BROWNING'S
SHORTER POEMS

Set up and electrotyped October, 1899. Reprinted January, 1901; April, 1902; May, 1903; May, 1904; January, 1905; January, June, 1906; January, July, 1907; February, 1908; September, 1909; February, 1910; March, 1911; July, 1912; July, 1913; January, July, l9l5; July, 1916; January, September, 1917.

These selections from the poetry of Robert Browning have been made with especial reference to the tastes and capacities of readers of the high-school age. Every poem included has been found by experience to be within the grasp of boys and girls. Most of Browning's best poetry is within the ken of any reader of imagination and diligence. To the reader who lacks these, not only Browning, but the great world of literature, remains closed: Browning is not the only poet who requires close study. The difficulties he offers are, in his best poems, not more repellent to the thoughtful reader than the nut that protects and contains the kernel. To a boy or girl of active mind, the difficulty need rarely be more than a pleasant challenge to the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity.

Browning, when at his best in vigor, clearness, and beauty, is peculiarly a poet for young people. His freedom from sentimentality, his liveliness of conception and narration, his high optimism, and his interest[page iv] in the things that make for the life of the soul, appeal to the imagination and the feelings of youth.

The present edition, attempts but little in the way of criticism. The notes cover such matters as are not readily settled by an appeal to the dictionary, and suggest, in addition, questions that are designed to help in interpretation and appreciation.

TEACHERS' COLLEGE, NEW YORK,
          July, 1899.

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. He was contemporary with Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and a score of other men famous in art and science.

Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His father, a clerk in the Bank of England, possessed ample means for the education of his children. He had artistic and literary tastes, a mind richly stored with philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some repute as a maker of verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted son in following his bent. From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes and his vigorous health; in his father he found a critic and companion. His mother was described by Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of music, and her [page viii] deep religious feeling reappear in the poet.

Free from struggles with adversity, and devoid of public or stirring incidents, the story of Browning's life is soon told. It was the life of a scholar and man of letters, devoted to the study of poetry, philosophy, history; to the contemplation of the lives of men and women; and to the exercise of his chosen vocation.

His school life was of meagre extent. He attended a private academy, read at home under a tutor, and for two years attended the University of London, When asked in his later life whether he had been to Oxford or Cambridge, he used to say, "Italy was my University," And, indeed, his many poems on Italian themes bear testimony to the profound influence of Italy upon him. In his teens, he came under the influence of Pope and Byron, and wrote verses after their styles. Then Shelley came by accident in his way, and became to the boy the model of poetic excellence.

In 1838 appeared his first published poem, Pauline. It bears the marks of his peculiar genius; it has the germs of his merits and his defects. Though not widely read, it received favorable notice from some of the critics. In 1835 appeared Paracelsus, in 1837 Strafford, in 1840 Sordello. From this time on, for the fifty remaining years of his life, his poetic activity hardly ceased, though his poetry was of uneven excellence.[page ix] The middle period of his work, beginning with Bells and Pomegranates in 1842, and ending with Balaustion's Adventure (a transcript of Euripides' Alcestis) in 1871, was by far the richest in poetic value.

In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. They left England for Italy, where, because of Mrs. Browning's feeble health, they continued to reside until her death in 1861. The remainder of his life was divided between England and Italy, with frequent visits to southern France. His reputation as a poet had steadily grown. He was now one of the best known men in England. His mental activity continued unabated to the end. Within the last thirty years of his life he wrote The Ring and the Book—his longest work, one of the longest and, intellectually, one of the greatest, of English poems; translated the Agamemnon of Æschylus and the Alcestis of Euripides; published many shorter poems; kept up the studies which had always been his labor and his pastime; and found leisure also to know a wide circle of men and women. William Sharp gives a pleasing picture of the last years of his life: "Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian[page x] books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Æschylus: knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon tea-parties; and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare."¹

He died in Venice, on December 12, 1889, and was buried in the poet's corner of Westminster Abbey.

[Footnote 1: Sharp's Life of Browning.]

The three generations of readers who have lived since Browning's first publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep for common mortals to fathom with line and plummet,—concealing below green depths of ocean priceless gems of thought and feeling; to the third, a poet full of inequalities in conception and expression, who has done many good things well and has made many grave failures.

No poet in our generation has fared so ill at the[page xi] hands of the critics. Already the Browning library is large. Some of the criticism is good; much of it, regarding the author as philosopher and symbolist, is totally askew. Reams have been written in interpretation of Childe Roland, an imaginative fantasy composed in one day. Abstruse ideas have been wrested from the simple story of My Last Duchess. His poetry has been the stamping-ground of theologians and the centre of prattling literary circles. In this tortuous maze of futile criticism the one thing lost sight of is the fact that a poet must be judged by the standards of art. It must be confessed, however, that Browning is himself to blame for much of the smoke of commentary that has gathered round him. He has often chosen the oblique expression where the direct would serve better; often interpolated his own musing subtleties between the reader and the life he would present; often followed his theme into intricacies beyond his own power to resolve into the simple forms of art. Thus it has come about that misguided readers became enigma hunters, and the poet their Sphinx.

The real question with Browning, as with any poet, is, What is his work and worth as an artist? What of human life has he presented, and how clear and true are his presentations? What passions, what struggles, what ideals, what activities of men has he added to the art world? What beauty and dignity,[page xii] what light, has he created? How does he view life: with what of hope, or aspiration, or strength? These questions may be discussed under his sense and mastery of form, and under his views of human life.

Browning's sense of form has often been attacked and defended. The first impression upon reading him is of harshness amounting to the grotesque. Rhymes often clash and jangle like the music of savages. Such rhymes as

"Fancy the fabric... Ere mortar dab brick,"

strain dignity and beauty to the breaking-point. Archaic and bizarre words are pressed into service to help out the rhyme and metre; instead of melodic rhythm there are harsh and jolting combinations; until the reader brought up in the traditions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson, is fain to cry out, This is not poetry!

In internal form, as well, Browning often defies the established laws of literature. Distorted and elliptical sentences, long and irrelevant parentheses, curious involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent development of the narrative or the picture, often leave the reader in despair even of the meaning. Nor can these departures from orderly beauty always be defended by the exigencies of the subjects. They do[page xiii] not fit the theme. They are the discords of a musician who either has not mastered his instrument or is not sensitive to all the finer effects. Some of his work stands out clear from these faults: A Toccata of Galuppi's, Love Among the Ruins, the Songs from Pippa Passes, Apparitions, Andrea del Sarto, and a score of others might be cited to show that Browning could write with a sense of form as true, and an ear as delicate, as could any poet of the century, except Tennyson.

