner still, and bids us know

Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?

Thanks, then, to Arthur Chappell,--thanks to him

Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts

"Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,

My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,

When, night by night,--ah, memory, how it haunts!--

Music was poured by perfect ministrants,

By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim.

_April 5, 1884._

THE NAMES

At Dr. F. J. Furnivall's suggestion, Browning was asked to contribute a

sonnet to the _Shakesperean Show-Book_ of the "Shakesperean Show" held

in Albert Hall, London, on May 29-31, 1884, to pay off the debt on the

Hospital for Women, in Fulham Road. The poet sent to the committee a

sonnet on the names of Jehovah and Shakespeare.

Shakespeare!--to such name's sounding, what succeeds

Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,--

Act follows word, the speaker knows full well,

Nor tampers with its magic more than needs.

Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads

With his soul only: if from lips it fell,

Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell,

Would own "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes

We voice the other name, man's most of might,

Awesomely, lovingly: let awe and love

Mutely await their working, leave to sight

All of the issue as--below--above--

Shakespeare's creation rises: one remove,

Though dread--this finite from that infinite.

_March 12, 1884._

EPITAPH

ON LEVI LINCOLN THAXTER

Born in Watertown, Massachusetts, February 1, 1824.

Died May 31, 1884.

Mr. Thaxter was early a student of Browning's genius and in his

later years gave readings from his poems, which were singularly

interpretative. The boulder over his grave bears these lines.

Thou, whom these eyes saw never! Say friends true

Who say my soul, helped onward by my song,

Though all unwittingly, has helped thee too?

I gave of but the little that I knew:

How were the gift requited, while along

Life's path I pace, couldst thou make weakness strong!

Help me with knowledge--for Life's Old--Death's New!

R. B. to L. L. T., _April_, 1885.

WHY I AM A LIBERAL

Contributed to a volume edited by Andrew Reid, in which a number of

leaders of English thought answered the question, "Why I am a Liberal?"

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,

All that I am now, all I hope to be,--

Whence comes it save from fortune setting free

Body and soul the purpose to pursue,

God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,

Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,

These shall I bid men--each in his degree

Also God-guided--bear, and gayly, too?

But little do or can the best of us:

That little is achieved through Liberty.

Who, then, dares hold, emancipated thus,

His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,

Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss

A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."

PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY

IN MEMORIAM J. MILSAND, OBIIT IV. SEPTEMBER, MDCCCLXXXVI.

_Absens Absentem Auditque Videtque._

APOLLO AND THE FATES

A PROLOGUE

(Hymn in Mercurium, v. 559. Eumenides, vv. 693-4, 697-8. Alcestis, vv.

12, 33.)

_Apollo._ (_From above._) Flame at my footfall, Parnassus! Apollo,

Breaking ablaze on thy topmost peak,

Burns thence, down to the depths--dread hollow--

Haunt of the Dire Ones. Haste! They wreak

Wrath on Admetus whose respite I seek.

* * * * *

_The Fates._ (_Below. Darkness._) Dragonwise couched in the womb

of our Mother,

Coiled at thy nourishing heart's core, Night!

Dominant Dreads, we, one by the other,

Deal to each mortal his dole of light

On earth--the upper, the glad, the bright.

_Clotho._ Even so: thus from my loaded spindle

Plucking a pinch of the fleece, lo, "Birth"

Brays from my bronze lip: life I kindle:

Look, 't is a man! go, measure on earth

The minute thy portion, whatever its worth!

* * * * *

_Lachesis._ Woe-purfled, weal-prankt,--if it speed, if it

linger,--

Life's substance and show are determined by me,

Who, meting out, mixing with sure thumb and finger,

Lead life the due length: is all smoothness and glee,

All tangle and grief? Take the lot, my decree!

* * * * *

_Atropos._--Which I make an end of: the smooth as the tangled

My shears cut asunder: each snap shrieks "One more

Mortal makes sport for us Moirai who dangled

The puppet grotesquely till earth's solid floor

Proved film he fell through, lost in Naught as before."

* * * * *

_Clo._ I spin thee a thread. Live, Admetus! Produce him!

_Lac._ Go,--brave, wise, good, happy! Now chequer the thread!

