This sight was shown me, there and then,--

Me, one out of a world of men,

Singled forth, as the chance might hap

To another if, in a thunderclap

Where I heard noise and you saw flame,

Some one man knew God called his name.

For me, I think I said, "Appear!

Good were it to be ever here.

If thou wilt, let me build to thee

Service-tabernacles three,

Where, forever in thy presence,

In ecstatic acquiescence,

Far alike from thriftless learning

And ignorance's undiscerning,

I may worship and remain!"

Thus at the show above me, gazing

With upturned eyes, I felt my brain

Glutted with the glory, blazing

Throughout its whole mass, over and under

Until at length it burst asunder

And out of it bodily there streamed,

The too-much glory, as it seemed,

Passing from out me to the ground,

Then palely serpentining round

Into the dark with mazy error.

VIII

All at once I looked up with terror.

He was there.

He himself with his human air.

On the narrow pathway, just before.

I saw the back of him, no more--

He had left the chapel, then, as I.

I forgot all about the sky.

No face: only the sight

Of a sweepy garment, vast and white,

With a hem that I could recognize.

I felt terror, no surprise;

My mind filled with the cataract,

At one bound of the mighty fact.

"I remember, he did say

Doubtless that, to this world's end,

Where two or three should meet and pray,

He would be in the midst, their friend;

Certainly he was there with them!"

And my pulses leaped for joy

Of the golden thought without alloy,

That I saw his very vesture's hem.

Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear,

With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear;

And I hastened, cried out while I pressed

To the salvation of the vest,

"But not so, Lord! It cannot be

That thou, indeed, art leaving me--

Me, that have despised thy friends!

Did my heart make no amends?

Thou art the love _of God_--above

His power, didst hear me place his love,

And that was leaving the world for thee.

Therefore thou must not turn from me

As I had chosen the other part!

Folly and pride o'ercame my heart.

Our best is bad, nor bears thy test;

Still, it should be our very best.

I thought it best that thou, the spirit,

Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,

And in beauty, as even we require it--

Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,

I left but now, as scarcely fitted

For thee: I knew not what I pitied.

But, all I felt there, right or wrong,

What is it to thee, who curest sinning?

Am I not weak as thou art strong?

I have looked to thee from the beginning,

Straight up to thee through all the world

Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled

To nothingness on either side:

And since the time thou wast descried,

Spite of the weak heart, so have I

Lived ever, and so fain would die,

Living and dying, thee before!

But if thou leavest me----"

IX

Less or more,

I suppose that I spoke thus.

When,--have mercy, Lord, on us!

The whole face turned upon me full.

And I spread myself beneath it,

As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it

In the cleansing sun, his wool,--

Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness

Some defiled, discolored web--

So lay I, saturate with brightness.

And when the flood appeared to ebb,

Lo, I was walking, light and swift,

With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying

On, just before me, still to be followed,

As it carried me after with its motion:

What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed

And a man went weltering through the ocean,

Sucked along in the flying wake

Of the luminous water-snake.

Darkness and cold were cloven, as through

I passed, upborne yet walking too.

And I turned to myself at intervals,--

"So he said, so it befalls.

God who registers the cup

Of mere cold water, for his sake

To a disciple rendered up,

Disdains not his own thirst to slake

At the poorest love was ever offered:

And because my heart I proffered,

With true love trembling at the brim,

He suffers me to follow him

For ever, my own way,--dispensed

From seeking to be influenced

By all the less immediate ways

That earth, in worships manifold,

Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,

The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold!"

The vision of high mass at St. Peters in Rome is the antipode of the

little Methodist Chapel. The Catholic Church is the church of all others

which has gathered about itself the marvels of art in sculpture,

painting and music. As the chapel depressed with its ugliness, the great

cathedral entrances with its beauty.

[Illustration: The Transfiguration _Fra Angelico_]

X

And so we crossed the world and stopped.

For where am I, in city or plain,

Since I am 'ware of the world again?

And what is this that rises propped

With pillars of prodigious girth?

Is it really on the earth,

This miraculous Dome of God?

Has the angel's measuring-rod

Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,

'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,

Meted it out,--and what he meted,

Have the sons of men completed?

--Binding, ever as he bade,

Columns in the colonnade

With arms wide open to embrace

The entry of the human race

To the breast of ... what is it, yon building,

Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,

With marble for brick, and stones of price

For garniture of the edifice?

Now I see; it is no dream;

It stands there and it does not seem;

For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,

And thus I have read of it in books

Often in England, leagues away,

And wondered how these fountains play,

Growing up eternally

Each to a musical water-tree,

Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,

Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,

To the granite lavers underneath.

Liar and dreamer in your teeth!

I, the sinner that speak to you,

Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew

Both this and more. For see, for see,

The dark is rent, mine eye is free

To pierce the crust of the outer wall,

And I view inside, and all there, all,

As the swarming hollow of a hive,

The whole Basilica alive!

Men in the chancel, body and nave,

Men on the pillars' architrave,

Men on the statues, men on the tombs

With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,

All famishing in expectation

Of the main-altar's consummation.

For see, for see, the rapturous moment

Approaches, and earth's best endowment

Blends with heaven's; the taper-fires

Pant up, the winding brazen spires

Heave loftier yet the baldachin;

The incense-gaspings, long kept in,

Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant

Holds his breath and grovels latent,

As if God's hushing finger grazed him,

(Like Behemoth when he praised him)

At the silver bell's shrill tinkling,

Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling

On the sudden pavement strewed

With faces of the multitude.

Earth breaks up, time drops away,

In flows heaven, with its new day

Of endless life, when He who trod,

Very man and very God,

This earth in weakness, shame and pain,

Dying the death whose signs remain

Up yonder on the accursed tree,--

Shall come again, no more to be

Of captivity the thrall,

But the one God, All in all,

King of kings, Lord of lords,

As His servant John received the words,

"I died, and live for evermore!"

XI

Yet I was left outside the door.

"Why sit I here on the threshold-stone

Left till He return, alone

Save for the garment's extreme fold

Abandoned still to bless my hold?"

My reason, to my doubt, replied,

As if a book were opened wide,

And at a certain page I traced

Every record undefaced,

Added by successive years,--

The harvestings of truth's stray ears

Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf

Bound together for belief.

Yes, I said--that he will go

And sit with these in turn, I know.

Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims

Too giddily to guide her limbs,

Disabled by their palsy-stroke

From propping mine. Though Rome's gross yoke

Drops off, no more to be endured,

Her teaching is not so obscured

By errors and perversities,

That no truth shines athwart the lies:

And he, whose eye detects a spark

Even where, to man's the whole seems dark,

May well see flame where each beholder

Acknowledges the embers smoulder.

But I, a mere man, fear to quit

The clue God gave me as most fit

To guide my footsteps through life's maze,

Because himself discerns all ways

Open to reach him: I, a man

Able to mark where faith began

To swerve aside, till from its summit

Judgment drops her damning plummet,

Pronouncing such a fatal space

Departed from the founder's base:

He will not bid me enter too,

But rather sit, as now I do,

Awaiting his return outside.

--'Twas thus my reason straight replied

And joyously I turned, and pressed

The garment's skirt upon my breast,

Until, afresh its light suffusing me,

My heart cried--What has been abusing me

That I should wait here lonely and coldly,

Instead of rising, entering boldly,

Baring truth's face, and letting drift

Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?

Do these men praise him? I will raise

My voice up to their point of praise!

I see the error; but above

The scope of error, see the love.--

Oh, love of those first Christian days!

--Fanned so soon into a blaze,

From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,

That the antique sovereign Intellect

Which then sat ruling in the world,

Like a change in dreams, was hurled

From the throne he reigned upon:

You looked up and he was gone.

Gone, his glory of the pen!

--Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

Bade her scribes abhor the trick

Of poetry and rhetoric,

And exult with hearts set free,

In blessed imbecility

Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet

Leaving Sallust incomplete.

Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!

--Love, while able to acquaint her

While the thousand statues yet

Fresh from chisel, pictures wet

From brush, she saw on every side,

Chose rather with an infant's pride

To frame those portents which impart

Such unction to true Christian Art.

Gone, music too! The air was stirred

By happy wings: Terpander's bird

(That, when the cold came, fled away)

Would tarry not the wintry day,--

As more-enduring sculpture must,

Till filthy saints rebuked the gust

With which they chanced to get a sight

Of some dear naked Aphrodite

They glanced a thought above the toes of,

By breaking zealously her nose off.

Love, surely, from that music's lingering,

Might have filched her organ-fingering,

Nor chosen rather to set prayings

To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.

Love was the startling thing, the new:

Love was the all-sufficient too;

And seeing that, you see the rest:

As a babe can find its mother's breast

As well in darkness as in light,

Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.

True, the world's eyes are open now:

--Less need for me to disallow

Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,

Peevish as ever to be suckled,

Lulled by the same old baby-prattle

With intermixture of the rattle,

When she would have them creep, stand steady

Upon their feet, or walk already,

Not to speak of trying to climb.

I will be wise another time,

And not desire a wall between us,

When next I see a church-roof cover

So many species of one genus,

All with foreheads bearing _lover_

Written above the earnest eyes of them;

All with breasts that beat for beauty,

Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,

In noble daring, steadfast duty,

The heroic in passion, or in action,--

Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,

To the mere outside of human creatures,

Mere perfect form and faultless features.

What? with all Rome here, whence to levy

Such contributions to their appetite,

With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,

They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight

On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding

On the glories of their ancient reading,

On the beauties of their modern singing,

On the wonders of the builder's bringing,

On the majesties of Art around them,--

And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,

When faith has at last united and bound them,

They offer up to God for a present?

Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--

And, only taking the act in reference

To the other recipients who might have allowed it,

I will rejoice that God had the preference.

XII

So I summed up my new resolves:

Too much love there can never be.

And where the intellect devolves

Its function on love exclusively,

I, a man who possesses both,

Will accept the provision, nothing loth,

--Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,

That my intellect may find its share.