To Browning belongs the credit of having created a new poetic form,—the dramatic monologue. In this form the larger number of his poems are cast. Among the best examples in this volume are My Last Duchess, The Bishop Orders his Tomb, The Laboratory, and Confessions. One person only is speaking, but reveals the presence, action, and thoughts of the others who are in the scene at the same time that he reveals his own character, as in a conversation in which but one voice is audible. The dramatic monologue has in a peculiar degree the advantages of compression and vividness, and is, in Browning's hands, an instrument of great power.

The charge of obscurity so often made against Browning's poetry must in part be admitted. As has been said above he is often led off by his many-sided interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that interfere with simplicity and beauty. His compressed[page xiv] style and his fondness for unusual words often make an unwarranted demand upon the reader's patience. Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a repulse to the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore is not worth the smelting; often it yields enough to reward the greatest patience.

Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely and deeply through men and books. He was born in London, near the great centres of the intellectual movements of his time; he travelled much, especially in Italy and France; he read widely in the literatures and philosophies of many ages and many lands; and so grew into the cosmopolitanism of spirit that belonged to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.

In all art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning this was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to Sordello, written thirty years after its first publication, he said: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study." This interest in "the development of a soul" is the keynote of nearly all his work. To it are directly traceable many of the most obvious excellences and defects of his poetry. He came to look below the surfaces of things for the soul beneath them. He came to be "the subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song," and like his own pair of lovers on the Campagna, "unashamed of soul." His[page xv] early preference of Shelley to Keats indicated this bent. His readers are conscious always of revelations of the souls of the men and women he portrays; the sweet and tender womanhood of the Duchess, the sordid and material soul of the old Bishop of St. Praxed's, the devoted and heroic soul of Napoleon's young soldier, the weary and despairing soul of Andrea del Sarto,—and a host of others stand before us cleared of the veil of habit and convention. The souls of men appear as the victors over all material and immaterial obstacles. Human affection transforms the bare room to a bower of fruits and flowers; human courage and resolution carry Childe Roland victoriously past the threats and terrors of malignant nature, and the despair from accumulated memories of failure; death itself is described in Evelyn Hope, in Prospice, in Rabbi Ben Ezra, as a phase, a transit of the soul, wherein the material aspects and the physical terrors disappear. In Browning's poetry, the one real and permanent thing is the world of ideas, the world of the spirit. He is in this one of the truest Platonists of modern times.

To many young readers this method in art comes like a revelation. Other poets also portray the souls of men; but Browning does it more obviously, more intentionally, more insistently. It is well, therefore, to have read Browning. To learn to read him aright[page xvi] is to enter the gateway to other good and great poetry.

Out of this predominating interest in the souls of men, and out of his intense intellectual activity and scientific curiosity, grows one of Browning's greatest defects. He is often led too far afield, into intricacies and anomalies of character beyond the range of common experience and sympathy. The criminal, the "moral idiot," belong to the alienist rather than to the poet. The abnormalities of nature have no place in the world of great art; they do not echo the common experience of mankind. Already the interest is decreasing in that part of his poetry which deals with such themes. Bishop Blougram and Mr. Sludge will not take place in the ranks of artistic creations. Nor can the poet's "special pleading" for such types, however ingenious it may be, whatever philanthropy of soul it may imply, be regarded as justification. Sometimes, indeed, the poet is led by his sympathy and his intellectual ingenuity into defences that are inconsistent with his own standards of the true and the beautiful.

The trait in Browning which appeals to the largest number of readers is his strenuous optimism. He will admit no evil or sorrow too great to be borne, too irrational to have some ultimate purpose of beneficence. "There shall never be one lost good," says Abt Vogler. The suicides in the morgue only serve[page xvii] to call forth his declaration:—

"My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
        °        °        °        °        °
That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."

He has no fear of death; he will face it gladly, in confidence of the life beyond. His Grammarian is content to assume an order of things which will justify in the next life his ceaseless toil in this, merely to learn how to live. Rabbi Ben Ezra's old age is serene in the hope of the continuity of life and the eternal development of character; he finds life good, and the plan of things perfect. In brief, Browning accepts life as it is, and believes it good, piecing out his conception of the goodness of life by drawing without limit upon his hopes of the other world. With the exception of a few poems like Andrea del Sarto, this is the unbroken tone of his poetry. Calvinism, asceticism, pessimism in any form, he rejects. He sustains his position not by argument, but by hope and assertion. It is a matter of temperament: he is optimistic because he was born so. Different from the serene optimism of Shakespeare's later life, in The Tempest and The Winter's Tale, in that it is not, like Shakespeare's, born of long and deep suffering[page xviii] from the contemplation of the tragedies of human life, it bears, in that degree, less of solace and conviction.

To Browning's temperament, also, may be ascribed another prominent trait in his work. He steadily asserts the right of the individual to live out his own life, to be himself in fulfilling his desires and aspirations. The Statue and the Bust is the famous exposition of this doctrine. It is a teaching that neither the poet's optimism nor his acumen has justified in the minds of men. It is a return to the unbridled freedom of nature advocated by Whitman and Rousseau; an extreme assertion of the value of the individual man, and of unregulated democracy; an outgrowth, it may be, of the robustness and originality of Browning's nature, and interesting—not as a clew to his life, which conformed to that of organized society—but as a clew to his independence of classical and conventional forms in the exercise of his art.

Creative energy Browning has in high degree. With the poet's insight into character and motives, the poet's grasp of the essential laws of human life, the poet's vividness of imagination, he has portrayed a host of types distinct from each other, true to life, strongly marked and consistent. With fine dramatic instinct he has shown these characters in true relation to the facts of life and to each other. In this respect he has satisfied the most exigent demands of art, and has[page xix] already taken rank as one of the great creative minds of the nineteenth century.

True poet he is, also, in his depth of feeling and range of sympathy. Beneath a ruggedness of intellect, like his landscape in De Gustibus, there is always sympathy and tenderness. It is, indeed, more like the serenity of Chaucer's emotions than like the tragic fervor of Shakespeare's. Mrs. Browning's estimate of him in Lady Geraldine's Courtship,—

"Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity,"

is true criticism.

His love of nature, and his sense of the joy and beauty of it, appear often in his poetry; but not with the same insistence as in Wordsworth and Burns, and seldom with the same pervasiveness, or with the same beauty, as in Tennyson. He was rather the poet of men's souls. When he does use nature, it is generally to illustrate some phase or experience of the soul, and not for the sake of its beauty. He has, however, some nature-descriptions so exquisite that English poetry would be the poorer for their loss. Witness De Gustibus, Up at a Villa, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Pippa's Songs, and Saul.

It is too early to guess at Browning's permanent[page xx] place in our literature. But his vigor of intellect, his insight into the human heart, his originality in phrase and conception, his unquenchable and fearless optimism, and his grasp of the problems of his century, make him beyond question one of its greatest figures.