He is slaved for, yet loved by a god. I unloose him

A goddess-sent plague. He has conquered, is wed,

Men crown him, he stands at the height,--

_Atr._ He is ...

_Apollo._ (_Entering: Light._) "Dead?"

Nay, swart spinsters! So I surprise you

Making and marring the fortunes of Man?

Huddling--no marvel, your enemy eyes you--

Head by head bat-like, blots under the ban

Of daylight earth's blessing since time began!

* * * * *

_The Fates._ Back to thy blest earth, prying Apollo!

Shaft upon shaft transpierce with thy beams

Earth to the centre,--spare but this hollow

Hewn out of Night's heart, where our mystery seems

Mewed from day's malice: wake earth from her dreams!

* * * * *

_Apol._ Crones, 't is your dusk selves I startle from slumber:

Day's god deposes you--queens Night-crowned!

--Plying your trade in a world ye encumber,

Fashioning Man's web of life--spun, wound,

Left the length ye allot till a clip strews the ground!

Behold I bid truce to your doleful amusement--

Annulled by a sunbeam!

_The Fates._ Boy, are not we peers?

_Apol._ You with the spindle grant birth: whose inducement

But yours--with the niggardly digits--endears

To mankind chance and change, good and evil? Your shears ...

* * * * *

_Atr._ Ay, mine end the conflict: so much is no fable.

We spin, draw to length, cut asunder: what then?

So it was, and so is, and so shall be: art able

To alter life's law for ephemeral men?

_Apol._ Nor able nor willing. To threescore and ten

Extend but the years of Admetus! Disaster

O'ertook me, and, banished by Zeus, I became

A servant to one who forbore me though master:

True lovers were we. Discontinue your game,

Let him live whom I loved, then hate on, all the same!

* * * * *

_The Fates._ And what if we granted--law-flouter, use-trampler--

His life at the suit of an upstart? Judge, thou--

Of joy were it fuller, of span because ampler?

For love's sake, not hate's, end Admetus--ay, now--

Not a gray hair on head, nor a wrinkle on brow!

For, boy, 't is illusion: from thee comes a glimmer

Transforming to beauty life blank at the best.

Withdraw--and how looks life at worst, when to shimmer

Succeeds the sure shade, and Man's lot frowns--confessed

Mere blackness chance-brightened? Whereof shall attest

The truth this same mortal, the darling thou stylest,

Whom love would advantage,--eke out, day by day,

A life which 't is solely thyself reconcilest

Thy friend to endure,--life with hope: take away

Hope's gleam from Admetus, he spurns it. For, say--

What 's infancy? Ignorance, idleness, mischief:

Youth ripens to arrogance, foolishness, greed:

Age--impotence, churlishness, rancor: call _this_ chief

Of boons for thy loved one? Much rather bid speed

Our function, let live whom thou hatest indeed!

Persuade thee, bright boy-thing! Our eld be instructive!

_Apol._ And certes youth owns the experience of age.

Ye hold then, grave seniors, my beams are productive

--They solely--of good that 's mere semblance, engage

Man's eye--gilding evil, Man's true heritage?

* * * * *

_The Fates._ So, even so! From without,--at due distance

If viewed,--set a-sparkle, reflecting thy rays,--

Life mimics the sun: but withdraw such assistance,

The counterfeit goes, the reality stays--

An ice-ball disguised as a fire-orb.

_Apol._ What craze

Possesses the fool then whose fancy conceits him

As happy?

_The Fates._ Man happy?

_Apol._ If otherwise--solve

This doubt which besets me! What friend ever greets him

Except with "Live long as the seasons revolve,"

Not "Death to thee straightway"? Your doctrines absolve

Such hailing from hatred: yet Man should know best.

He talks it, and glibly, as life were a load

Man fain would be rid of: when put to the test,

He whines "Let it lie, leave me trudging the road

That is rugged so far, but methinks" ...

_The Fates._ Ay, 't is owed

To that glamour of thine, he bethinks him "Once past

The stony, some patch, nay, a smoothness of swarth

Awaits my tired foot: life turns easy at last"--

Thy largess so lures him, he looks for reward

Of the labor and sorrow.