In his next experience the speaker learns what the effect of scientific

criticism has been upon historical Christianity.

The warfare between science and religion forms one of the most

fascinating and terrible chapters in the annals of the development of

the human mind. About the middle of the nineteenth century the war

became general. It was no longer a question of a skirmish over this

or that particular discovery in science which would cause some

long-cherished dogma to totter; it was a full battle all along the line,

and now that the smoke has cleared away, it is safe to say that science

sees, on the one hand, it cannot conquer religion, and religion sees, on

the other, it cannot conquer science. What each has done is to strip the

other of its untruths, leaving its truths to grow by the light each

holds up for the other. Together they advance toward the knowledge of

the Most High.

XIII

No sooner said than out in the night!

My heart beat lighter and more light:

And still, as before, I was walking swift,

With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying

On just before me, still to be followed,

As it carried me after with its motion,

--What shall I say?--as a path were hollowed,

And a man went weltering through the ocean,

Sucked along in the flying wake

Of the luminous water-snake.

XIV

Alone! I am left alone once more--

(Save for the garment's extreme fold

Abandoned still to bless my hold)

Alone, beside the entrance-door

Of a sort of temple,--perhaps a college,

--Like nothing I ever saw before

At home in England, to my knowledge.

The tall old quaint irregular town!

It may be ... though which, I can't affirm ... any

Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany;

And this flight of stairs where I sit down,

Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, Frankfort

Or Gˆttingen, I have to thank for 't?

It may be Gˆttingen,--most likely.

Through the open door I catch obliquely

Glimpses of a lecture-hall;

And not a bad assembly neither,

Ranged decent and symmetrical

On benches, waiting what's to see there;

Which, holding still by the vesture's hem,

I also resolve to see with them,

Cautious this time how I suffer to slip

The chance of joining in fellowship

With any that call themselves his friends;

As these folk do, I have a notion.

But hist--a buzzing and emotion!

All settle themselves, the while ascends

By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk,

Step by step, deliberate

Because of his cranium's over-freight,

Three parts sublime to one grotesque,

If I have proved an accurate guesser,

The hawk-nosed high-cheek-boned Professor.

I felt at once as if there ran

A shoot of love from my heart to the man--

That sallow virgin-minded studious

Martyr to mild enthusiasm,

As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious

That woke my sympathetic spasm,

(Beside some spitting that made me sorry)

And stood, surveying his auditory

With a wan pure look, well nigh celestial,--

Those blue eyes had survived so much!

While, under the foot they could not smutch,

Lay all the fleshly and the bestial.

Over he bowed, and arranged his notes,

Till the auditory's clearing of throats

Was done with, died into a silence;

And, when each glance was upward sent,

Each bearded mouth composed intent,

And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence,--

He pushed back higher his spectacles,

Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells,

And giving his head of hair--a hake

Of undressed tow, for color and quantity--

One rapid and impatient shake,

(As our own Young England adjusts a jaunty tie

When about to impart, on mature digestion,

Some thrilling view of the surplice-question)

--The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse,

Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse.

XV

And he began it by observing

How reason dictated that men

Should rectify the natural swerving,

By a reversion, now and then,

To the well-heads of knowledge, few

And far away, whence rolling grew

The life-stream wide whereat we drink,

Commingled, as we needs must think,

With waters alien to the source;

To do which, aimed this eve's discourse;

Since, where could be a fitter time

For tracing backward to its prime

This Christianity, this lake,

This reservoir, whereat we slake,

From one or other bank, our thirst?

So, he proposed inquiring first

Into the various sources whence

This Myth of Christ is derivable;

Demanding from the evidence,

(Since plainly no such life was liveable)

How these phenomena should class?

Whether 'twere best opine Christ was,

Or never was at all, or whether

He was and was not, both together--

It matters little for the name,

So the idea be left the same.

Only, for practical purpose's sake,

'Twas obviously as well to take

The popular story,--understanding

How the ineptitude of the time,

And the penman's prejudice, expanding

Fact into fable fit for the clime,

Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it

Into this myth, this Individuum,--

Which, when reason had strained and abated it

Of foreign matter, left, for residuum,

A man!--a right true man, however,

Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor:

Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient

To his disciples, for rather believing

He was just omnipotent and omniscient,

As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving

His word, their tradition,--which, though it meant

Something entirely different

From all that those who only heard it,

In their simplicity thought and averred it,

Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:

For, among other doctrines delectable,

Was he not surely the first to insist on

The natural sovereignty of our race?--

Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.

And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,

Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,

I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,

The vesture still within my hand.

XVI

I could interpret its command.

This time he would not bid me enter

The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.

Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic

When Papist struggles with Dissenter,

Impregnating its pristine clarity,

--One, by his daily fare's vulgarity,

Its gust of broken meat and garlic;

--One, by his soul's too-much presuming

To turn the frankincense's fuming

And vapors of the candle starlike

Into the cloud her wings she buoys on.

Each, that thus sets the pure air seething,

May poison it for healthy breathing--

But the Critic leaves no air to poison;

Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity

Atom by atom, and leaves you--vacuity.

Thus much of Christ does he reject?

And what retain? His intellect?

What is it I must reverence duly?

Poor intellect for worship, truly,

Which tells me simply what was told

(If mere morality, bereft

Of the God in Christ, be all that's left)

Elsewhere by voices manifold;

With this advantage, that the stater

Made nowise the important stumble

Of adding, he, the sage and humble,

Was also one with the Creator.

You urge Christ's followers' simplicity:

But how does shifting blame, evade it?

Have wisdom's words no more felicity?

The stumbling-block, his speech--who laid it?

How comes it that for one found able

To sift the truth of it from fable,

Millions believe it to the letter?

Christ's goodness, then--does that fare better?

Strange goodness, which upon the score

Of being goodness, the mere due

Of man to fellow-man, much more

To God,--should take another view

Of its possessor's privilege,

And bid him rule his race! You pledge

Your fealty to such rule? What, all--

From heavenly John and Attic Paul,

And that brave weather-battered Peter,

Whose stout faith only stood completer

For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,

As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened,--

All, down to you, the man of men,

Professing here at Gˆttingen,

Compose Christ's flock! They, you and I,

Are sheep of a good man! And why?

The goodness,--how did he acquire it?

Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?

Choose which; then tell me, on what ground

Should its possessor dare propound

His claim to rise o'er us an inch?

Were goodness all some man's invention,

Who arbitrarily made mention

What we should follow, and whence flinch,--

What qualities might take the style

Of right and wrong,--and had such guessing

Met with as general acquiescing

As graced the alphabet erewhile,

When A got leave an Ox to be,

No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G,

For thus inventing thing and title

Worship were that man's fit requital.

But if the common conscience must

Be ultimately judge, adjust

Its apt name to each quality

Already known,--I would decree

Worship for such mere demonstration

And simple work of nomenclature,

Only the day I praised, not nature,

But Harvey, for the circulation.

I would praise such a Christ, with pride

And joy, that he, as none beside,

Had taught us how to keep the mind

God gave him, as God gave his kind,

Freer than they from fleshly taint:

I would call such a Christ our Saint,

As I declare our Poet, him

Whose insight makes all others dim:

A thousand poets pried at life,

And only one amid the strife

Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take

His crown, I'd say, for the world's sake--

Though some objected--"Had we seen

The heart and head of each, what screen

Was broken there to give them light,

While in ourselves it shuts the sight,

We should no more admire, perchance,

That these found truth out at a glance,

Than marvel how the bat discerns

Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns,

Led by a finer tact, a gift

He boasts, which other birds must shift

Without, and grope as best they can."

No, freely I would praise the man,--

Nor one whit more, if he contended

That gift of his, from God descended.

Ah friend, what gift of man's does not?

No nearer something, by a jot,

Rise an infinity of nothings

Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:

Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,

Make that creator which was creature?

Multiply gifts upon man's head,

And what, when all's done, shall be said

But--the more gifted he, I ween!

That one's made Christ, this other, Pilate,

And this might be all that has been,--

So what is there to frown or smile at?

What is left for us, save, in growth

Of soul, to rise up, far past both,

From the gift looking to the giver,

And from the cistern to the river,

And from the finite to infinity,

And from man's dust to God's divinity?

XVII

Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast

Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:

Though he is so bright and we so dim,

We are made in his image to witness him:

And were no eye in us to tell,

Instructed by no inner sense,

The light of heaven from the dark of hell,

That light would want its evidence,--

Though justice, good and truth were still

Divine, if, by some demon's will,

Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed

Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.

No mere exposition of morality

Made or in part or in totality,

Should win you to give it worship, therefore:

And, if no better proof you will care for,

--Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?

Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more

Of what right is, than arrives at birth

In the best man's acts that we bow before:

This last knows better--true, but my fact is,

'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.

And thence conclude that the real God-function

Is to furnish a motive and injunction

For practising what we know already.

And such an injunction and such a motive

As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,

High-minded," hang your tablet-votive

Outside the fane on a finger-post?

Morality to the uttermost,

Supreme in Christ as we all confess,

Why need we prove would avail no jot

To make him God, if God he were not?

What is the point where himself lays stress?

Does the precept run "Believe in good,

In justice, truth, now understand

For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,

Who lived and died, yet essentially

Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take

The same to his heart and for mere love's sake

Conceive of the love,--that man obtains

A new truth; no conviction gains

Of an old one only, made intense

By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside?

Is the vesture left me to commune with?

Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with

Even at this lecture, if she tried?

Oh, let me at lowest sympathize

With the lurking drop of blood that lies

In the desiccated brain's white roots

Without throb for Christ's attributes,

As the lecturer makes his special boast!

If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.

Admire we, how from heart to brain

(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)

One instinct rises and falls again,

Restoring the equilibrium.

