But do not let us quarrel any more,

No, my Lucrezia! bear with me for once:

Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.

You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?

I'll work then for your friend's friend, never fear,

Treat his own subject after his own way,

Fix his own time, accept too his own price,

And shut the money into this small hand

When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?

Oh, I'll content him,--but to-morrow, Love!

I often am much wearier than you think,

This evening more than usual: and it seems

As if--forgive now--should you let me sit

Here by the window, with your hand in mine,

And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,

Both of one mind, as married people use,

Quietly, quietly the evening through,

I might get up to-morrow to my work

Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.

To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!

Your soft hand is a woman of itself,

And mine the man's bared breast she curls inside.

Don't count the time lost, neither; you must serve

For each of the five pictures we require:

It saves a model. So! keep looking so--

My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!

--How could you ever prick those perfect ears,

Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet--

My face, my moon, my everybody's moon,

Which everybody looks on and calls his,

And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,

While she looks--no one's: very dear, no less.

You smile? why, there's my picture ready made.

There's what we painters call our harmony!

A common grayness silvers everything,--

All in a twilight, you and I alike

--You, at the point of your first pride in me

(That's gone, you know)--but I, at every point;

My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down

To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.

There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top;

That length of convent-wall across the way

Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;

The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,

And autumn grows, autumn in everything.

Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape,

As if I saw alike my work and self

And all that I was born to be and do,

A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God's hand.

How strange now looks the life he makes us lead;

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!

I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!

This chamber for example--turn your head--

All that's behind us! You don't understand

Nor care to understand about my art,

But you can hear at least when people speak:

And that cartoon, the second from the door

--It is the thing, Love! so such things should be--

Behold Madonna!--I am bold to say.

I can do with my pencil what I know,

What I see, what at bottom of my heart

I wish for, if I ever wish so deep--

Do easily, too--when I say, perfectly,

I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,

Who listened to the Legate's talk last week;

And just as much they used to say in France.

At any rate 'tis easy, all of it!

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:

I do what many dream of, all their lives,

--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,

And fail in doing. I could count twenty such

On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,

Who strive--you don't know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that you smeared

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.

There burns a truer light of God in them,

In their vexed, beating, stuffed and stopped-up brain,

Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt

This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.

Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,

Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me,

Enter and take their place there sure enough,

Tho' they come back and cannot tell the world.

My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.

The sudden blood of these men! at a word--

Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.

I, painting from myself and to myself,

Know what I do, am unmoved by men's blame

Or their praise either. Somebody remarks

Morello's outline there is wrongly traced,

His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,

Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?

Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-gray,

Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!

I know both what I want and what might gain,

And yet how profitless to know, to sigh

"Had I been two, another and myself,

Our head would have o'erlooked the world!" No doubt.

Yonder's a work now, of that famous youth

The Urbinate who died five years ago.

('Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)

Well, I can fancy how he did it all,

Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,

Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,

Above and thro' his art--for it gives way;

That arm is wrongly put--and there again--

A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,

Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,

He means right--that, a child may understand.

Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:

But all the play, the insight and the stretch--

Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?

Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,

We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!

Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think--

More than I merit, yes, by many times.

But had you--oh, with the same perfect brow,

And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,

And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird

The fowler's pipe, and follows to the snare--

Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!

Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged

"God and the glory! never care for gain.

The present by the future, what is that?

Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!

Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!"

I might have done it for you. So it seems:

Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.

Besides, incentives come from the soul's self;

The rest avail not. Why do I need you?

What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?

In this world, who can do a thing, will not;

And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:

Yet the will's somewhat--somewhat, too, the power--

And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,

God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.

'Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,

That I am something underrated here,

Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.

I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,

For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.

The best is when they pass and look aside;

But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.

Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,

And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!

I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,

Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear,

In that humane great monarch's golden look,--

One finger in his beard or twisted curl

Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile,

One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,

The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,

I painting proudly with his breath on me,

All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,

Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls

Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts,--

And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,

This in the background, waiting on my work,

To crown the issue with a last reward!

A good time, was it not, my kingly days?

And had you not grown restless ... but I know--

'Tis done and past; 'twas right, my instinct said;

Too live the life grew, golden and not gray:

And I'm the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt

Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.

How could it end in any other way?

You called me, and I came home to your heart.

The triumph was--to reach and stay there; since

I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?

Let my hands frame your face in your hair's gold,

You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!

"Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;

The Roman's is the better when you pray,

But still the other's Virgin was his wife--"

Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge

Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows

My better fortune, I resolve to think.

For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,

Said one day Agnolo, his very self,

To Rafael ... I have known it all these years....

(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts

Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,

Too lifted up in heart because of it)

"Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub

Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,

Who, were he set to plan and execute

As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,

Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!"

To Rafael's!--And indeed the arm is wrong.

I hardly dare ... yet, only you to see,

Give the chalk here--quick, thus the line should go!

Ay, but the soul! he's Rafael! rub it out!

Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,

(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?

Do you forget already words like those?)

If really there was such a chance so lost,--

Is, whether you're--not grateful--but more pleased.

Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!

This hour has been an hour! Another smile?

If you would sit thus by me every night

I should work better, do you comprehend?

I mean that I should earn more, give you more.

See, it is settled dusk now; there's a star;

Morello's gone, the watch-lights show the wall,

The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.

Come from the window, love,--come in, at last,

Inside the melancholy little house

We built to be so gay with. God is just.

King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights

When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,

The walls become illumined, brick from brick

Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,

That gold of his I did cement them with!

Let us but love each other. Must you go?

That Cousin here again? he waits outside?

Must see you--you, and not with me? Those loans?

More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?

Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?

While hand and eye and something of a heart

Are left me, work's my ware, and what's it worth?

I'll pay my fancy. Only let me sit

The gray remainder of the evening out,

Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly

How I could paint, were I but back in France,

One picture, just one more--the Virgin's face,

Not yours this time! I want you at my side

To hear them--that is, Michel Agnolo--

Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.

Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend.

I take the subjects for his corridor,

Finish the portrait out of hand--there, there,

And throw him in another thing or two

If he demurs; the whole should prove enough

To pay for this same Cousin's freak. Beside,

What's better and what's all I care about,

Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!

Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,

The Cousin! what does he to please you more?

I am grown peaceful as old age to-night.

I regret little, I would change still less.

Since there my past life lies, why alter it?

The very wrong to Francis!--it is true

I took his coin, was tempted and complied,

And built this house and sinned, and all is said.

My father and my mother died of want.

Well, had I riches of my own? you see

How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.

They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:

And I have laboured somewhat in my time

And not been paid profusely. Some good son

Paint my two hundred pictures--let him try!

No doubt, there's something strikes a balance. Yes,

You loved me quite enough, it seems to-night.

This must suffice me here. What would one have?