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore, on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man has walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Tennyson has a vivid feeling of the dignity and potency of law.... Browning vividly feels the importance, the greatness and beauty of passions and enthusiasms, and his imagination is comparatively unimpressed by the presence of law and its operations.... It is not the order and regularity in the processes of the natural world which chiefly delight Browning's imagination, but the streaming forth of power, and will, and love from the whole face of the visible universe....

Tennyson considers the chief instruments of human progress to be a vast increase of knowledge and of political organization. Browning makes that progress dependent on[page xxi] the production of higher passions, and aspirations,—hopes, and joys, and sorrows; Tennyson finds the evidence of the truth of the doctrine of progress in the universal presence of a self-evolving law. Browning obtains his assurance of its truth from inward presages and prophecies of the soul, from anticipations, types, and symbols of a higher greatness in store for man, which even now reside within him, a creature ever unsatisfied, ever yearning upward in thought, feeling, and endeavour.

... Hence, it is not obedience, it is not submission to the law of duty, which points out to us our true path of life, but rather infinite desire and endless aspiration. Browning's ideal of manhood in this world always recognizes the fact that it is the ideal of a creature who never can be perfected on earth, a creature whom other and higher lives await in an endless hereafter....

The gleams of knowledge which we possess are of chief value because they "sting with hunger for full light." The goal of knowledge, as of love, is God himself. Its most precious part is that which is least positive—those momentary intuitions of things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard. The needs of the highest parts of our humanity cannot be supplied by ascertained truth, in which we might rest, or which we might put to use for definite ends; rather by ventures of faith, which test the courage of the soul, we ascend from surmise to assurance, and so again to higher surmise.

     —Condensed from EDWARD DOWDEN, Studies in Literature.

... Browning has not cared for that poetic form which bestows perennial charm, or else he was incapable of it. He[page xxii] fails in beauty, in concentration of interest, in economy of language, in selection of the best from the common treasure of experience. In those works where he has been most indifferent, as in the Red Cotton Night-Cap Country, he has been merely whimsical and dull; in those works where the genius he possessed is most felt, as in Saul, A Toccata of Galuppi's, Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Flight of the Duchess, The Bishop Orders his Tomb in Saint Praxed's Church, Hervé Riel, Cavalier Tunes, Time's Revenges, and many more, he achieves beauty, or nobility, or fitness of phrase such as only a poet is capable of. It is in these last pieces and their like that his fame lies for the future. It was his lot to be strong as the thinker, the moralist, with "the accomplishment of verse," the scholar interested to rebuild the past of experience, the teacher with an explicit dogma in an intellectual form with examples from life, the anatomist of human passions, instincts, and impulses in all their gamut, the commentator on his own age; he was weak as the artist, often unnecessarily and by choice, in the repulsive form,—in the awkward, the obscure, the ugly. He belongs with Jonson, with Dryden, with the heirs of the masculine intellect, the men of power not unvisited by grace, but in whom mind is predominant. Upon the work of such poets time hesitates, conscious of their mental greatness, but also of their imperfect art, their heterogeneous matter; at last the good is sifted from that whence worth has departed.

     —From GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY'S Studies in Letters and Life.

When it is urged that for a poet the intellectual energies are too strong in Browning, that for poetry the play of[page xxiii] intellectual interests and activities is too great in his work, and that Browning often and at times ruthlessly sacrifices the requirements and effects of art for the expression of thought, that "though he refreshes the heart he tires the brain," we should admit this with regard to a good deal of the work of the third period. We should allow that this is the side to which he leans generally, but still hold that, though to many his intellectual quality and energy may well seem excessive, yet in great part of his work, and that of course, his best, the passion of the poet and his kind of imagination are just as fresh and powerful as the intellectual force and subtlety are keen and abundant.

     —JAMES FROTHINGHAM, Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning.

Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak,
And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier,
Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear:
We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.
We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak
Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:
See a great Tree of Life that never sere
Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak;
Such ending is not death: such living shows
What wide illumination brightness sheds
From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes:
The coward, and the tyrant, and the force
Of all those weedy monsters raising heads
When Song is muck from springs of turbid source.

—GEORGE MEREDITH.

The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (The Macmillan Company, ten vols.).
Browning's Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., one vol.).
Selections from Browning (Crowell & Co., one vol.).
Life of Browning, by William Sharp.
Life of Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr.
Introduction to Browning, by Hiram Corson.
Guide Book to Browning, by George Willis Cook.
Browning Cyclopædia, by Edward Berdoe.
Literary Studies, by Walter Bagehot.
Studies in Literature, by Edward Dowden.
Makers of Literature, by George Edward Woodberry (New York, 1901).
Boston Browning Society Papers.
A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning, by Mrs Sutherland Orr.
Robert Browning: Personalia, by Edmund Gosse.
Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets, by Vida D. Scudder.[page xxviii]
Victorian Poetry, by Edmund Clarence Stedman.
Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning, by James Fotheringham.
Browning Society Papers.
Our Living Poets, by H. Buxton Forman.
Browning's Message to his Times, by Edward Berdoe (London, 1897).
Browning Studies, by Edward Berdoe (London, 1895).
The Poetry of Robert Browning, by Stopford Brooke (New York, 1902).
Browning, Poet and Man, by E.L. Cary (New York, 1899).
(An extensive bibliography, biographical and critical, is given in the
Appendix to Sharp's Life of Browning; London, Walter Scott, 1890.)

(Written for, and inscribed to W. M. the Younger)

   °1Hamelin° town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its walls on either side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

   10Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,[page 2]
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats.
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats.
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
   20In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation, shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you're old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease!
   30Rouse up, sirs! give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we're lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!"
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sat in council;[page 3]
At length the Mayor broke silence:
"For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell,
I wish I were a mile hence!
It's easy to bid one rack one's brain—
   40I'm sure my poor head aches again,
I've scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!"
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
"Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?"
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little, though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
   50Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous)
"Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

"Come in!"—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:[page 4]
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red,
And he himself was tall and thin,
   60With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in;
There was no guessing his kith and kin:
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire.
Quoth one: "It's as my great grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone,
Had walked his way from his painted tombstone!"

   70He advanced to the council-table:
And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm[page 5]
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper."
   80(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of self-same cheque:
And at the scarf's end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying,
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am,
  °89In Tartary I freed the Cham,°
   90Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
  °91I eased in Asia the Nizam°
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats:
And as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?"
"One? fifty thousand!"—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stept,
Smiling first a little smile,
  100As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while:
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled,
Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered:
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
  110And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
    Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
  120And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished![page 7]

—Save one, who, stout as Julius Cæsar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
  130Into a cider press's gripe;
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks:
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
  140Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!'
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
Already staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce an inch before me,
Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!'
—I found the Weser rolling o'er me."