_Apol._ It seems, then--debarred

Of illusion--(I needs must acknowledge the plea)

Man desponds and despairs. Yet,--still further to draw

Due profit from counsel,--suppose there should be

Some power in himself, some compensative law

By virtue of which, independently ...

* * * * *

_The Fates._ Faugh!

Strength hid in the weakling!

What bowl-shape hast there,

Thus laughingly proffered? A gift to our shrine?

Thanks--worsted in argument! Not so? Declare

Its purpose!

_Apol._ I proffer earth's product, not mine.

Taste, try, and approve Man's invention of--WINE!

* * * * *

_The Fates._ We feeding suck honeycombs.

_Apol._ Sustenance meagre!

Such fare breeds the fumes that show all things amiss.

Quaff wine,--how the spirits rise nimble and eager,

Unscale the dim eyes! To Man's cup grant one kiss

Of your lip, then allow--no enchantment like this!

* * * * *

_Clo._ Unhook wings, unhood brows! Dost hearken?

_Lach._ I listen:

I see--smell the food these fond mortals prefer

To our feast, the bee's bounty!

_Atr._ The thing leaps! But--glisten

Its best, I withstand it--unless all concur

In adventure so novel.

_Apol._ Ye drink?

_The Fates._ We demur.

* * * * *

_Apol._ Sweet Trine, be indulgent nor scout the contrivance

Of Man--Bacchus-prompted! The juice, I uphold,

Illuminates gloom without sunny connivance,

Turns fear into hope and makes cowardice bold,--

Touching all that is leadlike in life turns it gold!

* * * * *

_The Fates._ Faith foolish as false!

_Apol._ But essay it, soft sisters!

Then mock as ye may. Lift the chalice to lip!

Good: thou next--and thou! Seems the web, to you twisters

Of life's yarn, so worthless?

_Clo._ Who guessed that one sip

Would impart such a lightness of limb?

_Lach._ I could skip

In a trice from the pied to the plain in my woof!

What parts each from either? A hair's breadth, no inch.

Once learn the right method of stepping aloof,

Though on black next foot falls, firm I fix it, nor flinch,

--Such my trust white succeeds!

_Atr._ One could live--at a pinch!

* * * * *

_Apol._ What, beldames? Earth's yield, by Man's skill, can effect

Such a cure of sick sense that ye spy the relation

Of evil to good? But drink deeper, correct

Blear sight more convincingly still! Take your station

Beside me, drain dregs! Now for edification!

Whose gift have ye gulped? Thank not me but my brother,

Blithe Bacchus, our youngest of godships. 'T was he

Found all boons to all men, by one god or other

Already conceded, so judged there must be

New guerdon to grace the new advent, you see!

Else how would a claim to Man's homage arise?

The plan lay arranged of his mixed woe and weal,

So disposed--such Zeus' will--with design to make wise

The witless--that false things were mingled with real,

Good with bad: such the lot whereto law set the seal.

Now, human of instinct--since Semele's son,

Yet minded divinely--since fathered by Zeus,

With naught Bacchus tampered, undid not things done,

Owned wisdom anterior, would spare wont and use,

Yet change--without shock to old rule--introduce.

Regard how your cavern from crag-tip to base

Frowns sheer, height and depth adamantine, one death!

I rouse with a beam the whole rampart, displace

No splinter--yet see how my flambeau, beneath

And above, bids this gem wink, that crystal unsheathe!

Withdraw beam--disclosure once more Night forbids you

Of spangle and sparkle--Day's chance-gift, surmised

Rock's permanent birthright: my potency rids you

No longer of darkness, yet light--recognized--

Proves darkness a mask: day lives on though disguised.

If Bacchus by wine's aid avail so to fluster

Your sense, that life's fact grows from adverse and thwart

To helpful and kindly by means of a cluster--

Mere hand-squeeze, earth's nature sublimed by Man's art--

Shall Bacchus claim thanks wherein Zeus has no part?

Zeus--wisdom anterior? No, maids, be admonished!

If morn's touch at base worked such wonders, much more

Had noontide in absolute glory astonished

Your den, filled a-top to o'erflowing. I pour

No such mad confusion. 'T is Man's to explore

Up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason:

No torch, it suffices--held deftly and straight.