In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance--

Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,

Meted on each side by the angel's reed,

For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me

To cover--the three first without a wife,

While I have mine! So--still they overcome

Because there's still Lucrezia,--as I choose.

Again the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.

MULEYKEH

If a stranger passed the tent of Hoseyn, he cried "A churl's!"

Or haply "God help the man who has neither salt nor bread!"

--"Nay," would a friend exclaim, "he needs nor pity nor scorn

More than who spends small thought on the shore-sand, picking pearls,

--Holds but in light esteem the seed-sort, bears instead

On his breast a moon-like prize, some orb which of night makes morn.

"What if no flocks and herds enrich the son of Sinan?

They went when his tribe was mulct, ten thousand camels the due,

Blood-value paid perforce for a murder done of old.

'God gave them, let them go! But never since time began,

Muleykeh, peerless mare, owned master the match of you,

And you are my prize, my Pearl: I laugh at men's land and gold!'

"So in the pride of his soul laughs Hoseyn--and right, I say.

Do the ten steeds run a race of glory? Outstripping all,

Ever Muleykeh stands first steed at the victor's staff.

Who started, the owner's hope, gets shamed and named, that day.

'Silence,' or, last but one, is 'The Cuffed,' as we use to call

Whom the paddock's lord thrusts forth.

Right, Hoseyn, I say, to laugh!"

"Boasts he Muleykeh the Pearl?" the stranger replies: "Be sure

On him I waste nor scorn nor pity, but lavish both

On Duhl the son of Sheyban, who withers away in heart

For envy of Hoseyn's luck. Such sickness admits no cure.

A certain poet has sung, and sealed the same with an oath,

'For the vulgar--flocks and herds! The Pearl is a prize apart.'"

Lo, Duhl the son of Sheyban comes riding to Hoseyn's tent,

And he casts his saddle down, and enters and "Peace!" bids he.

"You are poor, I know the cause: my plenty shall mend the wrong.

'Tis said of your Pearl--the price of a hundred camels spent

In her purchase were scarce ill paid: such prudence is far from me

Who proffer a thousand. Speak! Long parley may last too long."

Said Hoseyn "You feed young beasts a many, of famous breed,

Slit-eared, unblemished, fat, true offspring of Muzennem:

There stumbles no weak-eyed she in the line as it climbs the hill.

But I love Muleykeh's face: her forefront whitens indeed

Like a yellowish wave's cream-crest. Your camels--go gaze on them!

Her fetlock is foam-splashed too. Myself am the richer still."

A year goes by: lo, back to the tent again rides Duhl.

"You are open-hearted, ay--moist-handed, a very prince.

Why should I speak of sale? Be the mare your simple gift!

My son is pined to death for her beauty: my wife prompts 'Fool,

Beg for his sake the Pearl! Be God the rewarder, since

God pays debts seven for one: who squanders on Him shows thrift.'"

Said Hoseyn "God gives each man one life, like a lamp, then gives

That lamp due measure of oil: lamp lighted--hold high, wave wide

Its comfort for others to share! once quench it, what help is left?

The oil of your lamp is your son: I shine while Muleykeh lives.

Would I beg your son to cheer my dark if Muleykeh died?

It is life against life: what good avails to the life-bereft?"

Another year, and--hist! What craft is it Duhl designs?

He alights not at the door of the tent as he did last time,

But, creeping behind, he gropes his stealthy way by the trench

Half-round till he finds the flap in the folding, for night combines

With the robber--and such is he: Duhl, covetous up to crime,

Must wring from Hoseyn's grasp the Pearl, by whatever the wrench.

"He was hunger-bitten, I heard: I tempted with half my store,

And a gibe was all my thanks. Is he generous like Spring dew?

Account the fault to me who chaffered with such an one!

He has killed, to feast chance comers, the creature he rode: nay, more--

For a couple of singing-girls his robe has he torn in two:

I will beg! Yet I nowise gained by the tale of my wife and son.

"I swear by the Holy House, my head will I never wash

Till I filch his Pearl away. Fair dealing I tried, then guile,

And now I resort to force. He said we must live or die:

Let him die, then,--let me live! Be bold--but not too rash!

I have found me a peeping-place: breast, bury your breathing while

I explore for myself! Now, breathe! He deceived me not, the spy!

"As he said--there lies in peace Hoseyn--how happy! Beside

Stands tethered the Pearl: Thrice winds her headstall about his wrist:

'Tis therefore he sleeps so sound--the moon through the roof reveals.

And, loose on his left, stands too that other, known far and wide,

Buheyseh, her sister born: fleet is she yet ever missed

The winning tail's fire-flash a-stream past the thunderous heels.

"No less she stands saddled and bridled, this second, in case some thief

Should enter and seize and fly with the first, as I mean to do.

What then? The Pearl is the Pearl: once mount her we both escape."

Through the skirt-fold in glides Duhl,--so a serpent disturbs no leaf

In a bush as he parts the twigs entwining a nest: clean through,

He is noiselessly at his work: as he planned, he performs the rape.

He has set the tent-door wide, has buckled the girth, has clipped

The headstall away from the wrist he leaves thrice bound as before,

He springs on the Pearl, is launched on the Desert like bolt from bow.

Up starts our plundered man: from his breast though the heart be ripped,

Yet his mind has the mastery: behold, in a minute more,

He is out and off and away on Buheyseh, whose worth we know!

And Hoseyn--his blood turns flame, he has learned long since to ride,

And Buheyseh does her part,--they gain--they are gaining fast

On the fugitive pair, and Duhl has Ed-Darraj to cross and quit,

And to reach the ridge El-Saban,--no safety till that be spied!

And Buheyseh is, bound by bound, but a horse-length off at last,

For the Pearl has missed the tap of the heel, the touch of the bit.

She shortens her stride, she chafes at her rider the strange and queer:

Buheyseh is mad with hope--beat sister she shall and must

Though Duhl, of the hand and heel so clumsy, she has to thank.

She is near now, nose by tail--they are neck by croup--joy! fear!

What folly makes Hoseyn shout "Dog Duhl, Damned son of the Dust,

Touch the right ear and press with your foot my Pearl's left flank!"

And Duhl was wise at the word, and Muleykeh as prompt perceived

Who was urging redoubled pace, and to hear him was to obey,

And a leap indeed gave she, and evanished for evermore.

And Hoseyn looked one long last look as who, all bereaved,

Looks, fain to follow the dead so far as the living may:

Then he turned Buheyseh's neck slow homeward, weeping sore.

And lo, in the sunrise, still sat Hoseyn upon the ground

Weeping: and neighbors came, the tribesmen of Benu-Asad

In the vale of green Er-Rass, and they questioned him of his grief;

And he told from first to last how, serpent-like, Duhl had wound

His way to the nest, and how Duhl rode like an ape, so bad!

And how Buheyseh did wonders, yet Pearl remained with the thief.