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
"Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles,
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
  150Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town, not even a trace
Of the rats!"—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation, too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
 °158With Claret,° Moselle,° Vin-de-Grave,° Hock°;
And half the money would replenish
 °160Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish°.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
"Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink,
"Our business was done at the river's brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what's dead can't come to life, I think.
So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink[page 9]

From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
  170But as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!"

The Piper's face fell, and he cried,
"No trifling! I can't wait! Beside,
I've promised to visit by dinner-time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in,
 °179For having left, in the Caliph's° kitchen,
  180Of a nest of scorpions no survivor:
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe after another fashion."

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook
Being worse treated than a cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald[page 10]
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst!
  190Blow your pipe there till you burst!"

Once more he stept into the street,
    And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
    And ere he blew three notes (such sweet,
Soft notes as yet musician's cunning
    Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling;
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
  200Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farm-yard, when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls.
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood.
  210Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by,
—Could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the piper's back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council's bosom beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters,
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However, he turned from South to West,
  220And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed:
Great was the joy in every breast.
"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop."
When lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced, and the children followed,
  230And when all were in, to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say all? No! One was lame,[page 12]
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,—
"It's dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
  240For he led us, he said, to a joyous land.
Joining the town, and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new:
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer.
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings;
And just as I became assured,
  250My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before.
And never hear of that country more!"

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
    There came into many a burgher's pate
    A text which says that Heaven's gate
    Opes to the rich at as easy a rate
  260As the needle's eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
    Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,
    And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor,
And Piper and dancers were gone forever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
  270  Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
    "And so long after what happened here
    On the twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six;"
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it the Pied Piper's Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
  280Was sure for the future to lose his labour.[page 14]
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
    To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
    They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away.
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
  290That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

  300So, Willy, let me and you be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially pipers!
And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice,[page 15]
If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!

Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst
Of soul, ye bards!
                   Quoth Bard the first:
   °3"Sir Olaf,° the good knight, did don
His helm, and eke his habergeon ..."
Sir Olaf and his bard——!

   °6"That sin-scathed brow"° (quoth Bard the second),
"That eye wide ope as tho' Fate beckoned
My hero to some steep, beneath
Which precipice smiled tempting Death ..."
   10You too without your host have reckoned!

"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!)
"Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird
Sang to herself at careless play,
And fell into the stream. 'Dismay!
Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.

"Bystanders reason, think of wives[page 16]
And children ere they risk their lives.
Over the balustrade has bounced
A mere instinctive dog, and pounced
   20Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives!

"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight
In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite
A depth of ten feet—twelve, I bet!
Good dog! What, off again? There's yet
Another child to save? All right!

"'How strange we saw no other fall!
It's instinct in the animal.
Good dog! But he's a long while under:
If he got drowned I should not wonder—
   30Strong current, that against the wall!

"'Here lie comes, holds in mouth this time
—What may the thing be? Well, that's prime!
Now, did you ever? Reason reigns
In man alone, since all Tray's pains
Have fished—the child's doll from the slime!'

"And so, amid the laughter gay,
Trotted my hero off,—old Tray,—
Till somebody, prerogatived
With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived,[page 17]
   40His brain would show us, I should say.

"'John, go and catch—or, if needs be,
Purchase that animal for me!
By vivisection, at expense
Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence,
How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"

°1You know, we French stormed Ratisbon°:
    A mile or so away
On a little mound, Napoleon
    Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
    Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
    Oppressive with its mind.

Just as perhaps he mused "My plans 10
    That soar, to earth may fall,
°11Let once my army-leader Lannes°
     Waver at yonder wall"—
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew[page 18]
    A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
    Until he reached the mound,

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
    And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy: °20
     hardly could suspect°—
(So tight he kept his lips compressed.
    Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
    Was all but shot in two.

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
    We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
    And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans30
    Where I, to heart's desire,
Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
    Soared up again like fire.

The chief's eye flashed; but presently
    Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye[page 19]
    When her bruised eaglet breathes.
"You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
    Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,     40
Smiling, the boy fell dead.

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;
"Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;
"Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through;
Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place;
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
10Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right,[page 20]
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near
°14Lokeren°, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear:
°15At Boom°, a great yellow star came out to see;
°16At Düffeld°, 'twas morning as plain as could be;
°17And from Mecheln° church-steeple we heard the half-chime,
So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

°19At Aershot° up leaped of a sudden the sun,
20And against him the cattle stood black every one,
To stare through the mist at us galloping past,
And I saw my stout galloper Roland, at last,
With resolute shoulders, each butting away
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye's black intelligence,—ever that glance
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon
30His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on.

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur![page 21]
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her,
We'll remember at Aix"—for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees,
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank,
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I,
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky;
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh,
40'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,
And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"—and all in a moment his roan
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate,
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall,[page 22]
50Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all,
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear,
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer;
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good,
Till at length, into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is,—friends flocking round
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine,
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,
Which (the burgesses voted by common consent)
60Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent.

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two,
Did the English fight the French,—woe to France!
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue.
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue,[page 23]°5
    Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,°
With the English fleet in view.

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
    First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
        Close on him fled, great and small,10
        Twenty-two good ships in all;
And they signalled to the place
"Help the winners of a race!
    Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick—or, quicker still,
    Here's the English can and will!"

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board;
    "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they:
"Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,
Shall the 'Formidable' here, with her twelve and eighty guns[page 24]
    Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
20Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,
        And with flow at full beside?
        Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide.
    Reach the mooring? Rather say,
While rock stands or water runs,
Not a ship will leave the bay!"

Then was called a council straight.
Brief and bitter the debate:
"Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow,
30For a prize to Plymouth Sound?
Better run the ships aground!"
    (Ended Damfreville his speech).
Not a minute more to wait!
    "Let the Captains all and each
    Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach!
France must undergo her fate.

"Give the word!" But no such word[page 25]
Was ever spoke or heard;
    For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these
40—A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate—first, second, third?
    No such man of mark, and meet
    With his betters to compete!°43
    But a simple Breton sailor pressed° by Tourville for the fleet,
°44A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese.°

And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel:°46
    "Are you mad, you Malouins?° Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
    'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?
50Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for?
         Morn and eve, night and day,
         Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.[page 26]
    Burn, the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
        Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!
Only let me lead the line,
    Have the biggest ship to steer,
    Get this 'Formidable' clear,
Make the others follow mine,
60And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well,
    Right to Solidor past Grève,
        And there lay them safe and sound;
    And if one ship misbehave,
        —Keel so much as grate the ground.
Why, I've nothing but my life,—here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel.

Not a minute more to wait.
"Steer us in then, small and great!
    Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief.
Captains, give the sailor place! 70
    He is Admiral, in brief.