And how when the Critic had done his best,

And the pearl of price, at reason's test,

Lay dust and ashes levigable

On the Professor's lecture-table,--

When we looked for the inference and monition

That our faith, reduced to such condition,

Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,--

He bids us, when we least expect it,

Take back our faith,--if it be not just whole,

Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,

Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,

So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!

"Go home and venerate the myth

I thus have experimented with--

This man, continue to adore him

Rather than all who went before him,

And all who ever followed after!"--

Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!

Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?

That's one point gained: can I compass another?

Unlearned love was safe from spurning--

Can't we respect your loveless learning?

Let us at least give learning honor!

What laurels had we showered upon her,

Girding her loins up to perturb

Our theory of the Middle Verb;

Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar

O'er anapÊsts in comic-trimeter;

Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'

While we lounged on at our indebted ease:

Instead of which, a tricksy demon

Sets her at Titus or Philemon!

When ignorance wags his ears of leather

And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;

Nor leaves he his congenial thistles

To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.

--And you, the audience, who might ravage

The world wide, enviably savage,

Nor heed the cry of the retriever,

More than Herr Heine (before his fever),--

I do not tell a lie so arrant

As say my passion's wings are furled up,

And, without plainest heavenly warrant,

I were ready and glad to give the world up--

But still, when you rub brow meticulous,

And ponder the profit of turning holy

If not for God's, for your own sake solely,

--God forbid I should find you ridiculous!

Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,

Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,

"Christians,"--abhor the deist's pravity,--

Go on, you shall no more move my gravity

Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,

I find it in my heart to embarrass them

By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,

And they really carry what they say carries them.

XIX

So sat I talking with my mind.

I did not long to leave the door

And find a new church, as before,

But rather was quiet and inclined

To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting

From further tracking and trying and testing.

"This tolerance is a genial mood!"

(Said I, and a little pause ensued).

"One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf,

And sees, each side, the good effects of it,

A value for religion's self,

A carelessness about the sects of it.

Let me enjoy my own conviction,

Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness,

Still spying there some dereliction

Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!

Better a mild indifferentism,

Teaching that both our faiths (though duller

His shine through a dull spirit's prism)

Originally had one color!

Better pursue a pilgrimage

Through ancient and through modern times

To many peoples, various climes,

Where I may see saint, savage, sage

Fuse their respective creeds in one

Before the general Father's throne!"

XX

--'Twas the horrible storm began afresh!

The black night caught me in his mesh,

Whirled me up, and flung me prone.

I was left on the college-step alone.

I looked, and far there, ever fleeting

Far, far away, the receding gesture,

And looming of the lessening vesture!--

Swept forward from my stupid hand,

While I watched my foolish heart expand

In the lazy glow of benevolence,

O'er the various modes of man's belief.

I sprang up with fear's vehemence.

Needs must there be one way, our chief

Best way of worship: let me strive

To find it, and when found, contrive

My fellows also take their share!

This constitutes my earthly care:

God's is above it and distinct.

For I, a man, with men am linked

And not a brute with brutes; no gain

That I experience, must remain

Unshared: but should my best endeavor

To share it, fail--subsisteth ever

God's care above, and I exult

That God, by God's own ways occult,

May--doth, I will believe--bring back

All wanderers to a single track.

Meantime, I can but testify

God's care for me--no more, can I--

It is but for myself I know;

The world rolls witnessing around me

Only to leave me as it found me;

Men cry there, but my ear is slow:

Their races flourish or decay

--What boots it, while yon lucid way

Loaded with stars divides the vault?

But soon my soul repairs its fault

When, sharpening sense's hebetude,

She turns on my own life! So viewed,

No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense

With witnessings of providence:

And woe to me if when I look

Upon that record, the sole book

Unsealed to me, I take no heed

Of any warning that I read!

Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve,

God's own hand did the rainbow weave,

Whereby the truth from heaven slid

Into my soul? I cannot bid

The world admit he stooped to heal

My soul, as if in a thunder-peal

Where one heard noise, and one saw flame,

I only knew he named my name:

But what is the world to me, for sorrow

Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow

It drops the remark, with just-turned head

Then, on again, "That man is dead"?

Yes, but for me--my name called,--drawn

As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn,

He has dipt into on a battle-dawn:

Bid out of life by a nod, a glance,--

Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance,--

With a rapid finger circled round,

Fixed to the first poor inch of ground

To fight from, where his foot was found;

Whose ear but a minute since lay free

To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry--

Summoned, a solitary man

To end his life where his life began,

From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van!

Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held

By the hem of the vesture!--

XXI

And I caught

At the flying robe, and unrepelled

Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught

With warmth and wonder and delight,

God's mercy being infinite.

For scarce had the words escaped my tongue,

When, at a passionate bound, I sprung,

Out of the wandering world of rain,

Into the little chapel again.

He finds himself back in the chapel, all that has occurred having been a

vision. His conclusions have that broadness of view which belongs only

to those most advanced in thought. He has learned that not only must

there be the essential truth behind every sincere effort to reach it,

but that even his own vision of the truth is not necessarily the final

way of truth but is merely the way which is true for him. The jump from

the attitude of mind that persecutes those who do not believe according

to one established rule to such absolute toleration of all forms because

of their symbolizing an eternal truth gives the measure of growth in

religious thought from the days of Wesley to Browning. The Wesleys and

their fellow-helpers were stoned and mobbed, and some died of their

wounds in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while in 1850, when

"Christmas-Eve" was written, an Englishman could express a height of

toleration and sympathy for religions not his own, as well as taking a

religious stand for himself so exalted that it is difficult to imagine a

further step in these directions. Perhaps we are suffering to-day from

over-toleration, that is, we tolerate not only those whose aspiration

takes a different form, but those whose ideals lead to degeneracy. It

seems as though all virtues must finally develop their shadows. What,

however, is a shadow but the darkness occasioned by the approach of some

greater light.

XXII

How else was I found there, bolt upright

On my bench, as if I had never left it?

--Never flung out on the common at night,

Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it,

Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor,

Or the laboratory of the Professor!

For the Vision, that was true, I wist,

True as that heaven and earth exist.

There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,

With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;

Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall.

She had slid away a contemptuous space:

And the old fat woman, late so placable,

Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable,

Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.

In short, a spectator might have fancied

That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber,

Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly,

Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,

And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.

But again, could such disgrace have happened?

Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;

And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?

Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?

Could I report as I do at the close,

First, the preacher speaks through his nose:

Second, his gesture is too emphatic:

Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,

The subject-matter itself lacks logic:

Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.

Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,

Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call

Of making square to a finite eye

The circle of infinity,

And find so all-but-just-succeeding!

Great news! the sermon proves no reading

Where bee-like in the flowers I bury me,

Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!

And now that I know the very worst of him,

What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?

Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks?

Shall I take on me to change his tasks,

And dare, despatched to a river-head

For a simple draught of the element,

Neglect the thing for which he sent,

And return with another thing instead?--

Saying, "Because the water found

Welling up from underground,

Is mingled with the taints of earth,

While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,

And couldst, at wink or word, convulse

The world with the leap of a river-pulse,--

Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,

And bring thee a chalice I found, instead:

See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!

One would suppose that the marble bled.

What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:

The waterless cup will quench my thirst."

--Better have knelt at the poorest stream

That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!

For the less or the more is all God's gift,

Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam.

And here, is there water or not, to drink?

I then, in ignorance and weakness,

Taking God's help, have attained to think

My heart does best to receive in meekness

That mode of worship, as most to his mind,

Where earthly aids being cast behind,

His All in All appears serene

With the thinnest human veil between,

Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,

The many motions of his spirit,

Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.

For the preacher's merit or demerit,

It were to be wished the flaws were fewer

In the earthen vessel, holding treasure

Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;

But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?

Heaven soon sets right all other matters!--

Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,

This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,

This soul at struggle with insanity,

Who thence take comfort--can I doubt?--

Which an empire gained, were a loss without.

May it be mine! And let us hope

That no worse blessing befall the Pope,

Turned sick at last of to-day's buffoonery,

Of posturings and petticoatings,

Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings

In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!

Nor may the Professor forego its peace

At Gˆttingen presently, when, in the dusk

Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,

Prophesied of by that horrible husk--

When thicker and thicker the darkness fills

The world through his misty spectacles,

And he gropes for something more substantial

Than a fable, myth or personification,--

May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,

And stand confessed as the God of salvation!

Meantime, in the still recurring fear

Lest myself, at unawares, be found,

While attacking the choice of my neighbors round,

With none of my own made--I choose here!

The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;

I have done: and if any blames me,

Thinking that merely to touch in brevity

The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,--

Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,

On the bounds of the holy and the awful,--

I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,

And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,

Who head and heart alike discernest,

Looking below light speech we utter,

When frothy spume and frequent sputter

Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!

May truth shine out, stand ever before us!

I put up pencil and join chorus

To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,

The last five verses of the third section

Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,

To conclude with the doxology.

In "Easter-Day" the interest is purely personal. It is a long and

somewhat intricate discussion between two friends upon the basis of

belief and gives no glimpses of the historical progress of belief. In

brief, the poem discusses the relation of the finite life to the

infinite life. The first speaker is not satisfied with the different

points of view suggested by the second speaker. First, that one would be

willing to suffer martyrdom in this life if only one could truly believe

it would bring eternal joy. Or perhaps doubt is God's way of telling who

are his friends, who are his foes. Or perhaps God is revealed in the law

of the universe, or in the shows of nature, or in the emotions of the

human heart. The first speaker takes the ground that the only

possibility satisfying modern demands is an assurance that this world's

gain is in its imperfectness surety for true gain in another world. An

imaginatively pictured experience of his own soul is next presented,

wherein he represents himself at the Judgment Day as choosing the finite

life instead of the infinite life. As a result, he learns there is

nothing in finite life except as related to infinite life. The way

opened out toward the infinite through love is that which gives the

light of life to all the good things of earth which he desired--all

beauties, that of nature and art, and the joy of intellectual activity.

EASTER-DAY

. . . . . . .