And they jeered him, one and all: "Poor Hoseyn is crazed past hope!

How else had he wrought himself his ruin, in fortune's spite?

To have simply held the tongue were a task for a boy or girl,

And here were Muleykeh again, the eyed like an antelope,

The child of his heart by day, the wife of his breast by night!"--

"And the beaten in speed!" wept Hoseyn: "You never have loved my Pearl."

COUNT GISMOND[2]

AIX IN PROVENCE

Christ God who savest man, save most of men Count Gismond who saved me!

Count Gauthier, when he chose his post, chose time and place and company

to suit it; when he struck at length my honor, 'twas with all his

strength. And doubtlessly ere he could draw all points to one, he must

have schemed! That miserable morning saw few half so happy as I seemed,

while being dressed in queen's array to give our tourney prize away. I

thought they loved me, did me grace to please themselves; 'twas all their

deed; God makes, or fair or foul, our face; if showing mine so caused to

bleed my cousins' hearts, they should have dropped a word, and straight

the play had stopped. They, too, so beauteous! Each a queen by virtue of

her brow and breast; not needing to be crowned, I mean, as I do. E'en

when I was dressed, had either of them spoke, instead of glancing sideways

with still head! But no: they let me laugh, and sing my birthday song

quite through, adjust the last rose in my garland, fling a last look on

the mirror, trust my arms to each an arm of theirs, and so descend the

castle-stairs--and come out on the morning troop of merry friends who

kissed my cheek, and called me queen, and made me stoop under the

canopy--(a streak that pierced it, of the outside sun, powdered with gold

its gloom's soft dun)--and they could let me take my state and foolish

throne amid applause of all come there to celebrate my queen's-day--Oh I

think the cause of much was, they forgot no crowd makes up for parents in

their shroud! However that be, all eyes were bent upon me, when my cousins

cast theirs down; 'twas time I should present the victor's crown, but ...

there, 'twill last no long time ... the old mist again blinds me as then

it did. How vain! See! Gismond's at the gate, in talk with his two boys: I

can proceed. Well, at that moment, who should stalk forth boldly--to my

face, indeed--but Gauthier? and he thundered "Stay!" and all stayed.

"Bring no crowns, I say! bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet about her!

Let her shun the chaste, or lay herself before their feet! Shall she,

whose body I embraced a night long, queen it in the day? For honour's sake

no crowns, I say!" I? What I answered? As I live I never fancied such a

thing as answer possible to give. What says the body when they spring some

monstrous torture-engine's whole strength on it? No more says the soul.

Till out strode Gismond; then I knew that I was saved. I never met his

face before, but, at first view, I felt quite sure that God had set

Himself to Satan; who would spend a minute's mistrust on the end? He

strode to Gauthier, in his throat gave him the lie, then struck his mouth

with one back-handed blow that wrote in blood men's verdict there. North,

South, East, West, I looked. The lie was dead, and damned, and truth stood

up instead. This glads me most, that I enjoyed the heart of the joy, with

my content in watching Gismond unalloyed by any doubt of the event: God

took that on him--I was bid watch Gismond for my part: I did. Did I not

watch him while he let his armourer just brace his greaves, rivet his

hauberk, on the fret the while! His foot ... my memory leaves no least

stamp out, nor how anon he pulled his ringing gauntlets on. And e'en

before the trumpet's sound was finished, prone lay the false knight, prone

as his lie, upon the ground: Gismond flew at him, used no sleight o' the

sword, but open-breasted drove, cleaving till out the truth he clove.

Which done, he dragged him to my feet and said "Here die, but end thy

breath in full confession, lest thou fleet from my first, to God's second

death! Say, hast thou lied?" And, "I have lied to God and her," he said,

and died. Then Gismond, kneeling to me, asked--What safe my heart holds,

though no word could I repeat now, if I tasked my powers forever, to a

third dear even as you are. Pass the rest until I sank upon his breast.

Over my head his arm he flung against the world; and scarce I felt his

sword (that dripped by me and swung) a little shifted in its belt: for he

began to say the while how South our home lay many a mile. So, 'mid the

shouting multitude we two walked forth to never more return. My cousins

have pursued their life, untroubled as before I vexed them. Gauthier's

dwelling-place God lighten! May his soul find grace! Our elder boy has got

the clear great brow; tho' when his brother's black full eye shows scorn,

it ... Gismond here? And have you brought my tercel back? I was just

telling Adela how many birds it struck since May.

BY THE FIRESIDE

How well I know what I mean to do when the long dark autumn evenings come:

and where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? with the music of all thy voices,

dumb in life's November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, o'er a

great wise book, as beseemeth age; while the shutters flap as the

cross-wind blows, and I turn the page, and I turn the page, not verse now,

only prose! Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at

it, deep in Greek: now then, or never, out we slip to cut from the hazels

by the creek a mainmast for our ship!" I shall be at it indeed, my

friends! Greek puts already on either side such a branch-work forth as

soon extends to a vista opening far and wide, and I pass out where it

ends. The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees--but the inside-archway

widens fast, and a rarer sort succeeds to these, and we slope to Italy at

last and youth, by green degrees. I follow wherever I am led, knowing so

well the leader's hand: oh woman-country, wooed not wed, loved all the

more by earth's male-lands, laid to their hearts instead! Look at the

ruined chapel again half-way up in the Alpine gorge! Is that a tower, I

point you plain, or is it a mill, or an iron-forge breaks solitude in

vain? A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; the woods are round us,

heaped and dim; from slab to slab how it slips and springs, the thread of

water single and slim, thro' the ravage some torrent brings! Does it feed

the little lake below? That speck of white just on its marge is Pella;

see, in the evening-glow, how sharp the silver spear-heads charge when

Alp meets heaven in snow! On our other side is the straight-up rock; and a

path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it by boulder-stones where lichens mock

the marks on a moth, and small ferns fit their teeth to the polished

block. Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers, and thorny balls, each

three in one, the chestnuts throw on our path in showers! for the drop of

the woodland fruit's begun, these early November hours, that crimson the

creeper's leaf across like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt, o'er a

shield else gold from rim to boss, and lay it for show on the fairy-cupped

elf-needled mat of moss, by the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged last

evening--nay, in to-day's first dew yon sudden coral nipple bulged, where

a freaked fawn-colored flaky crew of toadstools peep indulged. And yonder,

at foot of the fronting ridge that takes the turn to a range beyond, is

the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge, where the water is stopped in

a stagnant pond danced over by the midge. The chapel and bridge are of

stone alike, blackish-gray and mostly wet; cut hemp-stalks steep in the

narrow dyke. See here again, how the lichens fret and the roots of the ivy

strike! Poor little place, where its one priest comes on a festa-day, if

he comes at all, to the dozen folk from their scattered homes, gathered

within that precinct small by the dozen ways one roams--to drop from the

charcoal-burners' huts, or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed, leave