Still the north-wind, by God's grace![page 27]
See the noble fellow's face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound!
    See, safe thro' shoal and rock,
    How they follow in a flock,
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
    Not a spar that comes to grief!
80The peril, see, is past,
All are harboured to the last,
And just as Hervé Kiel hollas "Anchor!"—sure as fate
Up the English come, too late!

So, the storm subsides to calm:
    They see the green trees wave
    On the heights o'erlooking Grève.
Hearts that bled are staunched with balm.
    "Just our rapture to enhance,
    Let the English rake the bay,
90Gnash their teeth and glare askance
    As they cannonade away!
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!"[page 28]
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance!
Out burst all with one accord,
    "This is Paradise for Hell!
        Let France, let France's King
        Thank the man that did the thing!"
What a shout, and all one word,
        "Hervé Riel!"
100As he stepped in front once more,
    Not a symptom of surprise
    In the frank blue Breton eyes,
Just the same man as before.

Then said Damfreville, "My friend,
I must speak out at the end,
    Tho' I find the speaking hard.
Praise is deeper than the lips:
You have saved the King his ships,
    You must name your own reward,
110'Faith our sun was near eclipse!
Demand whate'er you will,
France remains your debtor still.
Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville."

Then a beam of fun outbroke[page 29]
On the bearded mouth that spoke,
As the honest heart laughed through
Those frank eyes of Breton blue:
"Since I needs must say my say,
    Since on board the duty's done, 120
    And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?—
Since 'tis ask and have, I may—
Since the others go ashore—
Come! A good whole holiday!
    Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!"
That he asked and that he got,—nothing more.

Name and deed alike are lost:
Not a pillar nor a post
    In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
Not a head in white and black
130On a single fishing smack,
In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack
    All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.
Go to Paris: rank on rank.
    Search, the heroes flung pell-mell[page 30]
°135On the Louvre,° face and flank!
    You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel.
So, for better and for worse,
Hervé Riel, accept my verse!
In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more
140Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore!

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock!
Gods of my birthplace, dæmons and heroes, honour to all!
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal in praise
°4—Ay, with Zeus° the Defender, with Her° of the ægis and spear!
°5Also, ye of the bow and the buskin,° praised be your peer,
Now, henceforth, and forever,—O latest to whom I upraise[page 31]
Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock!
°8Present to help, potent to save, Pan°—patron I call!

°9Archons° of Athens, topped by the tettix,° see, I return!
10See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that speaks!
Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, Athens and you,
"Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid!
°13Persia has come,° we are here, where is She?" Your command I obeyed,
Ran and raced: like stubble, some field which a fire runs through,
Was the space between city and city: two days, two nights did I burn
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks.

Into their midst I broke: breath served but for "Persia has come!
°18Persia bids Athens proffer slaves'-tribute, water and earth°;[page 32]
°19Razed to the ground is Eretria.°—but Athens? shall Athens, sink,
°20Drop into dust and die—the flower of Hellas° utterly die,
°21Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, the stander-by°?
Answer me quick,—what help, what hand do you stretch o'er destruction's brink?
How,—when? No care for my limbs!—there's lightning in all and some—
Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it birth!"

O my Athens—Sparta love thee? did Sparta respond?
Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust,
Malice,—each eye of her gave me its glitter of gratified hate!
Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses. I stood
Quivering,—the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an inch from dry wood:
30"Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they debate?
Thunder, thou Zeus! Athene, are Spartans a quarry beyond[page 33]
°32Swing of thy spear? Phoibos° and Artemis,° clang them 'Ye must'!"

°33No bolt launched from Olumpos°! Lo, their answer at last!
"Has Persia come,—does Athens ask aid,—may Sparta befriend?
Nowise precipitate judgment—too weighty the issue at stake!
Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to the Gods!
Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds
In your favour, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is unable to take
Full-circle her state in the sky!' Already she rounds to it fast:
40Athens must wait, patient as we—who judgment suspend."

Athens,—except for that sparkle,—thy name, I had mouldered to ash!
That sent a blaze thro' my blood; off, off and away was I back,[page 34]
—Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false and the vile!
Yet "O Gods of my land!" I cried, as each hillock and plain,
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them again,
"Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honours we paid you erewhile?
Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation! Too rash
Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack!

"Oak and olive and bay,—I bid you cease to en-wreathe
50Brows made bold by your leaf! Fade at the Persian's foot,
You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn a slave!
°52Rather I hail thee, Parnes,°—trust to thy wild waste tract!
Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain! What matter if slacked
My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave[page 35]
No deity deigns to drape with verdure?—at least I can breathe,
Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the mute!"

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge;
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a bar
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way.
60Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across:
"Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse?
°62Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos,° thus I obey—
Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge
Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came on, of wonders that are?

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he—majestical Pan!
Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned his hoof;[page 36]
All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly—the curl
Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I saw.
70"Halt, Pheidippides!"—halt I did, my brain of a whirl:
"Hither to me! Why pale in my presence?"! he gracious began:
"How is it,—Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof?

"Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no feast!
Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more helpful of old?
Ay, and still, and forever her friend! Test Pan, trust me!
Go bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have faith
In the temples and tombs! Go, say to Athens, 'The Goat-God saith:
When Persia—so much as strews not the soil—Is cast in the sea,
Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most and least,[page 37]
80Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the free and the bold!'

"Say Pan saith: 'Let this, foreshowing the place, be the pledge!'"
(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear
—Fennel,—I grasped it a-tremble with dew—whatever it bode),
"While, as for thee..." But enough! He was gone. If I ran hitherto—
Be sure that the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but flew.
Parnes to Athens—earth no more, the air was my road;
Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the razor's edge!
Pan for Athens, Pan for me! I too have a guerdon rare!

°89Then spoke Miltiades.° "And thee, best runner of Greece,
90Whose limbs did duty indeed,—what gift is promised thyself?
Tell it us straightway,—Athens the mother demands of her son!"[page 38]
Rosily blushed the youth: he paused: but, lifting at length
His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength
Into the utterance—"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done
Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release
From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!'

"I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to my mind!
Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel may grow,—
Pound—Pan helping us—Persia to dust, and, under the deep,
100Whelm her away forever; and then,—no Athens to save,—
Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave,—
Hie to my house and home: and, when my children shall creep
Close to my knees,—recount how the God was awful yet kind,[page 39]
Promised their sire reward to the full—rewarding him—so!"

Unforeseeing one! Yes, he fought on the Marathon day:
°106So, when Persia was dust, all cried "To Akropolis°!
Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due!
'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung down his shield,
°109Ran like fire once more: and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field°
110And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through,
Till in he broke: "Rejoice, we conquer!" Like wine thro' clay,
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died—the bliss!

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of salute
Is still "Rejoice!"—his word which brought rejoicing indeed.
So is Pheidippides happy forever,—the noble strong man[page 40]
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom a god loved so well,
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began,
So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter be mute:
120"Athens is saved!"—Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed.