XV

And as I said

This nonsense, throwing back my head

With light complacent laugh, I found

Suddenly all the midnight round

One fire. The dome of heaven had stood

As made up of a multitude

Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack

Of ripples infinite and black,

From sky to sky. Sudden there went,

Like horror and astonishment,

A fierce vindictive scribble of red

Quick flame across, as if one said

(The angry scribe of Judgment) "There--

Burn it!" And straight I was aware

That the whole ribwork round, minute

Cloud touching cloud beyond compute,

Was tinted, each with its own spot

Of burning at the core, till clot

Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire

Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire

As fanned to measure equable,--

Just so great conflagrations kill

Night overhead, and rise and sink,

Reflected. Now the fire would shrink

And wither off the blasted face

Of heaven, and I distinct might trace

The sharp black ridgy outlines left

Unburned like network--then, each cleft

The fire had been sucked back into,

Regorged, and out it surging flew

Furiously, and night writhed inflamed,

Till, tolerating to be tamed

No longer, certain rays world-wide

Shot downwardly. On every side

Caught past escape, the earth was lit;

As if a dragon's nostril split

And all his famished ire o'erflowed;

Then, as he winced at his lord's goad,

Back he inhaled: whereat I found

The clouds into vast pillars bound,

Based on the corners of the earth,

Propping the skies at top: a dearth

Of fire i' the violet intervals,

Leaving exposed the utmost walls

Of time, about to tumble in

And end the world.

XVI

I felt begin

The Judgment-Day: to retrocede

Was too late now. "In very deed,"

(I uttered to myself) "that Day!"

The intuition burned away

All darkness from my spirit too:

There, stood I, found and fixed, I knew,

Choosing the world. The choice was made;

And naked and disguiseless stayed,

And unevadable, the fact.

My brain held all the same compact

Its senses, nor my heart declined

Its office; rather, both combined

To help me in this juncture. I

Lost not a second,--agony

Gave boldness: since my life had end

And my choice with it--best defend,

Applaud both! I resolved to say,

"So was I framed by thee, such way

I put to use thy senses here!

It was so beautiful, so near,

Thy world,--what could I then but choose

My part there? Nor did I refuse

To look above the transient boon

Of time; but it was hard so soon

As in a short life, to give up

Such beauty: I could put the cup

Undrained of half its fulness, by;

But, to renounce it utterly,

--That was too hard! Nor did the cry

Which bade renounce it, touch my brain

Authentically deep and plain

Enough to make my lips let go.

But Thou, who knowest all, dost know

Whether I was not, life's brief while,

Endeavoring to reconcile

Those lips (too tardily, alas!)

To letting the dear remnant pass,

One day,--some drops of earthly good

Untasted! Is it for this mood,

That Thou, whose earth delights so well,

Hast made its complement a hell?"

XVII

A final belch of fire like blood,

Overbroke all heaven in one flood

Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky

Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy,

Then ashes. But I heard no noise

(Whatever was) because a voice

Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done,

Time ends, Eternity's begun,

And thou art judged for evermore."

XVIII

I looked up; all seemed as before;

Of that cloud-Tophet overhead

No trace was left: I saw instead

The common round me, and the sky

Above, stretched drear and emptily

Of life. 'Twas the last watch of night,

Except what brings the morning quite;

When the armed angel, conscience-clear,

His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear

And gazes on the earth he guards,

Safe one night more through all its wards,

Till God relieve him at his post.

"A dream--a waking dream at most!"

(I spoke out quick, that I might shake

The horrid nightmare off, and wake.)

"The world gone, yet the world is here?

Are not all things as they appear?

Is Judgment past for me alone?

--And where had place the great white throne?

The rising of the quick and dead?

Where stood they, small and great? Who read

The sentence from the opened book?"

So, by degrees, the blood forsook

My heart, and let it beat afresh;

I knew I should break through the mesh

Of horror, and breathe presently:

When, lo, again, the voice by me!

XIX

I saw.... Oh brother, 'mid far sands

The palm-tree-cinctured city stands,

Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue,

Leans o'er it, while the years pursue

Their course, unable to abate

Its paradisal laugh at fate!

One morn,--the Arab staggers blind

O'er a new tract of death, calcined

To ashes, silence, nothingness,--

And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess

Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies

And prostrate earth, he should surprise

The imaged vapor, head to foot,

Surveying, motionless and mute,

Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt

It vanished up again?--So hapt

My chance. HE stood there. Like the smoke

Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke,--

I saw Him. One magnific pall

Mantled in massive fold and fall

His head, and coiled in snaky swathes

About His feet: night's black, that bathes

All else, broke, grizzled with despair,

Against the soul of blackness there.

A gesture told the mood within--

That wrapped right hand which based the chin,

That intense meditation fixed

On His procedure,--pity mixed

With the fulfilment of decree.

Motionless, thus, He spoke to me,

Who fell before His feet, a mass,

No man now.

XX

"All is come to pass.

Such shows are over for each soul

They had respect to. In the roll

Of judgment which convinced mankind

Of sin, stood many, bold and blind,

Terror must burn the truth into:

Their fate for them!--thou hadst to do

With absolute omnipotence,

Able its judgments to dispense

To the whole race, as every one

Were its sole object. Judgment done,

God is, thou art,--the rest is hurled

To nothingness for thee. This world,

This finite life, thou hast preferred,

In disbelief of God's plain word,

To heaven and to infinity.

Here the probation was for thee,

To show thy soul the earthly mixed

With heavenly, it must choose betwixt.

The earthly joys lay palpable,--

A taint, in each, distinct as well;

The heavenly flitted, faint and rare,

Above them, but as truly were

Taintless, so, in their nature, best.

Thy choice was earth: thou didst attest

'Twas fitter spirit should subserve

The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve

Beneath the spirit's play. Advance

No claim to their inheritance

Who chose the spirit's fugitive

Brief gleams, and yearned, 'This were to live

Indeed, if rays, completely pure

From flesh that dulls them, could endure,--

Not shoot in meteor-light athwart

Our earth, to show how cold and swart

It lies beneath their fire, but stand

As stars do, destined to expand,

Prove veritable worlds, our home!'

Thou saidst,--'Let spirit star the dome

Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak,

No nook of earth,--I shall not seek

Its service further!' Thou art shut

Out of the heaven of spirit; glut

Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine

For ever--take it!"

XXI

"How? Is mine,

The world?" (I cried, while my soul broke

Out in a transport.) "Hast Thou spoke

Plainly in that? Earth's exquisite

Treasures of wonder and delight,

For me?"

XXII

The austere voice returned,--

"So soon made happy? Hadst thou learned

What God accounteth happiness,

Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess

What hell may be his punishment

For those who doubt if God invent

Better than they. Let such men rest

Content with what they judged the best.

Let the unjust usurp at will:

The filthy shall be filthy still:

Miser, there waits the gold for thee!

Hater, indulge thine enmity!

And thou, whose heaven self-ordained

Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained,

Do it! Take all the ancient show!

The woods shall wave, the rivers flow,

And men apparently pursue

Their works, as they were wont to do,

While living in probation yet.

I promise not thou shalt forget

The past, now gone to its account;

But leave thee with the old amount

Of faculties, nor less nor more,

Unvisited, as heretofore,

By God's free spirit, that makes an end.

So, once more, take thy world! Expend

Eternity upon its shows,

Flung thee as freely as one rose

Out of a summer's opulence,

Over the Eden-barrier whence

Thou art excluded. Knock in vain!"

XXIII

I sat up. All was still again.

I breathed free: to my heart, back fled

The warmth. "But, all the world!"--I said.

I stooped and picked a leaf of fern,

And recollected I might learn

From books, how many myriad sorts

Of fern exist, to trust reports,

Each as distinct and beautiful

As this, the very first I cull.

Think, from the first leaf to the last!

Conceive, then, earth's resources! Vast

Exhaustless beauty, endless change

Of wonder! And this foot shall range

Alps, Andes,--and this eye devour

The bee-bird and the aloe-flower?

XXIV

Then the voice, "Welcome so to rate

The arras-folds that variegate

The earth, God's antechamber, well!

The wise, who waited there, could tell

By these, what royalties in store

Lay one step past the entrance-door.

For whom, was reckoned, not so much,

This life's munificence? For such

As thou,--a race, whereof scarce one

Was able, in a million,

To feel that any marvel lay

In objects round his feet all day;

Scarce one, in many millions more,

Willing, if able, to explore

The secreter, minuter charm!

--Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm

Of power to cope with God's intent,--

Or scared if the south firmament

With north-fire did its wings refledge!

All partial beauty was a pledge

Of beauty in its plenitude:

But since the pledge sufficed thy mood,

Retain it! plenitude be theirs

Who looked above!"

XXV

Though sharp despairs

Shot through me, I held up, bore on.

"What matter though my trust were gone

From natural things? Henceforth my part

Be less with nature than with art!

For art supplants, gives mainly worth

To nature; 'tis man stamps the earth--

And I will seek his impress, seek

The statuary of the Greek,

Italy's painting--there my choice

Shall fix!"

XXVI

"Obtain it!" said the voice,

"--The one form with its single act,

Which sculptors labored to abstract,

The one face, painters tried to draw,

With its one look, from throngs they saw.

And that perfection in their soul,

These only hinted at? The whole,

They were but parts of? What each laid

His claim to glory on?--afraid

His fellow-men should give him rank

By mere tentatives which he shrank

Smitten at heart from, all the more,

That gazers pressed in to adore!

'Shall I be judged by only these?'

If such his soul's capacities,

Even while he trod the earth,--think, now,

What pomp in Buonarroti's brow,

With its new palace-brain where dwells

Superb the soul, unvexed by cells

That crumbled with the transient clay!

What visions will his right hand's sway

Still turn to forms, as still they burst

Upon him? How will he quench thirst,

Titanically infantine,

Laid at the breast of the Divine?