the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, or the wattled cote where

the fowlers spread their gear on the rock's bare juts. It has some

pretension too, this front, with its bit of fresco half-moon-wise set over

the porch, Art's early wont: 'tis John in the Desert, I surmise, but has

borne the weather's brunt--not from the fault of the builder, though, for

a pent-house properly projects where three carved beams make a certain

show, dating--good thought of our architect's--'five, six, nine, he lets

you know. And all day long a bird sings there, and a stray sheep drinks at

the pond at times; the place is silent and aware; it has had its scenes,

its joys and crimes, but that is its own affair. My perfect wife, my

Leonor, oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too, Whom else could I dare look

backward for, with whom besides should I dare pursue the path gray heads

abhor? For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; youth, flowery all

the way, there stops--not they; age threatens and they contemn, till they

reach the gulf wherein youth drops, one inch from life's safe hem! With

me, youth led ... I will speak now, no longer watch you as you sit reading

by firelight, that great brow and the spirit-small hand propping it,

mutely, my heart knows how--when, if I think but deep enough, you are

wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; and you, too, find without rebuff

response your soul seeks many a time, piercing its fine flesh-stuff. My

own, confirm me! If I tread this path back, is it not in pride to think

how little I dreamed it led to an age so blest that, by its side, youth

seems the waste instead? My own, see where the years conduct! At first,

'twas something our two souls should mix as mists do; each is sucked in

each now: on, the new stream rolls, whatever rocks obstruct. Think, when

our one soul understands the great Word which makes all things new, when

earth breaks up and heaven expands, how will the change strike me and you

in the house not made with hands? Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine,

your heart anticipate my heart, you must be just before, in fine, see and

make me see, for your part, new depths of the divine! But who could have

expected this when we two drew together first just for the obvious human

bliss to satisfy life's daily thirst with a thing men seldom miss? Come

back with me to the first of all, let us lean and love it over again, let

us now forget and now recall, break the rosary in a pearly rain, and

gather what we let fall! What did I say?--that a small bird sings all day

long, save when a brown pair of hawks from the wood float with wide wings

strained to a bell: 'gainst noon-day glare you count the streaks and

rings. But at afternoon or almost eve 'tis better; then the silence grows

to that degree, you half believe it must get rid of what it knows, its

bosom does so heave. Hither we walked then, side by side, arm in arm and

cheek to cheek, and still I questioned or replied, while my heart,

convulsed to really speak, lay choking in its pride. Silent the crumbling

bridge we cross, and pity and praise the chapel sweet, and care about the

fresco's loss, and wish for our souls a like retreat, and wonder at the

moss. Stoop and kneel on the settle under, look through the window's

grated square: nothing to see! For fear of plunder, the cross is down and

the altar bare, as if thieves don't fear thunder. We stoop and look in

through the grate, see the little porch and rustic door, read duly the

dead builder's date; then cross the bridge that we crossed before, take

the path again--but wait! Oh moment one and infinite! the water slips o'er

stock and stone; the West is tender, hardly bright: how gray at once is

the evening grown--one star, its chrysolite! We two stood there with never

a third, but each by each, as each knew well: the sights we saw and the

sounds we heard, the lights and the shades made up a spell till the

trouble grew and stirred. Oh, the little more, and how much it is! and the

little less, and what worlds away! How a sound shall quicken content to

bliss, or a breath suspend the blood's best play, and life be a proof of

this! Had she willed it, still had stood the screen so slight, so sure,

'twixt my love and her: I could fix her face with a guard between, and

find her soul as when friends confer, friends--lovers that might have

been. For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, wanting to sleep now

over its best. Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, but bring to the

last leaf no such test! "Hold the last fact!" runs the rhyme. For a chance

to make your little much, to gain a lover and lose a friend, venture the

tree and a myriad such, when nothing you mar but the year can mend: but a

last leaf--fear to touch! Yet should it unfasten itself and fall eddying

down till it find your face at some slight wind--best chance of all! be

your heart henceforth its dwelling-place you trembled to forestall! Worth

how well, those dark gray eyes, that hair so dark and dear, how worth that

a man should strive and agonize, and taste a veriest hell on earth for the

hope of such a prize! You might have turned and tried a man, set him a

space to weary and wear, and prove which suited more your plan, his best

of hope or his worst despair, yet end as he began. But you spared me this,

like the heart you are, and filled my empty heart at a word. If two lives

join, there is oft a scar, they are one and one, with a shadowy third; one

near one is too far. A moment after, and hands unseen were hanging the

night around us fast; but we knew that a bar was broken between life and

life: we were mixed at last in spite of the mortal screen. The forests had

done it; there they stood; we caught for a moment the powers at play: they

had mingled us so, for once and good, their work was done--we might go or

stay, they relapsed to their ancient mood. How the world is made for each

of us! how all we perceive and know in it tends to some moment's product

thus, when a soul declares itself--to wit, by its fruit, the thing it

does! Be hate that fruit or love that fruit, it forwards the general deed

of man: and each of the Many helps to recruit the life of the race by a

general plan; each living his own, to boot. I am named and known by that

moment's feat; there took my station and degree; so grew my own small life

complete, as nature obtained her best of me--one born to love you, sweet!

And to watch you sink by the fireside now back again, as you mutely sit

musing by firelight, that great brow and the spirit-small hand propping

it, yonder, my heart knows how! So, earth has gained by one man the more,

and the gain of earth must be heaven's gain too; and the whole is well

worth thinking o'er when autumn comes: which I mean to do one day, as I

said before.

PHEIDIPPIDES

[Greek: chairete, nikomen]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by?

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

brink?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wood:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to the Gods!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, thus I obey--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

strength

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

Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

well,

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

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

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

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

PROSPICE

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe,

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go;

For the journey is done and the summit attained,

And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,

The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness, and cold.

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,

The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

Oh, thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest!

THE BISHOP ORDERS HIS TOMB AT SAINT PRAXED'S CHURCH

(ROME, 15--.)

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!

Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?

Nephews--sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well--

She, men would have to be your mother once,

Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!

What's done is done, and she is dead beside,

Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,

And as she died so must we die ourselves,

And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.

Life, how and what is it? As here I lie

In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,

Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.

Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;

And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought

With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:

--Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;

Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South

He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!

Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence

One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,

And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,

And up into the aery dome where live

The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:

And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,

And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,

With those nine columns round me, two and two,

The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse.

--Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,

Put me where I may look at him! True peach,

Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!

Draw close: that conflagration of my church

--What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!

My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig

The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,

Drop water gently till the surface sink,

And if ye find ... Ah God, I know not, I!...

Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,

And corded up in a tight olive-frail,

Some lump, ah God, of _lapis lazuli_,

Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,

Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast ...

Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,

That brave Frascati villa with its bath,

So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,

Like God the Father's globe on both his hands

Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,

For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!

Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:

Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?

Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons? Black--

'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else

Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?

The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,

Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance

Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,

The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,

Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan

Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,

And Moses with the tables ... but I know

Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,

Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope

To revel down my villas while I gasp

Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine

Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!

Nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then!

'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.

My bath must needs be left behind, alas!

One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,

There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world--

And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray

Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,

And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?

--That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,

Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,

No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line--

Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!

And then how I shall lie thro' centuries,

And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,

And see God made and eaten all day long,

And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste

Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,

Dying in state and by such slow degrees,

I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,

And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,

And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop

Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:

And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts

Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,

About the life before I lived this life,

And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,

Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,

Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,

And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,

And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,

--Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?

No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!

Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.

All _lapis_, all, sons! Else I give the Pope

My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,

They glitter like your mother's for my soul,

Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,

Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase

With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx

That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,

To comfort me on my entablature

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude

To death--ye wish it--God, ye wish it! Stone--

Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat

As if the corpse they keep were oozing through--

And no more _lapis_ to delight the world!

Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,

But in a row: and, going, turn your backs

--Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,

And leave me in my church, the church for peace,

That I may watch at leisure if he leers--

Old Gandolf at me, from his onion-stone,

As still he envied me, so fair she was!

SIBRANDUS SCHAFNABURGENSIS

Plague take all your pedants, say I!

He who wrote what I hold in my hand,

Centuries back was so good as to die,

Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;

This, that was a book in its time,

Printed on paper and bound in leather,

Last month in the white of a matin-prime

Just when the birds sang all together.

Into the garden I brought it to read,

And under the arbute and laurustine

Read it, so help me grace in my need,

From title-page to closing line.

Chapter on chapter did I count,

As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;

Added up the mortal amount;

And then proceeded to my revenge.

Yonder's a plum-tree, with a crevice

An owl would build in, were he but sage;

For a lap of moss like a fine pontlevis

In a castle of the middle age,

Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;

Where he'd be private, there might he spend

Hours alone in his lady's chamber:

Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

Splash went he, as under he ducked,

--I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate;

Next a handful of blossoms I plucked

To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;

Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,

Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;

Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf

Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss

And gum that locked our friend in limbo,

A spider had spun his web across,

And sate in the midst with arms a-kimbo:

So, I took pity, for learning's sake,

And, _de profundis, accentibus laetis,

Cantate_! quoth I, as I got a rake,

And up I fished his delectable treatise.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,

With all the binding all of a blister,

And great blue spots where the ink has run,

And reddish streaks that wink and glister

O'er the page so beautifully yellow--

Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!

Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?

Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

How did he like it when the live creatures

Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,

And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,

Came in, each one, for his right of trover;

When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face

Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface

As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet.

All that life, and fun, and romping,

All that frisking, and twisting, and coupling,

While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping,

And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling!

As if you had carried sour John Knox

To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich,

Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the Ballet with trousers and tunic.

Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it?

Back to my room shall you take your sweet self!

Good-by, mother-beetle; husband-eft, SUFFICIT!

See the snug niche I have made on my shelf:

A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,

Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,

And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,

Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

ABT VOGLER

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS

INVENTION)

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,

Claiming each slave of the sound at a touch, as when Solomon willed

Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,

Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--

Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,

And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princes he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!

Ah, one and all, how they helped would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,

Burrow awhile, and build broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,

Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was;

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,

Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,

Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest,

For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,

When a great illumination surprises a festal night--

Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth;

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,

Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;

Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,

For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

Nay, more: for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,

Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,

Lured now to begin and live in a house to their liking at last;

Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone,

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;

And what is--shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,

Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:

Had I written the same, made verse,--still, effect proceeds from cause;

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:--

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,

Existent behind all laws, that made them, and lo, they are!

And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,

That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought;

It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:

Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:

And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;

Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;

For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,

That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.

Never to be again! But many more of the kind

As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?

To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind

To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?

Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!

What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?

Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more:

On earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist,--

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power

Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,

The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,

Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence

For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?

Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?

Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized?

Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear;

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:

But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;

The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:

I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.

Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,

Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,--yes,

And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,

Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;

Which, hark! I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,

The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

SAUL

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,

Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.

And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,

Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent

Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,

Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet.

For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days,

Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer or of praise,

To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended their strife,

And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life.

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child, with his dew

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat

Were now raging to torture the desert!"

Then I, as was meet,

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet,

And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped;

I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped;

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone,

That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on

Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid,

But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied.

At the first I saw nought but the blackness; but soon I descried

A something more black than the blackness--the vast, the upright

Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight

Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all;--

Then a sunbeam, that burst thro' the tent-roof,--showed Saul.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop; both arms stretched out wide

On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side:

He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there,--as, caught in his pangs

And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,

Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come

With the spring-time,--so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

Then I tuned my harp,--took off the lilies we twine round its chords

Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide--those sunbeams like

swords!

And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one,

So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done.

They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed

Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;

And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star

Into eve and the blue far above us,--so blue and so far!

--Then the tune for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate

To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate,

Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight

To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand house--

There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse!--

God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,

To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand

Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts

expand

And grow one in the sense of this world's life.--And then, the last song

When the dead man is praised on his journey--"Bear, bear him along

With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm-seeds not here

To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.

Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"--And then, the glad chaunt

Of the marriage,--first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.--And then, the great march

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch

Nought can break; who shall harm them, our friends?--Then, the chorus

intoned

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.

But I stopped here--for here in the darkness, Saul groaned.

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;

And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered,--and sparkles 'gan dart

From the jewels that woke in his turban at once with a start--

All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart.

So the head--but the body still moved not, still hung there erect.

And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,

As I sang,--

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste,

Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor sinew unbraced.

Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock--

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree,--the cool silver shock

Of the plunge in a pool's living water,--the hunt of the bear,

And the sultriness showing the lion is crouched in his lair.

And the meal, the rich dates, yellowed over with gold dust divine,

And the locust's-flesh steeped in the pitcher; the full draught of wine,

And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell

That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ

All the heart and the soul and the senses, forever in joy!

Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst

guard

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?

Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung

The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongue

Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest,

I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best'?

Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much,--but the

rest.

And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew

Such result as from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true!

And the friends of thy boyhood--that boyhood of wonder and hope,

Present promise, and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,--

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine;

And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one head combine!

On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage, like the throe

That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor, and lets the gold go:

High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,--all

Brought to blaze on the head of one creature--King Saul!"

And lo, with that leap of my spirit, heart, hand, harp, and voice,

Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice

Saul's fame in the light it was made for--as when, dare I say,

The Lord's army in rapture of service, strains through its array,

And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot--"Saul!" cried I and stopped,

And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped

By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name.

Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim,

And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held, (he alone,

While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone

A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,--leaves grasp of the sheet?

Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,

And there fronts you, stark, black but alive yet, your mountain of old,

With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold--

Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar

Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest--all hail, there they are!

Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest

Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest

For their food in the ardors of summer! One long shudder thrilled

All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled,

At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.

What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope and despair--

Death was past, life not come--so he waited. Awhile his right hand

Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand

To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.

I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more

Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore

At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean--a sun's slow decline

Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine

Base with base to knit strength more intense: so, arm folded arm

O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

What spell or what charm,

(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next should I urge

To sustain him where song had restored him?--Song filled to the verge

His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields

Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty! Beyond on what fields,

Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by?

He saith, "It is good;" still he drinks not--he lets me praise life,

Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

Then fancies grew rife

Which had come long ago on the pastures, when round me the sheep

Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep,

And I lay in my hollow, and mused on the world that might lie

'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky:

And I laughed--"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks,

Let me people at least with my fancies, the plains and the rocks,

Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show

Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!

Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains,

And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old

trains

Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so once more the string

Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus--

"Yea, my king,"

I began--"thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring

From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:

In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit.

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,--how its stem trembled first

Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst

The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn

Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect; yet more was to learn,

E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we

slight,

When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight

Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and

branch

Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall

stanch

Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.

Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine!

By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy

More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.

Crush that life, and behold its wine running! each deed thou hast done

Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun

Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests

efface,

Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace

The results of his past summer-prime,--so, each ray of thy will,

Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill

Thy whole people the countless, with ardor, till they too give forth

A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the south and the north

With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past.

But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last.

As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height,

So with man--so his power and his beauty forever take flight.

No! again a long draught of my soul-wine! look forth o'er the years--

Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!

Is Saul dead? in the depth of the vale make his tomb--bid arise

A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till built to the skies.

Let it mark where the Great First King slumbers--whose fame would ye

know?

Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go

In great characters cut by the scribe,--Such was Saul, so he did;

With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid,--

For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend,

In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend

(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record

With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,--the statesman's great word

Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's awave

With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet winds rave:

So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part

In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art."

And behold while I sang.... But O Thou who didst grant me that day,

And before it not seldom hast granted thy help to essay,

Carry on and complete an adventure,--my Shield and my Sword

In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,--

Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor

And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever

On the new stretch of Heaven above me--till, Mighty to save,

Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance--God's throne from man's

grave!

Let me tell out my tale to its ending--my voice to my heart,

Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part,

As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep,

And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep!

For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves

The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves

Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

I say then,--my song

While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong

Made a proffer of good to console him--he slowly resumed

His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed

His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes

Of his turban, and see--the huge sweat that his countenance bathes,

He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore,

And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before.

He is Saul, ye remember in glory,--ere error had bent

The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent

Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose,

To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.

So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the pile

Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there a while,

And so sat out my singing,--one arm round the tent-prop, to raise

His bent head, and the other hung slack--till I touched on the praise

I foresaw from all men in all times, to the man patient there,

And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware

That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees

Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please

To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know

If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow

Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care

Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow; thro' my hair

The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind

power--

All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower,

Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine--

And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?

I yearned--"Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,

I would add to that life of the past, both the future and this.

I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,

As this moment,--had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!"

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more--no song more! outbroke--

"I have gone the whole round of Creation: I saw and I spoke!

I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain

And pronounced on the rest of his handwork--returned him again

His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw.

I report, as a man may of God's work--all's love, yet all's law!

Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked

To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dew-drop was asked.

Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare.

Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite care!

Do I task any faculty highest, to image success?

I but open my eyes,--and perfection, no more and no less,

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew

(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too)

The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's All-Complete,

As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet!

Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity known,

I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own.

There's one faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink,

I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think)

Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst

E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold! I could love if I durst!

But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake

God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain, for love's sake!

--What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small,

Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal?

In the least things, have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all?

Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,

That I doubt his own love can compete with it? here, the parts shift?

Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, what Began?--

Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,

And dare doubt He alone shall not help him, who yet alone can?

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power,

To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower

Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul,

Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole?

And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest)

These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best?

Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height

This perfection,--succeed with life's day-spring, death's minute of

night?

Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake,

Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,--and bid him awake

From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set

Clear and safe in new light and new life,--a new harmony yet

To be run and continued, and ended--who knows?--or endure!

The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure.

By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss,

And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggle in this.

"I believe it! 'tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:

In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.

All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to my prayer

As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.

From thy will, stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:

_I_ will?--the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not loath

To look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dare

Think but lightly of such impuissance? what stops my despair?

This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do?

See the king--I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.

Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,

To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would--knowing which,

I know that my service is perfect.--Oh, speak through me now!

Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou--so wilt Thou!

So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost Crown--

And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down

One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that Salvation joins issue with death!

As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved

Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!

He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most

weak.

'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek

In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be

A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like to me,

Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever! a Hand like this hand

Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand!"

I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.

There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,

Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive--the aware--

I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,

As a runner beset by the populace famished for news--

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews;

And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot

Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not.

For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported--suppressed

All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,

Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.

Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth--

Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;

In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;

In the shuddering forests' new awe; in the sudden wind-thrills;

In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling still

Tho' averted, in wonder and dread; and the birds stiff and chill

That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe.

E'en the serpent that slid away silent,--he felt the new Law.

The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;

The same worked in the heart of the cedar, and moved the vine-bowers.

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--"E'en so, it is so!"

INDEX

Titles of complete monologues are printed in _Italics_; authors of these

in SMALL CAPITALS; subjects of lessons are printed in CAPITALS; ordinary

topics in Roman.

Abrupt beginning, cause of Browning's obscurity, 81

_Abt Vogler_, 290;

theme in, 88-89

ACTION, 172-195

importance at opening, 172-173

precedence of, 173

significance of, in a monologue, 174

in Italian in England, 174

in Mrs. Caudle, 174

in Up at a Villa, 174-175

in A Tale, 175-176

caused by change in thinking and feeling, 175-176

by struggle for idea, 176

in quotations, 177-178

transitions and, 178

pivotal, shows attention and politeness, 181-186

locations of objects, 182-183

monologue must not be declaimed, 183

descriptive and manifestative, 187-189

in Old Boggs' Slarnt, Day, 188

in Vagabonds, Trowbridge, 190-193

dangers of, 194

attitude, importance of, 195

_Andrea del Sarto_, 265

_Appearances_, 265

ARGUMENT OF MONOLOGUE, 86-100

Illustrated by A Death in the Desert, 89

Illustrated by Bishop orders his Tomb, 91-94

(Poem, 285)