All that I know
    Of a certain star
Is, it can throw °4
    (Like the angled spar°)
Now a dart of red,
    Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
    They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!

10Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:[page 41]
°11They must solace themselves with the Saturn° above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
    Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
    She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
    Little has yet been changed, I think:
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
    Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died! 10
    Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name;
It was not her time to love; beside,
    Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
    And now was quiet, now astir,
Till God's hand beckoned unawares,—
    And the sweet white brow is all of her.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?[page 42]
    What, your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope, 20
    Made you of spirit, fire and dew—
And just because I was thrice as old
    And our paths in the world diverged so wide,
Each was naught to each, must I be told?
    We were fellow mortals, naught beside?

No, indeed! for God above
    Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love:
    I claim you still, for my own love's sake!
Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 30
    Thro' worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
Much is to learn, much, to forget
    Ere the time be come for taking you.

But the time will come, at last it will,
    When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say)
In the lower earth in the years long still,
    That body and soul so pure and gay?
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,
    And your mouth of your own geranium's red—
And what would you do with me, in fine, 40
    In the new life come in the old one's stead.

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,[page 43]
    Given up myself so many times,
Gained me the gains of various men,
    Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes;
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope,
    Either I missed or itself missed me:
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope!
    What is the issue? let us see!

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! 50
    My heart seemed full as it could hold;
There was place and to spare for the frank young smile,
    And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold.
So hush,—I will give you this leaf to keep:
    See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
    You will wake, and remember, and understand.

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
          Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
          Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop[page 44]
          As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
          (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince 10
          Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
          Peace or war.

Now,—the country does not even boast a tree,
          As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
          From the hills
Intersect and give a name to (else they run
          Into one),
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires 20
          Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
          Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
          Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
          Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'erspreads
          And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,[page 45]30
          Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
          Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
          Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
          Bought and sold.

Now,—the single little turret that remains
          On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd 40
          Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
          Thro' the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
          Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
          As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
          Viewed the games.

And I know—while thus the quiet-coloured eve 50
          Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
          In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished gray[page 46]
          Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
          Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
          For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb 60
          Till I come,

But he looked upon the city, every side,
          Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
          Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,
          All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
          Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace 70
          Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
          Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
          South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high[page 47]
          As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
          Gold, of course.
Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! 80
          Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin!
          Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
          Love is best.

This is a spray the bird clung to,
    Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
    Fit for her nest and her treasure.
    Oh, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to,—
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

This is a heart the Queen leant on,
    Thrilled in a minute erratic,
10Ere the true bosom she bent on, °11
    Meet for love's regal dalmatic°.[page 48]
    Oh, what a fancy ecstatic
Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on—
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!

All I can say is—I saw it!
The room was as bare as your hand.
I locked in the swarth little lady,—I swear,
From the head to the foot of her—well, quite as bare!
°5"No Nautch° shall cheat me," said I, "taking my stand
At this bolt which I draw!" And this bolt—I withdraw it,
And there laughs the lady, not bare, but embowered
With—who knows what verdure, o'erfruited, o'erflowered?
Impossible! Only—I saw it!

10All I can sing is—I feel it!
This life was as blank as that room;
I let you pass in here. Precaution, indeed?
Walls, ceiling, and floor,—not a chance for a weed!
Wide opens the entrance: where's cold, now, where's gloom?
No May to sow seed here, no June to reveal it,[page 49]
Behold you enshrined in these blooms of your bringing,
These fruits of your bearing—nay, birds of your winging!
A fairy-tale! Only—I feel it!

Such a starved bank of moss
    Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
    Violets were born!

Sky—what a scowl of cloud
    Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
    Splendid, a star!

World—how it walled about
10    Life with disgrace,
Till God's own smile came out:
    That was thy face!

O the old wall here! How I could pass
    Life in a long midsummer day,
My feet confined to a plot of grass,
    My eyes from a wall not once away!

And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe
    Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green:
Its bald red bricks draped, nothing loath,
    In lappets of tangle they laugh between.

Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
10    Why tremble the sprays? What life o'erbrims
The body,—the house no eye can probe,—
    Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

And there again! But my heart may guess
    Who tripped behind; and she sang, perhaps:
So the old wall throbbed, and it's life's excess
    Died out and away in the leafy wraps.

Wall upon wall are between us: life
    And song should away from heart to heart!
I—prison-bird, with a ruddy strife
20    At breast, and a lip whence storm-notes start—

Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
[page 51]     That's spirit: tho' cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
    Of the rueful neighbours, and—forth to thee!

What is he buzzing in my ears?
    "Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
    Ah, reverend sir, not I!

What I viewed there once, what I view again
     Where the physic bottles stand
On the table's edge,—is a suburb lane,
    With a wall to my bedside hand.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
10    From a house you could descry
O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
    Or green to a healthy eye?

To mine, it serves for the old June weather
    Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"
[page 52]     Is the house o'er-topping all.

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
    There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it's improper,
20    My poor mind's out of tune.

Only, there was a way ... you crept
    Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
    They styled their house "The Lodge."

What right had a lounger up their lane?
    But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall's help,—their eyes might strain
    And stretch themselves to Oes,

Yet never catch her and me together,
30    As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"
    And stole from stair to stair

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,
    We loved, sir—used to meet;
How sad and bad and mad it was—
    But then, how it was sweet!

Let's contend no more, Love,
    Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
    —Only sleep!

What so wild as words are?
    I and thou
In debate, as birds are,
    Hawk on bough!

See the creature stalking
10    While we speak!
Hush and hide the talking,
    Cheek on cheek.

What so false as truth is,
    False to thee?
Where the serpent's tooth is,
    Shun the tree—

Where the apple reddens,
    Never pry—
Lest we lose our Edens,
20    Eve and I.

Be a god and hold me
[page 54]     With a charm!
Be a man and fold me
    With thine arm!

Teach me, only teach, Love!
    As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love,
    Think thy thought—

Meet, if thou require it,
30    Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
    In thy hands.

That shall be to-morrow,
    Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
    Out of sight:

—Must a little weep, Love,
    (Foolish me!)
And so fall asleep, Love,
40    Loved by thee.

That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
        And the blue eye
        Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!

To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
        And infold you,
        Ay, and hold you,
And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!

You like us for a glance, you know—
10        For a word's sake
        Or a sword's sake:
All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.

And in turn we make you ours, we say—
        You and youth too,
        Eyes and mouth too,
All the face composed of flowers, we say.

All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet—
        Sing and say for,
        Watch and pray for,
20Keep a secret or go boast of, Sweet!

But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet,[page 56]
        Tho' we prayed you,
        Paid you, brayed you
In a mortar—for you could not, Sweet!

So, we leave the sweet face fondly there,
        Be its beauty
        Its sole duty!
Let all hope of grace beyond, lie there!