Does it confound thee,--this first page

Emblazoning man's heritage?--

Can this alone absorb thy sight,

As pages were not infinite,--

Like the omnipotence which tasks

Itself to furnish all that asks

The soul it means to satiate?

What was the world, the starry state

Of the broad skies,--what, all displays

Of power and beauty intermixed,

Which now thy soul is chained betwixt,--

What else than needful furniture

For life's first stage? God's work, be sure,

No more spreads wasted, than falls scant!

He filled, did not exceed, man's want

Of beauty in this life. But through

Life pierce,--and what has earth to do,

Its utmost beauty's appanage,

With the requirement of next stage?

Did God pronounce earth 'very good'?

Needs must it be, while understood

For man's preparatory state;

Nought here to heighten nor abate;

Transfer the same completeness here,

To serve a new state's use,--and drear

Deficiency gapes every side!

The good, tried once, were bad, retried.

See the enwrapping rocky niche,

Sufficient for the sleep in which

The lizard breathes for ages safe:

Split the mould--and as light would chafe

The creature's new world-widened sense,

Dazzled to death at evidence

Of all the sounds and sights that broke

Innumerous at the chisel's stroke,--

So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff

Was, neither more nor less, enough

To house man's soul, man's need fulfil.

Man reckoned it immeasurable?

So thinks the lizard of his vault!

Could God be taken in default,

Short of contrivances, by you,--

Or reached, ere ready to pursue

His progress through eternity?

That chambered rock, the lizard's world,

Your easy mallet's blow has hurled

To nothingness for ever; so,

Has God abolished at a blow

This world, wherein his saints were pent,--

Who, though found grateful and content,

With the provision there, as thou,

Yet knew he would not disallow

Their spirit's hunger, felt as well,--

Unsated,--not unsatable,

As paradise gives proof. Deride

Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside!"

XXVII

I cried in anguish, "Mind, the mind,

So miserably cast behind,

To gain what had been wisely lost!

Oh, let me strive to make the most

Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped

Of budding wings, else now equipped

For voyage from summer isle to isle!

And though she needs must reconcile

Ambition to the life on ground,

Still, I can profit by late found

But precious knowledge. Mind is best--

I will seize mind, forego the rest,

And try how far my tethered strength

May crawl in this poor breadth and length.

Let me, since I can fly no more,

At least spin dervish-like about

(Till giddy rapture almost doubt

I fly) through circling sciences,

Philosophies and histories

Should the whirl slacken there, then verse,

Fining to music, shall asperse

Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain

Intoxicate, half-break my chain!

Not joyless, though more favored feet

Stand calm, where I want wings to beat

The floor. At least earth's bond is broke!"

XXVIII

Then, (sickening even while I spoke)

"Let me alone! No answer, pray,

To this! I know what Thou wilt say!

All still is earth's,--to know, as much

As feel its truths, which if we touch

With sense, or apprehend in soul,

What matter? I have reached the goal--

'Whereto does knowledge serve!' will burn

My eyes, too sure, at every turn!

I cannot look back now, nor stake

Bliss on the race, for running's sake.

The goal's a ruin like the rest!--

And so much worse thy latter quest,"

(Added the voice) "that even on earth--

Whenever, in man's soul, had birth

Those intuitions, grasps of guess,

Which pull the more into the less,

Making the finite comprehend

Infinity,--the bard would spend

Such praise alone, upon his craft,

As, when wind-lyres obey the waft,

Goes to the craftsman who arranged

The seven strings, changed them and rechanged--

Knowing it was the South that harped.

He felt his song, in singing, warped;

Distinguished his and God's part: whence

A world of spirit as of sense

Was plain to him, yet not too plain,

Which he could traverse, not remain

A guest in:--else were permanent

Heaven on the earth its gleams were meant

To sting with hunger for full light,--

Made visible in verse, despite

The veiling weakness,--truth by means

Of fable, showing while it screens,--

Since highest truth, man e'er supplied,

Was ever fable on outside.

Such gleams made bright the earth an age;

Now the whole sun's his heritage!

Take up thy world, it is allowed,

Thou who hast entered in the cloud!"

XXIX

Then I--"Behold, my spirit bleeds,

Catches no more at broken reeds,--

But lilies flower those reeds above:

I let the world go, and take love!

Love survives in me, albeit those

I love be henceforth masks and shows,

Not living men and women: still

I mind how love repaired all ill,

Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends

With parents, brothers, children, friends!

Some semblance of a woman yet

With eyes to help me to forget,

Shall look on me; and I will match

Departed love with love, attach

Old memories to new dreams, nor scorn

The poorest of the grains of corn

I save from shipwreck on this isle,

Trusting its barrenness may smile

With happy foodful green one day,

More precious for the pains. I pray,--

Leave to love, only!"

XXX

At the word,

The form, I looked to have been stirred

With pity and approval, rose

O'er me, as when the headsman throws

Axe over shoulder to make end--

I fell prone, letting Him expend

His wrath, while thus the inflicting voice

Smote me. "Is this thy final choice?

Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!

And all thou dost enumerate

Of power and beauty in the world,

The mightiness of love was curled

Inextricably round about.

Love lay within it and without,

To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul

Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,

Still set deliberate aside

His love!--Now take love! Well betide

Thy tardy conscience! Haste to take

The show of love for the name's sake,

Remembering every moment Who,

Beside creating thee unto

These ends, and these for thee, was said

To undergo death in thy stead

In flesh like thine: so ran the tale.

What doubt in thee could countervail

Belief in it? Upon the ground

'That in the story had been found

Too much love! How could God love so?'

He who in all his works below

Adapted to the needs of man,

Made love the basis of the plan,--

Did love, as was demonstrated:

While man, who was so fit instead

To hate, as every day gave proof,--

Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,

Both could and did invent that scheme

Of perfect love: 'twould well beseem

Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise,

Not tally with God's usual ways!"

XXXI

And I cowered deprecatingly--

"Thou Love of God! Or let me die,

Or grant what shall seem heaven almost!

Let me not know that all is lost,

Though lost it be--leave me not tied

To this despair, this corpse-like bride!

Let that old life seem mine--no more--

With limitation as before,

With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:

Be all the earth a wilderness!

Only let me go on, go on,

Still hoping ever and anon

To reach one eve the Better Land!"

XXXII

Then did the form expand, expand--

I knew Him through the dread disguise

As the whole God within His eyes

Embraced me.

XXXIII

When I lived again,

The day was breaking,--the grey plain

I rose from, silvered thick with dew.

Was this a vision? False or true?

Since then, three varied years are spent,

And commonly my mind is bent

To think it was a dream--be sure

A mere dream and distemperature--

The last day's watching: then the night,--

The shock of that strange Northern Light

Set my head swimming, bred in me

A dream. And so I live, you see,

Go through the world, try, prove, reject,

Prefer, still struggling to effect

My warfare; happy that I can

Be crossed and thwarted as a man,

Not left in God's contempt apart,

With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,

Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.

Thank God, she still each method tries

To catch me, who may yet escape,

She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!

Thank God, no paradise stands barred

To entry, and I find it hard

To be a Christian, as I said!

Still every now and then my head

Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear

Spite of the sunshine, while I fear

And think, "How dreadful to be grudged

No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.

Condemned to earth for ever, shut

From heaven!"

But Easter-Day breaks! But

Christ rises! Mercy every way

Is infinite,--and who can say?

This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in

historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a

doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the

speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in

the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can

come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore

holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all

human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in

an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own

philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the

intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension,

and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.

Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert

Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil

are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery

behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are

identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer

contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the

Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has conceived

of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we _can_

know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we

know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.

In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be

touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out

Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century

thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de

Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the

first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun,

which latter symbolizes Divine Love.

BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE

. . . . . . .

IX

Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,

Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun

Above the conscious earth, and one by one

Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark

His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge

Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,

Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold

On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge

Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist

Her work done and betook herself in mist

To marsh and hollow there to bide her time

Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere

Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime

Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there

No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew

Glad through the inrush--glad nor more nor less

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,

The universal world of creatures bred

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise--

All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,

Joyless and thankless, who--all scowling can--

Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,

Sullen and silent.

Stand thou forth then, state

Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved--disconsolate--

While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay

And glad acknowledges the bounteous day!

X

Man speaks now:--"What avails Sun's earth-felt thrill

To me? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant--

They feel and grow: perchance with subtler skill

He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until

Each favored object pays life's ministrant

By pressing, in obedience to his will,

Up to completion of the task prescribed,

So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed

Such influence also, stood and stand complete--

The perfect Man,--head, body, hands and feet,

True to the pattern: but does that suffice?

How of my superadded mind which needs

--Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads

For--more than knowledge that by some device

Sun quickens matter: mind is nobly fain

To realize the marvel, make--for sense

As mind--the unseen visible, condense

--Myself--Sun's all-pervading influence

So as to serve the needs of mind, explain

What now perplexes. Let the oak increase

His corrugated strength on strength, the palm

Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm,--

Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace,--

The eagle, like some skyey derelict,

Drift in the blue, suspended glorying,--

The lion lord it by the desert-spring,--

What know or care they of the power which pricked

Nothingness to perfection? I, instead,

When all-developed still am found a thing

All-incomplete: for what though flesh had force

Transcending theirs--hands able to unring

The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse

The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king

Of carnage couched discrowned? Mind seeks to see,

Touch, understand, by mind inside of me,

The outside mind--whose quickening I attain

To recognize--I only. All in vain

Would mind address itself to render plain

The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks

Behind the operation--that which works

Latently everywhere by outward proof--

Drag that mind forth to face mine? No! aloof

I solely crave that one of all the beams

Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will

Should operate--myself for once have skill

To realize the energy which streams

Flooding the universe. Above, around,

Beneath--why mocks that mind my own thus found

Simply of service, when the world grows dark,

To half-surmise--were Sun's use understood,

I might demonstrate him supplying food,

Warmth, life, no less the while? To grant one spark

Myself may deal with--make it thaw my blood

And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark

Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise

That somehow secretly is operant

A power all matter feels, mind only tries

To comprehend! Once more--no idle vaunt

'Man comprehends the Sun's self!' Mysteries

At source why probe into? Enough: display,

Make demonstrable, how, by night as day,

Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed

Equally by Sun's efflux!--source from whence

If just one spark I drew, full evidence

Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned--

Sun's self made palpable to Man!"