Illustrated by _Memorabilia_, 160-162

Art, function of, 7

dramatic, important, 11

forms of, not invented, necessary, 11-12

Browning on, 40

indirect, 63

composed of few elements, 87-88

theme of, 110

social, 258

At the Mermaid, 73-74

extract from, 74

Attention, key to dramatic, 181

shown by pivotal action, 182-186

Attitude, importance of, 195

Barrack-Room Ballads are monologues, 128

_Before Sedan_, Dobson, 84

Biglow Papers are monologues, 19

Bishop Blougram's Apology, listener in, 41-42

_Bishop orders his Tomb_, 285

listener in, 53

dramatic argument of, 91-94

BODY, ACTIONS OF MIND AND, 172-195

=BRET HARTE'S=, _In a Tunnel_, 173

_Bridge of Sighs_, =HOOD=, 209

metre of, 211

=BROWNING=

_Patriot, The_, 3

_Woman's Last Word, A_, 6

_Confessions_, 7

_Youth and Art_, 21

_Incident of the French Camp_, 33

_Rabbi Ben Ezra_, 36

_Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_, 58

_Up at a Villa--Down in the City_, 65

A Grammarian's Funeral, 72

At the Mermaid, 74

_My Last Duchess_, 96

_Lost Mistress_, 106

_Tray_, 143

_One Way of Love_, 150

_Italian in England_, 152

_Wanting is--What?_ 157

_Memorabilia_, 160

_A Tale_, 164

_In a Year_, 201

_Lost Leader_, 212

_Evelyn Hope_, 216

_Appearances_, 265

_Andrea del Sarto_, 265

_Muleykeh_, 272

_Count Gismond_, 275

_By the Fireside_, 277

_Pheidippides_, 281

_Prospice_, 284

_Bishop orders his Tomb_, 285

_Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, 288

_Abt Vogler_, 290

_Saul_, 293

Why not appreciated, 1-2

Invented monologue, 1-2

his art form, 7

dramatic, 9-10

compared with Leigh Hunt, 25-26

influence of, 48

compared with Tennyson, 52

compared with Shakespeare, 55-61

soliloquies are monologues, 58-61

obscurity of, 71-81

master of monologue, 131-132

grotesque, element in, 229

variety of his themes, 263-264

=BURNS=, monologues in, 117-120

_O wert thou in the cauld blast_, 118

_By the Fireside_, 277

Caliban upon Setebos, character of, 24

speaker in, 24

Caudle, Mrs., _On the Umbrella_, 139

Character of speaker must be realized, 138

=CHESTERTON=, on personal element in story-telling, 86

on Clive and Muleykeh, 125

justifies Browning's grotesque language, 229

=CHURCHILL, J. W.=, rendering of Sam Lawson, 16

Cleon, monologue or letter, 18

Clive, illustrates person spoken of, 54

why a monologue, 126

_Confessions_, 7

Connection, importance of first words to the, 79-80

Consistency, law of, 235-237

Conversation, elements of, 159

_Count Gismond_, 275

speaker in, 16

=CUSHMAN, CHARLOTTE=, her rendering of monologue, 236-237

Definition of monologue, 7

Delivery

nature of, 134

important in monologue, 133-136

three languages in, complementary, 135-136

DIALECT, 222-230

must be dramatic, 222-223

in Riley, Burns, Tennyson, 223

not literal, 224-225

dramatic, 225-226

results from assimilation, 227

must express character, 228-229

part of grotesque, 229-230

_Didn't know Flynn_, =BRET HARTE=, 173

_Dieudonne_, Dr. Drummond, 225

=DOBSON, AUSTIN,=

_Before Sedan_, 84

change of situation in, 84-86

Dooley monologues, 42

Hennessey in, 42-43

Dowden, Edward, on static dramatic, 110-111

on Muleykeh, 111

Dramatic art, important, 11

Dramatic instinct, overlooked, 31

necessary in human life, 30

listener in, 31

definition of, 103-104

illustrated by, 103-113

static dramatic, 110-111

nature of, 111-112

interprets odd moments, 156

=DRAYTON, MICHAEL=

_Come, let us kiss and part_, 116

=DRUMMOND, DR.=

French Canadian dialect, 129

_Dieudonne_, 225

_Duchess, My Last_, 96

Epic spirit, nature of, 102

in Tennyson's Ulysses, 102-103, 123

in Sir Galahad, 124

_Evelyn Hope_, 216

Expression, vocal, necessity of, 133-146

nature of, in the monologue, 147-172

FAULTS IN RENDERING A MONOLOGUE, 241-247

staginess, 241

monotony, cause of, 241-242

tameness, 242

declamation, 242-243

indefiniteness, 243

exaggeration, 244

cause of, false, 244-246

=FIELD, EUGENE=, Monologues in, 44

_Fireside, By the_, 277

Flexibility

illustrated by A Tale, 164

Flight of the Duchess, as illustration of monologue, 108-109

FORM OF LITERATURE, THE MONOLOGUE AS A, 100-115

not invented, 11-12, 100-101

Monologue, one, 100-113

Foss, Sam Walter, monologues by, 48

Fra Lippo Lippi, connection in, 81-83

=FREYTAG'S= definition of drama, 103-104

Grammarian's Funeral, A, situation in, 72-73

Grigsby's Station, a monologue, 47

Grotesque, nature of, 226

dramatic, importance of, 30-31

illustrations of, 33-39

HEARER, THE, 30-64

implied in dramatic art, 30-31

in monologue, necessary, 32

illustrated by Rabbi Ben Ezra, 36

in Bishop Blougram, 41-42

by Dooley and Hennessey, 43

in Riley's Nothin' to Say, 46-47

in Tennyson's Lady Clara, 50

Herve Riel, metre in, 203

Higginson, Col. T. W., story of Carlyle, 226

HISTORY OF THE MONOLOGUE, 113-132

in early literature, 113-116

in Burns, 117-118

=HOOD, THOMAS=, _Bridge of Sighs_, 209

Hunt, Leigh, Browning's method differs from, 25-26

Imitation, danger of, in High Tide, 171

IMPORTANCE OF MONOLOGUE, 248-264

illustrated by Saul, 248-252;

by Job, 253

by Ninetieth Psalm, 253-254;

by Prophets, 255

has educational value, 255

speakers, 255-256

proves necessity of voice to literature, 256

gives new course in speaking, 256;