Eyes, purblind at first, feel their way in due season,

Accept good with bad, till unseemly debate

Turns concord--despair, acquiescence in fate.

Who works this but Zeus? Are not instinct and impulse,

Not concept and incept his work through Man's soul

On Man's sense? Just as wine ere it reach brain must brim pulse,

Zeus' flash stings the mind that speeds body to goal,

Bids pause at no part but press on, reach the whole.

For petty and poor is the part ye envisage

When--(quaff away, cummers!)--ye view, last and first,

As evil Man's earthly existence. Come! _Is_ age,

_Is_ infancy--manhood--so uninterspersed

With good--some faint sprinkle?

_Clo._ I 'd speak if I durst.

* * * * *

_Apol._ Draughts dregward loose tongue-tie.

_Lach._ I 'd see, did no web

Set eyes somehow winking.

_Apol._ Drains-deep lies their purge

--True collyrium!

_Atr._ Words, surging at high-tide, soon ebb

From starved ears.

_Apol._ Drink but down to the source, they resurge.

Join hands! Yours and yours too! A dance or a dirge?

* * * * *

_Cho._ Quashed be our quarrel! Sourly and smilingly,

Bare and gowned, bleached limbs and browned,

Drive we a dance, three and one, reconcilingly,

Thanks to the cup where dissension is drowned,

Defeat proves triumphant and slavery crowned.

Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning

Pale and depart in a passion of tears?

Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning!

Love once--e'en love's disappointment endears!

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

Manhood--the actual? Nay, praise the potential!

(Bound upon bound, foot it around!)

What _is?_ No, what _may_ be--sing! that 's Man's essential!

(Ramp, tramp, stamp and compound

Fancy with fact--the lost secret is found!)

Age? Why, fear ends there: the contest concluded,

Man _did_ live his life, _did_ escape from the fray:

Not scratchless but unscathed, he somehow eluded

Each blow fortune dealt him, and conquers to-day:

To-morrow--new chance and fresh strength,--might we say?

Laud then Man's life--no defeat but a triumph! [_Explosion from the

earth's centre._

_Clo._ Ha, loose hands!

_Lach._ I reel in a swound.

_Atro._ Horror yawns under me, while from on high--humph!

Lightnings astound, thunders resound,

Vault-roof reverberates, groans the ground! [_Silence._

_Apol._ I acknowledge.

_The Fates._ Hence, trickster! Straight sobered are we!

The portent assures 't was our tongue spoke the truth,

Not thine. While the vapor encompassed us three

We conceived and bore knowledge--a bantling uncouth,

Old brains shudder back from: so--take it, rash youth!

Lick the lump into shape till a cry comes!

_Apol._ I hear.

_The Fates_. Dumb music, dead eloquence! Say it, or sing!

What was quickened in us and thee also?

_Apol._ I fear.

_The Fates._ Half female, half male--go, ambiguous thing!

While we speak--perchance sputter--pick up what we fling!

Known yet ignored, nor divined nor unguessed,

Such is Man's law of life. Do we strive to declare

What is ill, what is good in our spinning? Worst, best,

Change hues of a sudden: now here and now there

Flits the sign which decides: all about yet nowhere.

'T is willed so,--that Man's life be lived, first to last,

Up and down, through and through--not in portions, forsooth,

To pick and to choose from. Our shuttles fly fast,

Weave living, not life sole and whole: as age--youth,

So death completes living, shows life in its truth.

Man learningly lives: till death helps him--no lore!

It is doom and must be. Dost submit?

_Apol._ I assent--

Concede but Admetus! So much if no more

Of my prayer grant as peace-pledge! Be gracious, though, blent,

Good and ill, love and hate streak your life-gift!

_The Fates._ Content!

Such boon we accord in due measure. Life's term

We lengthen should any be moved for love's sake

To forego life's fulfilment, renounce in the germ

Fruit mature--bliss or woe--either infinite. Take

Or leave thy friend's lot: on his head be the stake!

* * * * *

_Apol._ On mine, griesly gammers! Admetus, I know thee!