XI

Thus moaned

Man till Prometheus helped him,--as we learn,--

Offered an artifice whereby he drew

Sun's rays into a focus,--plain and true,

The very Sun in little: made fire burn

And henceforth do Man service--glass-conglobed

Though to a pin-point circle--all the same

Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed

Of that else-unconceived essential flame

Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive

Achingly to companion as it may

The supersubtle effluence, and contrive

To follow beam and beam upon their way

Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint--confessed

Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed

Infinitude of action? Idle quest!

Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry

The spectrum--mind, infer immensity!

Little? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed--

Which, in the large, who sees to bless? Not I

More than yourself: so, good my friend, keep still

Trustful with--me? with thee, sage Mandeville!

The second "Reverie" has the effect of a triumphant swan song,

especially the closing stanzas, the poem having been written very near

the end of the poet's life.

"In a beginning God

Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed

Knowledge: from star to clod

Man knew things: doubt abashed

Closed its long period.

Knowledge obtained Power praise.

Had Good been manifest,

Broke out in cloudless blaze,

Unchequered as unrepressed,

In all things Good at best--

Then praise--all praise, no blame--

Had hailed the perfection. No!

As Power's display, the same

Be Good's--praise forth shall flow

Unisonous in acclaim!

Even as the world its life,

So have I lived my own--

Power seen with Love at strife,

That sure, this dimly shown,

--Good rare and evil rife.

Whereof the effect be--faith

That, some far day, were found

Ripeness in things now rathe,

Wrong righted, each chain unbound,

Renewal born out of scathe.

Why faith--but to lift the load,

To leaven the lump, where lies

Mind prostrate through knowledge owed

To the loveless Power it tries

To withstand, how vain! In flowed

Ever resistless fact:

No more than the passive clay

Disputes the potter's act,

Could the whelmed mind disobey

Knowledge the cataract.

But, perfect in every part,

Has the potter's moulded shape,

Leap of man's quickened heart,

Throe of his thought's escape,

Stings of his soul which dart

Through the barrier of flesh, till keen

She climbs from the calm and clear,

Through turbidity all between,

From the known to the unknown here,

Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?

Then life is--to wake not sleep,

Rise and not rest, but press

From earth's level where blindly creep

Things perfected, more or less,

To the heaven's height, far and steep,

Where, amid what strifes and storms

May wait the adventurous quest,

Power is Love--transports, transforms

Who aspired from worst to best,

Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.

I have faith such end shall be:

From the first, Power was--I knew.

Life has made clear to me

That, strive but for closer view,

Love were as plain to see.

When see? When there dawns a day,

If not on the homely earth,

Then yonder, worlds away,

Where the strange and new have birth,

And Power comes full in play.

CHAPTER VI

ART CRITICISM INSPIRED BY THE ENGLISH MUSICIAN, AVISON

In the "Parleying" "With Charles Avison," Browning plunges into a

discussion of the problem of the ephemeralness of musical expression.

He hits upon Avison to have his colloquy with because a march by this

musician came into his head, and the march came into his head for no

better reason than that it was the month of March. Some interest

would attach to Avison if it were only for the reason that he was

organist of the Church of St. Nicholas in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In

the earliest accounts St. Nicholas was styled simply, "The Church of

Newcastle-upon-Tyne," but in 1785 it became a Cathedral. This was after

Avison's death in 1770. All we know about the organ upon which Avison

performed is found in a curious old history of Newcastle by Brand. "I

have found," he writes, "no account of any organ in this church during

the times of popery though it is very probable there has been one. About

the year 1676, the corporation of Newcastle contributed £300 towards

the erection of the present organ. They added a trumpet stop to it June

22d, 1699."

The year that Avison was born, 1710, it is recorded further that "the

back front of this organ was finished which cost the said corporation

£200 together with the expense of cleaning and repairing the whole

instrument."

June 26, 1749, the common council of Newcastle ordered a sweet stop to

be added to the organ. This was after Avison became organist, his

appointment to that post having been in 1736. So we know that he at

least had a "trumpet stop" and a "sweet stop," with which to embellish

his organ playing.

The church is especially distinguished for the number and beauty of its

chantries, and any who have a taste for examining armorial bearings will

find two good-sized volumes devoted to a description of those in this

church, by Richardson. Equal distinction attaches to the church owing to

the beauty of its steeple, which has been called the pride and glory of

the Northern Hemisphere. According to the enthusiastic Richardson it is

justly esteemed on account of its peculiar excellency of design and

delicacy of execution one of the finest specimens of architectural

beauty in Europe. This steeple is as conspicuous a feature of Newcastle

as the State House Dome is of Boston, situated, as it is, almost in the

center of the town. Richardson gives the following minute description of

this marvel. "It consists of a square tower forty feet in width, having

great and small turrets with pinnacles at the angles and center of each

front tower. From the four turrets at the angles spring two arches,

which meet in an intersecting direction, and bear on their center an

efficient perforated lanthorne, surmounted by a tall and beautiful

spire: the angles of the lanthorne have pinnacles similar to those on

the turrets, and the whole of the pinnacles, being twelve in number, and

the spire, are ornamented with crockets and vanes."

There is a stirring tradition in regard to this structure related by

Bourne to the effect that in the time of the Civil Wars, when the Scots

had besieged the town for several weeks, and were still as far as at

first from taking it, the general sent a messenger to the mayor of the

town, and demanded the keys, and the delivering up of the town, or he

would immediately demolish the steeple of St. Nicholas. The mayor and

aldermen upon hearing this, immediately ordered a certain number of the

chiefest of the Scottish prisoners to be carried up to the top of the

tower, the place below the lanthorne and there confined. After this,

they returned the general an answer to this purpose,--that they would

upon no terms deliver up the town, but would to the last moment defend

it: that the steeple of St. Nicholas was indeed a beautiful and

magnificent piece of architecture, and one of the great ornaments of the

town; but yet should be blown into atoms before ransomed at such a rate:

that, however, if it was to fall, it should not fall alone, that the

same moment he destroyed the beautiful structure he should bathe his

hands in the blood of his countrymen who were placed there on purpose

either to preserve it from ruin or to die along with it. This message

had the desired effect. The men were there kept prisoners during the

whole time of the siege and not so much as one gun fired against it.

Avison, however, had other claims to distinction, besides being organist

of this ancient church. He was a composer, and was remembered by one of

his airs, at least, into the nineteenth century, namely "Sound the Loud

Timbrel." He appears not to be remembered, however, by his concertos, of

which he published no less than five sets for a full band of stringed

instruments, nor by his quartets and trios, and two sets of sonatas for

the harpsichord and two violins. All we have to depend on now as to the

quality of his music are the strictures of a certain Dr. Hayes, an

Oxford Professor, who points out many errors against the rules of

composition in the works of Avison, whence he infers that his skill in

music is not very profound, and the somewhat more appreciative remarks

of Hawkins who says "The music of Avison is light and elegant, but it

wants originality, a necessary consequence of his too close attachment

to the style of Geminiani which in a few particulars only he was able to

imitate."

Geminiani was a celebrated violin player and composer of the day, who

had come to England from Italy. He is said to have held his pupil,

Avison, in high esteem and to have paid him a visit at Newcastle in

1760. Avison's early education was gained in Italy; and in addition to

his musical attainments he was a scholar and a man of some literary

acquirements. It is not surprising, considering all these educational

advantages that he really made something of a stir upon the publication

of his "small book," as Browning calls it, with, we may add, its "large

title."

AN

ESSAY

ON

MUSICAL EXPRESSION

BY CHARLES AVISON

_Organist_ in NEWCASTLE

With ALTERATIONS and Large ADDITIONS

To which is added,

A LETTER to the AUTHOR

concerning the Music of the ANCIENTS

and some Passages in CLASSIC WRITERS

relating to the Subject.

LIKEWISE

Mr. AVISON'S REPLY to the Author of

_Remarks on the Essay on MUSICAL EXPRESSION_

In a Letter from Mr. _Avison_ to his Friend in _London_

THE THIRD EDITION

LONDON

Printed for LOCKYER DAVIS, in _Holborn_.

Printer to the ROYAL SOCIETY.

MDCCLXXV.

The author of the "Remarks on the Essay on Musical Expression" was the

aforementioned Dr. W. Hayes, and although the learned doctor's pamphlet

seems to have died a natural death, some idea of its strictures may be

gained from Avison's reply. The criticisms are rather too technical to

be of interest to the general reader, but one is given here to show how

gentlemanly a temper Mr. Avison possessed when he was under fire. His

reply runs "His first critique, and, I think, his masterpiece, contains

many circumstantial, but false and virulent remarks on the first allegro

of these concertos, to which he supposes I would give the name of

_fugue_. Be it just what he pleases to call it I shall not defend what

the public is already in possession of, the public being the most proper

judge. I shall only here observe, that our critic has wilfully, or

ignorantly, confounded the terms _fugue_ and _imitation_, which latter

is by no means subject to the same laws with the former.

[Illustration: Handel]

"Had I observed the method of answering the _accidental subjects_ in

this _allegro_, as laid down by our critic in his remarks, they must

have produced most shocking effects; which, though this mechanic in

music, would, perhaps, have approved, yet better judges might, in

reality, have imagined I had known no other art than that of the

spruzzarino." There is a nice independence about this that would

indicate Mr. Avison to be at least an aspirant in the right direction in

musical composition. His criticism of Handel, too, at a time when the

world was divided between enthusiasm for Handel and enthusiasm for

Buononcini, shows a remarkably just and penetrating estimate of this

great genius.