illustration, 257

prevents students of art from being

mechanical, 258

shows necessity of art, 261

of any length or theme, 262

requires an artist, 263

requires no expensive scenery, 262

has limitations, 262

its range, 264

_In a Tunnel_, =BRET HARTE=, 173

_In a Year_, 201

_Incident of the French Camp_, 33

Inflection, function of, 151

importance of, 149-150, 157

Interpreter of monologue must command natural languages, 136

Interpretation of monologue difficult, 139

necessary, 133

unites three languages, 135

must be dramatic, 138-142

_Italian in England, The_, 152

Jerrold, Douglas, situation in his monologues, 75

on Sordello, 1

Mrs. Caudle and the Umbrella, 139

its spirit, 141-143

John Anderson, my Jo, =BURNS=, 62

=KIPLING=, dramatic spirit in, 127-129

Mandalay lyric or monologue, 128-129

dialect of results from dramatic spirit, 228

_Lady Clara Vere de Vere_, =TENNYSON=, 50

Language, threefold, 135-138

La Saisiaz, situation of, 78

_Last Ride Together_, 205

Letters and monologues compared, 17-18

LITERARY FORM, A NEW, 1-12

not invented, 100

monologue, as a, 100-113

monologue, a true, 124, 259-264

LITERATURE, THE MONOLOGUE AS A FORM OF, 100-113

implies unprinted elements, 133-134

suggests life, 135-136

_Lost Leader, The_, 212

_Lost Mistress, The_, 106

Lyric, nature of, 14

compared with monologue, 14-15

Macbeth, story of, compared to monologue, 105-107

_Memorabilia_, 160

illustrates vocal expression of monologue, 161-162

Mental actions modulate voice, 147-172

_Mermaid, At the_, passage from, 73-74

METRE AND THE MONOLOGUE, 195-222

mistakes regarding, 195

appreciation of, 196

part of vocal expression, 196-197

meaning of, 196, 204-205

relation to length of line, 198-199

in Woman's Last Word and In a Year, 201

study of, 213

_Mistress, The Lost_, 106

Mitchell, D. G., on letters, 17

Modulations of voice, 147-172

Monologue contrasted with the play, 105-109

"Invention" of Browning, 2

One end of conversation, 7

study of, centres in, 10

speaker in, 12-30, 41-43

dramatic, 32

person spoken of, in, 54-55

compared with soliloquy, 55-61

situation in, 64-78

connection, 78-86

argument of, 86-94

as literary form, 100-113

compared with play, 105-109

before Browning, 113

common in English poetry, 113-132

common in modern literature, 127-132

needs delivery, 133-146

vocal expression of, 147-172

rhythm of thinking in, 148

action in, 172-195

metre in, 195-222

dialect in, 222-229

use of properties, 231-240

faults in rendering, 241-246

IMPORTANCE OF, 248-264

Movement illustrated by High Tide, 168-171

Mrs. Jim, a series of monologues, 130

_Muleykeh_, 272

Chesterton on, 125

as a monologue, 125-126

_My Last Duchess_, 96

illustrates elements of monologue, 96-99

Natural languages, function of, 134-137

_Nothin' to Say_, Riley, 46

Obscurity, chief cause of Browning's, 81

_Old Boggs' Slarnt_, Day, 188

_One Way of Love_, 150

Oratory and acting compared, 13, 179-181

Jefferson on, 179-180

Palgrave on Sally in our Alley, 120-122

_Patriot, The_, 3

Pause, Importance of, 149

Personal element in art, Chesterton on, 86

found in all conversation and expression, 81-88

_Pheidippides_, 281

Play, a monologue, 10-12

Poetry, Aristotle on, 128

dramatic, not invented, 100

epic, 122-123

PROPERTIES, 230-247

use of, in play and monologue, 230-231

significance of, 230-231

need of generalizing, 232

Irving, Sir Henry, scenery in unity, 233

consistency in, 235

use of scenery, 236-240

must not be literal, 237

when dramatic, 238-240

_Prospice_, 284

metre of, 209

_Psalm Ninetieth_, 253

a monologue, 253-255

_Rabbi Ben Ezra_, 36

Rendering of monologues, 236-237

RENDITION, NECESSITY OF, 133-147

Rhythm, first element in interpretation, 148

=RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB=, Hoosier monologue, 129-131

Knee-deep in June, a monologue, 45

situation in, 53

_Nothin' to Say_, 46

Ring and the Book, The, proves value of monologue, 26-29

extract from, on art, 40

_Sally in our Alley_, =CAREY=, 120

Sam Lawson, stories of, Mrs. Stowe, monologues, 16

illustrates nature of monologue, 248-252

_Saul_, 293

Shakespeare compared with Browning, 112

his soliloquies compared to monologues, 55-57

_Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_, 288

SITUATION, PLACE AND, 64-78

dramatic, 64

monologue implies, 65

Up at a Villa--Down in the City, 65

in Browning, always definite, 71-72

changes in Grammarian's Funeral, 72

in Douglas Jerrold, 75

Andrea del Sarto (Poem, 265)

_Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister_, 58

soliloquy compared with monologue, 56-57

Shakespeare's, 55

difference between Browning and

Shakespeare, 57-61

SPEAKER, THE, in monologue, 12-30

speech and monologue compared, 101-102

=SUCKLING, SIR JOHN=, _Why so pale and wan_, 116

_Tale, A_, 163

=TENNYSON'S= _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_, 50

a monologue, 52

many monologues, 49

not master of, 53

TIME AND CONNECTION, 78-86

abrupt beginning, 79-80

tone-color explained, 157-160

_Tray_, 143

_Up at a Villa--Down in the City_, 65

_Vagabonds, The_, =TROWBRIDGE=, 190

Vocal Expression

nature of, 134

reveals processes of mind, 147-172

unprintable, 136

in play and monologue, 167-168

VOICE, ACTIONS OF MIND AND, 147-172

_Wanting is--What?_ 157

Whitman, dramatic element in his "O Captain," 120

_Why so pale and wan_, Suckling, 116

_Woman's Last Word, A_, 6

Words complemented by tone and action, 135

=WYATT, SIR THOMAS=, The Lover's Appeal, lyric in form of monologue, 114

_Youth and Art_, 21

metre of, 216

The University Press Cambridge, U. S. A.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Freytag, Technik des Dramas, chap. i, sec. 2, p. 16 (Leipzig, 1881).

Translation by Prof. H. B. Lathrop.

[2] To emphasize the nature and importance of poetic form (see pp. 211,

213), "Count Gismond" and "By the Fireside" are here printed as prose.

Find the length of line, the stanzas, and the metre, the meaning and

appropriateness of all these. How should they be paragraphed?

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these

letters have been replaced with transliterations.

Several of the poems appear in the middle of a paragraph. They have been

left as placed in the original text.

In the index, the original text used SMALL CAPITALS to indicate authors of

the complete monologues and CAPITALS to indicate the subjects of lessons.

In order to differentiate the two in this text version, =SMALL CAPITALS=

has been used to indicate authors of the complete monologues.

The following misprints have been corrected:

"'" corrected to "i'" (page 38)

"call st" corrected to "callest" (page 38)

"attenton" corrected to "attention" (page 72)

"Muleykeh" standardized to "Muleykeh" (page 111)

"in" corrected to "is" (page 195)

"al" corrected to "all" (page 205)

Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and

hyphenation have been retained from the original.

End of Project Gutenberg's Browning and the Dramatic Monologue, by S. S. Curry