Thou prizest the right these unwittingly give

Thy subjects to rush, pay obedience they owe thee!

Importunate one with another they strive

For the glory to die that their king may survive.

Friends rush: and who first in all Pheræ appears

But thy father to serve as thy substitute?

_Clo._ Bah!

_Apol._ Ye wince? Then his mother, well stricken in years,

Advances her claim--or his wife--

_Lach._ Tra-la-la!

_Apol._ But he spurns the exchange, rather dies!

_Atro._ Ha, ha, ha!

[_Apollo ascends. Darkness._

WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE

I

Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine,

Come and review thy counsels: art thou still

Stanch to their teaching?--not as fools opine

Its purport might be, but as subtler skill

Could, through turbidity, the loaded line

Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till

It touched a quietude and reached a shrine

And recognized harmoniously combine

Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph.--thine,

Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville!

II

Only, 't is no fresh knowledge that I crave,

Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave;

Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn

To what account Man may Man's portion, learn

Man's proper play with truth in part, before

Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more

Than smiling witness that I do my best

With doubtful doctrine: afterwards the rest!

So, silent face me while I think and speak!

A full disclosure? Such would outrage law.

Law deals the same with soul and body: seek

Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw

A new-born weakling, starts up strong--not weak--

Man every whit, absolved from earning awe,

Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak

Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw,

As mind bids muscle--mind which long has striven,

Painfully urging body's impotence

To effort whereby--once law's barrier riven,

Life's rule abolished--body might dispense

With infancy's probation, straight be given

--Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven,

Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven--

To stand full-statured in magnificence.

III

No: as with body so deals law with soul

That 's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good

Through evil,--earth its race-ground, heaven its goal,

Presumably: so far I understood

Thy teaching long ago. But what means this

--Objected by a mouth which yesterday

Was magisterial in antithesis

To half the truths we hold, or trust we may,

Though tremblingly the while? "No sign"--groaned he--

"No stirring of God's finger to denote

He wills that right should have supremacy

On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote

But one poor instance when he interposed

Promptly and surely and beyond mistake

Between oppression and its victim, closed

Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake

From our long dream that justice bears no sword,

Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves!

So might we safely mock at what unnerves

Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase

That haply evil's strife with good shall cease

Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace

Born out of life-long battle? Man's lip curves

With scorn: there, also, what if justice swerves

From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke

Right fettered here by wrong, but leaves life's yoke--

Death should loose man from--fresh laid, past release?"

IV

Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me

This parlous friend who captured or set free

Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw

Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw

Thy gold-rimmed amber-headed cane had whisked

Out of his pathway if the object risked

Encounter, 'scaped thy kick from buckled shoe!

As when folk heard thee in old days pooh-pooh

Addison's tye-wig preachment, grant this friend--

(Whose groan I hear, with guffaw at the end

Disposing of mock-melancholy)--grant

His bilious mood one potion, ministrant

Of homely wisdom, healthy wit! For, hear!

"With power and will, let preference appear

By intervention ever and aye, help good

When evil's mastery is understood

In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong

Tramples weak right to nothingness: nay, long

Ere such sad consummation brings despair

To right's adherents, ah, what help it were

If wrong lay strangled in the birth--each head

Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, instead

Of spared to gather venom! We require

No great experience that the inch-long worm,

Free of our heel, would grow to vomit fire,

And one day plague the world in dragon form.

So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet

Wrong's due quietus, leave our world's way safe

For honest walking."

V

Sage, once more repeat

Instruction! 'T is a sore to soothe not chafe.

Ah, Fabulist, what luck, could I contrive

To coax from thee another "Grumbling Hive"!

My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet:

Ask him--"Suppose the Gardener of Man's ground

Plants for a purpose, side by side with good,

Evil--(and that he does so--look around!

What does the field show?)--were it understood

That purposely the noxious plant was found

Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food,

If, at first stealing-forth of life in stalk

And leaflet-promise, quick his spud should balk

Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit?

Such timely treatment of the offending root

Might strike the simple as wise husbandry,

But swift sure extirpation would scarce suit

Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives: why

Frustrate its product, miss the quality

Which sower binds himself to count upon?

Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone

Unhindered up to harvest--what know I

But proof were gained that every growth of good

Sprang consequent on evil's neighborhood?"

So said your shrewdness: true--so did not say

That other sort of theorists who held

Mere unintelligence prepared the way

For either seed's upsprouting: you repelled

Their notion that both kinds could sow themselves.

True! but admit 't is understanding delves

And drops each germ, what else but folly thwarts

The doer's settled purpose? Let the sage

Concede a use to evil, though there starts

Full many a burgeon thence, to disengage

With thumb and finger lest it spoil the yield

Too much of good's main tribute! But our main

Tough-tendoned mandrake-monster--purge the field

Of him for once and all? It follows plain

Who set him there to grow beholds repealed

His primal law: his ordinance proves vain:

And what beseems a king who cannot reign,

But to drop sceptre valid arm should wield?

VI

"Still there 's a parable"--retorts my friend--

"Shows agriculture with a difference!

What of the crop and weeds which solely blend

Because, once planted, none may pluck them thence?

The Gardener contrived thus? Vain pretence!

An enemy it was who unawares

Ruined the wheat by interspersing tares.

Where 's our desiderated forethought? Where 's

Knowledge, where power and will in evidence?

'T is Man's-play merely! Craft foils rectitude,

Malignity defeats beneficence.

And grant, at very last of all, the feud

'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude

Though good be garnered safely, and good's foe

Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal: 'Even so--

Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower

Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower,

Triumph one sunny minute? Knowledge, power,

And will thus worked?' Man's fancy makes the fault!

Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside

His finite God's infinitude,--earth's vault

He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,

Since Man may claim a right to understand

What passes understanding. So, succinct

And trimly set in order, to be scanned

And scrutinized, lo--the divine lies linked

Fast to the human, free to move as moves

Its proper match: awhile they keep the grooves,

Discreetly side by side together pace,

Till sudden comes a stumble incident

Likely enough to Man's weak-footed race,

And he discovers--wings in rudiment,

Such as he boasts, which full-grown, free-distent

Would lift him skyward, fail of flight while pent

Within humanity's restricted space.

Abjure each fond attempt to represent

The formless, the illimitable! Trace

No outline, try no hint of human face

Or form or hand!"

VII

Friend, here 's a tracing meant

To help a guess at truth you never knew.

Bend but those eyes now, using mind's eye too,

And note--sufficient for all purposes--

The ground-plan--map you long have yearned for--yes,

Make out in markings--more what artist can?--

Goethe's Estate in Weimar,--just a plan!

_A_ is the House, and _B_ the Garden-gate,

And _C_ the Grass-plot--you 've the whole estate

Letter by letter, down to _Y_ the Pond,

And _Z_ the Pigsty. Do you look beyond

The algebraic signs, and captions say

"Is _A_ the House? But where 's the Roof to _A_,

Where 's Door, where 's Window? Needs must House have such!"

Ay, that were folly. Why so very much

More foolish than our mortal purblind way

Of seeking in the symbol no mere point

To guide our gaze through what were else inane,

But things--their solid selves? "Is, joint by joint,

Orion man-like,--as these dots explain

His constellation? Flesh composed of suns--

How can such be?" exclaim the simple ones.

Look through the sign to the thing signified--

Shown nowise, point by point at best descried,

Each an orb's topmost sparkle: all beside

Its shine is shadow: turn the orb one jot--

Up flies the new flash to reveal 't was not

The whole sphere late flamboyant in your ken!

VIII

"What need of symbolizing? Fitlier men

Would take on tongue mere facts--few, faint and far,

Still facts not fancies: quite enough they are,

That Power, that Knowledge, and that Will,--add then

Immensity, Eternity: these jar

Nowise with our permitted thought and speech.

Why human attributes?"

A myth may teach:

Only, who better would expound it thus

Must be Euripides, not Æschylus.

IX

Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,

Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun

Above the conscious earth, and one by one

Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark

His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge

Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,

Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold

On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge

Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist

Her work done and betook herself in mist

To marsh and hollow, there to bide her time

Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere

Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime,

Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there

No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew

Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,

The universal world of creatures bred

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise--

All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,

Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can--

Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,

Sullen and silent.