"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous,

exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always

correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution

frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of _soaring the boldest

flights_; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age

they lived in, _descended to the lowest_. Yet, as both their

excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so

both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of

perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate

the human soul."

On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is

eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits

off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and

imitation.

"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression,

so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be

entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind

hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising or falling of the

notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent;

broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick

divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter,

to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel

kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse

to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that

their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude

between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to

excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and

raise the passions of the soul.

"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some

very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method

here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of

expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular

words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus,

were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of _Milton_,

--Their songs

Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:

it is highly probable, that upon the word _divide_, he would run a

_division_ of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the

sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or _risen_ to

that _height_ of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had

climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the

human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of

mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn

airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives

that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can

feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content."

And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed

heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this

very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way

concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers

of musical expression.

The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man

Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from

to-day."

CHARLES AVISON

. . . . . . .

And to-day's music-manufacture,--Brahms,

Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,--to where--trumpets, shawms,

Show yourselves joyful!--Handel reigns--supreme?

By no means! Buononcini's work is theme

For fit laudation of the impartial few:

(We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too

Favors Geminiani--of those choice

Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice

Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch

Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush

Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats

While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats

Of music in thy day--dispute who list--

Avison, of Newcastle organist!

V

And here's your music all alive once more--

As once it was alive, at least: just so

The figured worthies of a waxwork-show

Attest--such people, years and years ago,

Looked thus when outside death had life below,

--Could say "We are now," not "We were of yore,"

--"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore--

Explain why quietude has settled o'er

Surface once all-awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"

Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch

Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach

Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match

For fresh achievement? Feat once--ever feat!

How can completion grow still more complete?

Hear Avison! He tenders evidence

That music in his day as much absorbed

Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now.

Perfect from center to circumference--

Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:

And yet--and yet--whence comes it that "O Thou"--

Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus--

Will not again take wing and fly away

(Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)

In some unmodulated minor? Nay,

Even by Handel's help!

Having stated the problem that confronts him, namely, the change of

fashion in music, the poet boldly goes on to declare that there is no

truer truth obtainable by man than comes of music, because it does give

direct expression to the moods of the soul, yet there is a hitch that

balks her of full triumph, namely the musical form in which these moods

are expressed does not stay fixed. This statement is enriched by a

digression upon the meaning of the soul.

VI

I state it thus:

There is no truer truth obtainable

By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept

A word which vaguely names what no adept

In word-use fits and fixes so that still

Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain

Innominate as first, yet, free again,

Is no less recognized the absolute

Fact underlying that same other fact

Concerning which no cavil can dispute

Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"--

Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find

Distinct beneath that something. You exact

An illustrative image? This may suit.

VII

We see a work: the worker works behind,

Invisible himself. Suppose his act

Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,

Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts,

Lays stone by stone until a floor compact

Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress

Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,

Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,

Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,

An element which works beyond our guess,

Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge,

Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,

In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps

Mind arrogates no mastery upon--

Distinct indisputably. Has there gone

To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough

Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?

Still the successive labor of each inch,

Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch

That let the polished slab-stone find its place,

To the first prod of pick-axe at the base

Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all

Mind's varied process except natural,

Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,

After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe

Of senses ministrant above, below,

Far, near, or now or haply long ago

Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,

Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence

Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,

Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,--

Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?

Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll

This side and that, except to emulate

Stability above? To match and mate

Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest

Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,

Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink

Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,

A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread

Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,

Run mercury into a mould like lead,

And henceforth have the plain result to show--

How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--

This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which

Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch

That balks her of full triumph else to boast.

Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a

comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing

to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form

elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it

therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of

feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form

though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet

does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the

idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image

of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are

appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing

the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of

all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.

VIII

All Arts endeavor this, and she the most

Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?

Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?

What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,

Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange

Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep

Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce

Change, not creation: simply what lay loose

At first lies firmly after, what design

Was faintly traced in hesitating line

Once on a time, grows firmly resolute

Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot

Liquidity into a mould,--some way

Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep

Unalterably still the forms that leap

To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns

To save its capture: Poetry discerns,

Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,

Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all

A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain

Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain:

The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift

Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!

Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--passions caught

I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught,

Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,

Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,

And still the Poet's page holds Helena

At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they,

My brothers, in the armament I name

Hero by hero? Can it be that shame

For their lost sister holds them from the war?"

--Knowing not they already slept afar

Each of them in his own dear native land.

Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand

Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto

She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo

Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,

Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--

The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing

Unbroken of a branch, palpitating

With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,

Marvel and mystery, of mysteries

And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!

Save it from chance and change we most abhor!

Give momentary feeling permanence,

So that thy capture hold, a century hence,

Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,

The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena,

Still rapturously bend, afar still throw

The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!

Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,

Give feeling immortality by sound,

Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas--

As well expect the rainbow not to pass!

"Praise 'Radaminta'--love attains therein

To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win

Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said:

Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead--

They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,

Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate

As ever to go walk the world again,

Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain

Till Music loose them, fit each filmily

With form enough to know and name it by

For any recognizer sure of ken

And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen

Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal

Is Music long obdurate: off they steal--

How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they

Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day--

Passion made palpable once more. Ye look

Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!

Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart

Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart

Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,

Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,--

Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note

The ever-new invasion!

The poet makes no attempt to give any reason why music should be so

ephemeral in its appeal. He merely refers to the development of harmony

and modulation, nor does it seem to enter his head that there can be any

question about the appeal being ephemeral. He imagines the possibility

of resuscitating dead and gone music with modern harmonies and novel

modulations, but gives that up as an irreverent innovation. His next

mood is a historical one; dead and gone music may have something for us

in a historical sense, that is, if we bring our life to kindle theirs,

we may sympathetically enter into the life of the time.

IX

I devote

Rather my modicum of parts to use

What power may yet avail to re-infuse

(In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death

With momentary liveliness, lend breath

To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,

An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf

Of thy laboratory, dares unstop

Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop

Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine

Each in its right receptacle, assign

To each its proper office, letter large

Label and label, then with solemn charge,

Reviewing learnedly the list complete

Of chemical reactives, from thy feet

Push down the same to me, attent below,

Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go

To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!

Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough

For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash

Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash

As style my Avison, because he lacked

Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked

By modulations fit to make each hair

Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!

I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast

Discords and resolutions, turn aghast

Melody's easy-going, jostle law

With license, modulate (no Bach in awe),

Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank),

And lo, up-start the flamelets,--what was blank

Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned

By eyes that like new lustre--Love once more

Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before

Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,

My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch

Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years

The step precise of British Grenadiers

To such a nicety,--if score I crowd,

If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap

At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,

Ever the pace augmented till--what's here?

Titanic striding toward Olympus!

X

Fear

No such irreverent innovation! Still

Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will--

Nay, were thy melody in monotone,

The due three-parts dispensed with!

XI

This alone

Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne

Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,

And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats

Of strength,--shall somebody as sure push down,

Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,

And orb imperial--whereto?--Never dream

That what once lived shall ever die! They seem

Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring

Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king

Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot

No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit

Measure to subject, first--no marching on

Yet in thy bold C Major, Avison,

As suited step a minute since: no: wait--

Into the minor key first modulate--

Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)

The really serious conclusion of the poem amounts to a doctrine of

relativity in art and not only in art but in ethics and religion. It is

a statement in poetry of the prevalent thought of the nineteenth

century, of which the most widely known exponent was Herbert Spencer.

The form in which every truth manifests itself is partial and therefore

will pass, but the underlying truth, the absolute which unfolds itself

in form after form is eternal. Every manifestation in form, according to

Browning, however, has also its infinite value in relation to the truth

which is preserved through it.

XII

Of all the lamentable debts incurred

By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:

That he should find his last gain prove his first

Was futile--merely nescience absolute,

Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit

Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,

Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,

And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,--

Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe

From human records, late it graced so much.

"Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such

Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable.

"When we attained them! E'en as they, so will

This their successor have the due morn, noon,

Evening and night--just as an old-world tune

Wears out and drops away, until who hears

Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears

Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'

So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,

Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!

Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file,

Simply proves first of our delusions."

XIII

Now--

Blare it forth, bold C Major! Lift thy brow,

Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled

With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed--

Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope,

Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope

They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,--

Were equally existent in far days

Of Music's dim beginning--even so,

Truth was at full within thee long ago,

Alive as now it takes what latest shape

May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape

Time's insufficient garniture; they fade,

They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid

Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine

And free through March frost: May dews crystalline

Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit

As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,

Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall

Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call

New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,

So much the better!

As to the questions why music does not give feeling immortality through

sound, and why it should be so ephemeral in its appeal, there are

various things to be said. It is just possible that it may soon come to

be recognized that the psychic growth of humanity is more perfectly

reflected in music than any where else. Ephemeralness may be predicated

of culture-music more certainly than of folk-music, why? Because

culture-music often has occupied itself more with the technique than

with the content, while folk-music, being the spontaneous expression of

feeling must have content. Folk-music, it is true, is simple, but if it

be genuine in its feeling I doubt whether it ever loses its power to

move. Therefore, in folk-music is possibly made permanent simple states

of feeling. Now in culture-music, the development has constantly been

in the direction of the expression of the ultimate spiritual reality of

emotions. Music is now actually trying to accomplish what Browning

demands of it:

"Dredging deeper yet,

Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--

The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing

Unbroken of a branch, palpitating

With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies,

Marvel and mystery, of mysteries

And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!

Save it from chance and change we most abhor."

This is true no matter what the emotion may be. Hate may have its

"eidolon" as well as love. Above all arts, music has the power of

raising evil into a region of the artistically beautiful. Doubt,

despair, passion, become blossoms plucked by the hand of God when

transmuted in the alembic of the brain of genius--which is not saying

that he need experience any of these passions himself. In fact, it is

his power of perceiving the eidolon of beauty in modes of passion or

emotion not his own that makes him the great genius.