And while the face lies quiet there,
30        Who shall wonder
        That I ponder
A conclusion? I will try it there.

As,—why must one, for the love foregone
        Scout mere liking?
        Thunder-striking
Earth,—the heaven, we looked above for, gone!

Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
        Love with liking?
        Crush the fly-king
40In his gauze, because no honey-bee?

May not liking be so simple-sweet,[page 57]
        If love grew there
        'Twould undo there
All that breaks the cheek to dimples sweet?

Is the creature too imperfect, say?
        Would you mend it
        And so end it?
Since not all addition perfects aye!

Or is it of its kind, perhaps,
50        Just perfection—
        Whence, rejection
Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps?

Shall we burn up, tread that face at once
        Into tinder,
        And so hinder
Sparks from kindling all the place at once?

Or else kiss away one's soul on her?
        Your love-fancies!
        —A sick man sees
60Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!

Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose,—[page 58]
        Plucks a mould-flower
        For his gold flower,
Uses fine things that efface the rose.

Rosy rubies make its cup more rose.
        Precious metals
        Ape the petals,—
Last, some old king locks it up, morose!

Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
70        Leave it, rather.
        Must you gather?
Smell, kiss, wear it—at last, throw away.

It once might have been, once only:
    We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
    I, a lone she-bird of his feather.

Your trade was with sticks and clay,
    You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished,
Then laughed "They will see some day,
    °8Smith made, and Gibson° demolished."

My business was song, song, song;[page 59]
10    I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered,
"Kate Brown's on the boards ere long,
    °12And Grisi's° existence embittered!"

I earned no more by a warble
    Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marble,
    I needed a music-master.

We studied hard in our styles,
    °18Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,°
For air, looked out on the tiles,
20    For fun, watched each other's windows.

You lounged, like a boy of the South,
    Cap and blouse—nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you got it, rubbing your mouth
    With fingers the clay adhered to.

And I—soon managed to find
    Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind
    And be safe in my corset-lacing.

No harm! It was not my fault
30    If you never turned your eye's tail up
As I shook upon E in alt,[page 60]
    Or ran the chromatic scale up:

For spring bade the sparrows pair.
    And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street looked rare
    With bulrush and watercresses.

Why did not you pinch a flower
    In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power
40    Of thanks in a look or sing it?

I did look, sharp as a lynx,
    (And yet the memory rankles)
When models arrived, some minx
    Tripped up stairs, she and her ankles.

But I think I gave you as good!
    "That foreign fellow,—who can know
How she pays, in a playful mood,
    For his tuning her that piano?"

Could you say so, and never say
50    "Suppose we join hands and fortunes,
And I fetch her from over the way,
    Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?"

No, no: you would not be rash,[page 61]
    Nor I rasher and something over;
You've to settle yet Gibson's hash,
    And Grisi yet lives in clover.

But you meet the Prince at the Board,
    °58I'm queen myself at bals-parés,°
I've married a rich old lord,
60    And you're dubbed knight and an R.A.

Each life unfulfilled, you see;
    It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
    Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy

And nobody calls you a dunce,
    And people suppose me clever;
This could but have happened once,
    And we missed it, lost it forever.

What a pretty tale you told me
    Once upon a time
—Said you found it somewhere (scold me!)[page 62]
    Was it prose or was it rhyme,
Greek or Latin? Greek, you said,
While your shoulder propped my head.

Anyhow there's no forgetting
    This much if no more,
That a poet (pray, no petting!)
10    Yes, a bard, sir, famed of yore,
Went where suchlike used to go,
Singing for a prize, you know.

Well, he had to sing, nor merely
    Sing but play the lyre;
Playing was important clearly
    Quite as singing: I desire,
Sir, you keep the fact in mind
For a purpose that's behind.

There stood he, while deep attention
20    Held the judges round,
—Judges able, I should mention,
    To detect the slightest sound
Sung or played amiss: such ears
Had old judges, it appears!

None the less he sang out boldly,[page 63]
    Played in time and tune,
Till the judges, weighing coldly
    Each note's worth, seemed, late or soon,
Sure to smile "In vain one tries
30Picking faults out: take the prize!"

When, a mischief! Were they seven
    Strings the lyre possessed?
Oh, and afterwards eleven,
    Thank you! Well, sir,—who had guessed
Such ill luck in store?—it happed
One of those same seven strings snapped.

All was lost, then! No! a cricket
    (What "cicada"? Pooh!)
—Some mad thing that left its thicket
40    For mere love of music—flew
With its little heart on fire,
Lighted on the crippled lyre.

So that when (Ah joy!) our singer
    For his truant string
Feels with disconcerted finger,
    What does cricket else but fling
Fiery heart forth, sound the note[page 64]
Wanted by the throbbing throat?

Ay and, ever to the ending,
50    Cricket chirps at need,
Executes the hand's intending,
    Promptly, perfectly,—indeed
Saves the singer from defeat
With her chirrup low and sweet.

Till, at ending, all the judges
    Cry with one assent
"Take the prize—a prize who grudges
    Such a voice and instrument?
Why, we took your lyre for harp,
60So it shrilled us forth F sharp!"

Did the conqueror spurn the creature
    Once its service done?
That's no such uncommon feature
    In the case when Music's son
°65Finds his Lotte's° power too spent
For aiding soul development.

No! This other, on returning
    Homeward, prize in hand,
Satisfied his bosom's yearning:[page 65]
70    (Sir, I hope you understand!)
—Said "Some record there must be
Of this cricket's help to me!"

So, he made himself a statue:
    Marble stood, life size;
On the lyre, he pointed at you,
    Perched his partner in the prize;
Never more apart you found
Her, he throned, from him, she crowned.

That's the tale: its application?
80    Somebody I know
Hopes one day for reputation
        Thro' his poetry that's—Oh,
All so learned and so wise
And deserving of a prize!

If he gains one, will some ticket
        When his statue's built,
Tell the gazer "'Twas a cricket
        Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt
Sweet and low, when strength usurped
90Softness' place i' the scale, she chirped?

"For as victory was nighest,[page 66]
        While I sang and played,—
With my lyre at lowest, highest,
        Right alike,—one string that made
'Love' sound soft was snapt in twain
Never to be heard again,—

"Had not a kind cricket fluttered,
        Perched upon the place
Vacant left, and duly uttered
100        'Love, Love, Love,' whene'er the bass
Asked the treble to atone
For its somewhat sombre drone."

But you don't know music! Wherefore
        Keep on casting pearls
To a—poet? All I care for
        Is—to tell him that a girl's
"Love" comes aptly in when gruff
Grows his singing, (There, enough!)