It is doubtless true that whenever in culture-music there has really

been content aroused by feeling, no matter what the stage of technique

reached, _that_ music retains its power to move. It is also highly

probably that in the earlier objective phases of music, even the

contemporary audiences were not moved in the sense that we should be

moved to-day. The audiences were objective also and their enthusiasm may

have been aroused by merely the imitative aspects of music as Avison

called them. It is certainly a fact that content and form are more

closely linked in music than in any other art. Suppose, however, we

imagine the development of melody, counterpoint, harmony, modulation,

etc., to be symbolized by a series of concrete materials like clay

bricks, silver bricks, gold bricks, diamond bricks; a beautiful thought

might take as exquisite a form in bricks of clay as it would in diamond

bricks, or diamond bricks might be flung together without any informing

thought so that they would attract only the thoughtless by their

glitter. But it also follows that, with the increase in the kinds of

bricks, there is an increase in the possibilities for subtleties in

psychic expression, therefore music to-day is coming nearer and nearer

to the spiritual reality of feeling. It requires the awakened soul that

Maeterlinck talks about, that is, the soul alive to the spiritual

essences of things to recognize this new realm which composers are

bringing to us in music.

There are always, at least three kinds of appreciators of music, those

who can see beauty only in the masters of the past, those who can see

beauty only in the last new composer, and those who ecstatically welcome

beauty past, present and to come. These last are not only psychically

developed themselves, but they are able to retain delight in simpler

modes of feeling. They may be raised to a seventh heaven of delight by a

Bach fugue played on a clavichord by Mr. Dolmetsch, feeling as if angels

were ministering unto them, or to a still higher heaven of delight by a

Tschaikowsky symphony or a string quartet of Grieg, feeling that here

the seraphim continually do cry, or they may enter into the very

presence of the most High through some subtly exquisite and psychic song

of an American composer, for some of the younger American composers are

indeed approaching "Truth's very heart of truth," in their music.

On the whole, one gets rather the impression that the poet has here

tackled a problem upon which he did not have great insight. He passes

from one mood to another, none of which seem especially satisfactory to

himself, and concludes with one of the half-truths of nineteenth-century

thought. It is true as far as it goes that forms evolve, and it is a

good truth to oppose to the martinets of settled standards in poetry,

music and painting; it is also true that the form is a partial

expression of a whole truth, but there is the further truth that, let a

work of art be really a work of genius, and the form as well as the

content touches the infinite; that is, we have as Browning says in a

poem already quoted, "Bernard de Mandeville," the very sun in little, or

as he makes Abt Vogler say of his music, the broken arc which goes to

the formation of the perfect round, or to quote still another poem of

Browning's, "Cleon," the perfect rhomb or trapezoid that has its own

place in a mosaic pavement.

[Illustration: Avison's March]

The poem closes in a rolicking frame of mind, which is not remarkably

consistent with the preceding thought, except that the poet seems

determined to get all he can out of the music of the past by enlivening

it with his own jolly mood. To this end he sets a patriotic poem to the

tune of Avison's march, in honor of our old friend, Pym. It is a clever

_tour de force_ for the words are made to match exactly in rhythm and

quantity the notes of the march. Truth to say, the essential goodness of

the tune comes out by means of these enlivening words.

XIV

Therefore--bang the drums,

Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's

Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,

Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score

When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar

Mate the approaching trample, even now

Big in the distance--or my ears deceive--

Of federated England, fitly weave

March-music for the Future!

XV

Or suppose

Back, and not forward, transformation goes?

Once more some sable-stoled procession--say,

From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way,

Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree

Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be

Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day

Three hundred years ago! How duly drones

Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique

Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak

A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans--

Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite

Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars

Aside and filling vacant sky with stars

Hidden till now that day returns to night.

XVI

Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,

Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man's

The cause our music champions: I were loth

To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans

Ignobly: back to times of England's best!

Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb

Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,

The famous Five. There's rumor of arrest.

Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:

Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,

--Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb,

Harsh voises a-hallo, as beseems the mob!

How good is noise! what's silence but despair

Of making sound match gladness never there?

Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,

Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!

Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,--

Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!

Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then,

Marching, say "Pym, the man of men!"

Up, head's, your proudest--out, throats, your loudest--

"Somerset's Pym!"

Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,

Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"

Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held,

"Tavistock's Pym!"

Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen

Teach babes unborn the where and when

--Tyrants, he braved them,--

Patriots, he saved them--

"Westminster's Pym."

Another English musician, Arthur Chappell, was the inspiration of a

graceful little sonnet written by the poet in an album which was

presented to Mr. Chappell in recognition of his popular concerts in

London. Browning was a constant attendant at these. It gives a true

glimpse of the poet in a highly appreciative mood:

THE FOUNDER OF THE FEAST

1884

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

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

They range from Titian up to Angelo!"

Could we be silent at the rich survey?

A host so kindly, in as great a way

Invites to banquet, substitutes for show

Sound that's diviner still, and bids us know

Bach like Beethoven; are we thankless, pray?

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

Whose every guest henceforth not idly vaunts

"Sense has received the utmost Nature grants,

My cup was filled with rapture to the brim,

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

Music was poured by perfect ministrants,

By Halle, Schumann, Piatti, Joachim."

* * * * *

Transcriber Notes

Typographical inconsistencies have been changed and are listed below.

Archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation are preserved.

Author's punctuation style is preserved, except where noted.

Some illustrations moved to one page later.

Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.

Emphasized words within italics indicated by plus +emphasis+.

Transcriber Changes

The following changes were made to the original text:

Page 10: Removed extra quote after Keats (What porridge had John

=Keats?=)

Page 21: Was 'blurrs' (Stray-leaves, fragments, =blurs= and blottings)

Page 49: Paragraph continued, no quote needed (=Tibullus= gives

Virgil equal credit for having in his writings touched

with telling truth)

Page 53: Was 'Shakesspeare' (Jonson wrote for the First Folio edition

of =Shakespeare= printed in 1623)

Page 53: Was 'B. I.' (=B. J.=)

Page 53: Added single quotes (Shakespeare's talk in "At the

='Mermaid'=" grows out of the supposition)

Page 69: Was 'Shakepeare's' (He thinks the opening Sonnets are to the

Earl of Southampton, known to be =Shakespeare's= patron)

Page 81: Added comma after Strafford (not Pym, the leader of the

people, but =Strafford,= the supporter of the King.)

Page 85: Added end quote (some half-dozen years of immunity to the

'fretted tenement' of Strafford's 'fiery =soul'=)

Page 91: Capitalized King (The =King=, upon his visit to Scotland,

had been shocked)

Page 100: Was 'Finnees' (Hampden, Hollis, the younger Vane, Rudyard,

=Fiennes= and many of the Presbyterian Party)

Page 136: Removed extra start quote ("Be my friend =Of= friends!"--My

King! I would have....)

Page 137: Was 'brillance' (The else imperial =brilliance= of your mind)

Page 137: Was 'you way' (If Pym is busy,--=you may= write of Pym.)

Page 140: Capitalized King (the =King=, therefore, summoned it to meet

on the third of November.)

Page 142: Matching the original: leaving it hyphenated (the greatest

in England would have stood =dis-covered=.')

Page 172: Was 'Partiot' (The =Patriot= Pym, or the Apostate Strafford!)

Page 174: Was 'perfers' (The King =prefers= to leave the door ajar)

Page 178: Was 'her's' (I am =hers= now, and I will die.)

Page 193: Was 'Bethrothal' (Till death us do join past parting--that

sounds like =Betrothal= indeed!)

Page 200: Was 'canonade' (Such a castle seldom crumbles by sheer

stress of =cannonade=: 'Tis when foes are foiled and

fighting's finished that vile rains invade)

Page 203: Inserted stanza (=Down= I sat to cards, one evening)

Page 203: Added starting quote (="When= he found his voice, he

stammered 'That expression once again!')

Page 204: Added starting quote (='End= it! no time like the present!)

Page 224: Changed comma to period (the morning's lessons conned with

the =tutor.= There, too, it was that he impressed on the lad

those maxims)

Page 236: Added end quote (Why, he makes sure of her--"do you say,

=yes"=-- "She'll not say, no,"--what comes it to beside?)

Page 265: Added stanza ("'=I've= been about those laces we need for

... never mind!)

Page 266: Keeping original spelling (With =dreriment= about, within

may life be found)

Page 267: Added stanza ("'=Wicked= dear Husband, first despair and

then rejoice!)

Page 276: Was 'checks' (The dryness of "Aristotle's =cheeks=" is as

usual so enlivened by Browning that the fate of Halbert and

Hob grows)

Page 289: Added starting quote (="You= wrong your poor disciple.)

Page 290: Removed end quote (Wish I could take you; but fame travels

=fast=)

Page 291: Was 'aud' (Aunt =and= niece, you and me.)

Page 294: Was 'oustide' (Such =outside=! Now,--confound me for a prig!)

Page 299: Changed singe quote to double (="Not= you! But I see.)

Page 315: Was 'Descretion' (To live and die together--for a month,

=Discretion= can award no more!)

Page 329: Removed starting quote ("He may believe; and yet, and yet

=How= can he?" All eyes turn with interest.)

Page 344: Left in ending quote with unknown start (High Church, and

the Evangelicals, or Low =Church."=)

Page 370: Changed period to comma (Judgment drops her damning

=plummet,= Pronouncing such a fatal space)

Page 421: Removed starting quote (=About= the year 1676, the

corporation of Newcastle contributed)

Page 429: Added period (whose little book and large tune had led him

the long way from =to-day.=")

Page 437: Was 'irreverant' (gives that up as an =irreverent=

innovation.)

Page 440: Added beginning quote (="When= we attained them!)

Page 445: Added comma (we have as Browning says in a poem already

=quoted,= "Bernard de Mandeville,")