°1Kentish Sir Byng° stood for his King,
°2Bidding the crop-headed° Parliament swing:
And, pressing a troop unable to stoop
And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop,
Marched them along, fifty score strong,
Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

°7God for King Charles!° Pym° and such carles
To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!
Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup,
10Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup
Till you're—

CHORUS.—Marching along, fifty score strong,
                 Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

°13Hampden° to hell, and his obsequies knell.
°14Serve Hazelrig,° Fiennes,° and young Harry° as well!
°15England, good cheer! Rupert° is near!
Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here,

CHO.—Marching along, fifty score strong,
            Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

20Then, God for King Charles! Pym and his snarls[page 68]
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles!
Hold by the right, you double your might;
°23So, onward to Nottingham,° fresh for the fight,

CHO.—March we along, fifty score strong,
            Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!

King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse; here's, in hell's despite now,
King Charles!

Who gave me the goods that went since?
Who raised me the house that sank once?
Who helped me to gold I spent since?
Who found me in wine you drank once?

CHO.—King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
10            King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
            Give a rouse; here's, in hell's despite now,
            King Charles!

To whom used my boy George quaff else,
By the old fool's side that begot him?
For whom did he cheer and laugh else,
°16While Noll's° damned troopers shot him?

CHO.—King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
            King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
            Give a rouse: here's, in hell's despite now,
20            King Charles!

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!
Rescue my castle before the hot day
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray,

CHO.—Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say;
Many's the friend there, will listen and pray
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay—

CHO.—Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay,
10Flouts castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array:
Who laughs, "Good fellows ere this, by my fay,

CHO.—Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Who? My wife Gertrude; that, honest and gay,
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, "Nay!
I've better counsellors; what counsel they?

CHO.— Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!"

Nobly, nobly, Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
°3Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar° lay;

°4In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar° grand and gray;[page 71]
"Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God and pray,
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine,—wonder, wealth, and—how far above them—
        Truth, that's brighter than gem,
        Trust, that's purer than pearl,—
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe,—all were for me
        In the kiss of one girl.

If one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pure gold,
Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!
No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft
Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's
Burden of honey-colored buds to kiss
And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.
Then her little neck, three fingers might surround,
How it should waver on the pale gold ground
Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb:
But these are only massed there, I should think,
Waiting to see some wonder momently
Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky
(That's the pale ground you'd see this sweet face by),
All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

Day! Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cup's brim.
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
10Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

      All service ranks the same with God:
      If now, as formerly He trod
      Paradise, His presence fills
      Our earth, each only as God wills
      Can work—God's puppets, best and worst,
      Are we: there is no last nor first.

            The year's at the spring
[page 74] 20            And day's at the morn:
            Morning's at seven;
            The hillside's dew-pearled;
            The lark's on the wing;
            The snail's on the thorn:
            God's in His heaven—
            All's right with the world!

Give her but a least excuse to love me!
    When—where—
How—can this arm establish her above me,
30    If fortune fixed her as my lady there,
There already, to eternally reprove me?
    ("Hist!"—said Kate the queen;
But "Oh," cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
    "'Tis only a page that carols unseen,
Crumbling your hounds their messes!")

Is she wronged?—To the rescue of her honour,
    My heart!
Is she poor?—What costs it to be styled a donor?
    Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.
40But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her![page 75]
    ("Nay, list!"—bade Kate the queen;
And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,
    "'Tis only a page that carols unseen,
Fitting your hawks their jesses!")

Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat—
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed;
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
10Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
°13Shakespeare° was of us, Milton° was for us,
°14Burns,° Shelley,° were with us,—they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,[page 76]
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

We shall march prospering—not through his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre:
Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence,
20Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,
One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain,
Forced praise on our part—the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him—strike gallantly,
30Menace our heart ere we master his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

No, for I'll save it! Seven years since
    I passed through Paris, stopped a day
°3To see the baptism of your Prince,°
    Saw, made my bow, and went my way:
Walking the heat and headache off,
    I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
°7Thought of the Congress,° Gortschakoff,°
°8    Cavour's° appeal and Buol's° replies,
    So sauntered till—what met my eyes?

10Only the Doric little Morgue!
    The dead-house where you show your drowned:
°12Petrarch's Vaucluse° makes proud the Sorgue,°
    Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.
°14One pays one's debt° in such a case;
    I plucked up heart and entered,—stalked,
Keeping a tolerable face
    Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked:
    Let them! No Briton's to be balked!

First came the silent gazers; next,[page 78]
20    A screen of glass, we're thankful for;
Last, the sight's self, the sermon's text,
     The three men who did most abhor
Their life in Paris yesterday,
    So killed themselves: and now, enthroned
Each on his copper couch, they lay
    Fronting me, waiting to be owned.
    I thought, and think, their sin's atoned.

Poor men, God made, and all for that!
    The reverence struck me; o'er each head
30Religiously was hung its hat,
    Each coat dripped by the owner's bed,
Sacred from touch: each had his berth,
    His bounds, his proper place of rest,
Who last night tenanted on earth
    Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast,—
    Unless the plain asphalt seemed best.

How did it happen, my poor boy?
    You wanted to be Buonaparte
°39And have the Tuileries° for toy,
40    And could not, so it broke your heart?
You, old one by his side, I judge,[page 79]
    Were, red as blood, a socialist,
A leveller! Does the Empire grudge
    You've gained what no Republic missed?
    Be quiet, and unclench your fist!

And this—why, he was red in vain,
°47    Or black,—poor fellow that is blue°!
What fancy was it, turned your brain?
    Oh, women were the prize for you!
50Money gets women, cards and dice
    Get money, and ill-luck gets just
The copper couch and one clear nice
    Cool squirt of water o'er your bust,
    The right thing to extinguish lust!

It's wiser being good than bad;
    It's safer being meek than fierce:
It's fitter being sane than mad.
    My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
60    That, after Last, returns the First,
Tho' a wide compass round be fetched;
    That what began best, can't end worst,
    Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst

Here's my case. Of old I used to love him.
    This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
    Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.

°5Loved I not his letters° full of beauty?
    Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty,
    Present, he would find me at his side.

Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
10    Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
    What of that? My turn must come some day.

"Some day" proving—no day! Here's the puzzle.
    Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He's so busied! If I could but muzzle
    People's foolish mouths that give me pain!

"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?
    Ask the experts!—How they shake the head
O'er these characters, your friend's inditing—
°20    Call them forgery from A to Z°!

"Actions? Where's your certain proof" (they bother)[page 81]
    "He, of all you find so great and good,
He, he only, claims this, that, the other
    Action—claimed by men, a multitude?"

I can simply wish I might refute you,
    Wish my friend would,—by a word, a wink,—
Bid me stop that foolish mouth,—you brute you!
    He keeps absent,—why, I cannot think.

Never mind! Tho' foolishness may flout me.
30    One thing's sure enough; 'tis neither frost,
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
    Thanks for truth—tho' falsehood, gained—tho' lost.

All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,
    For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
Thro' and thro' me as I thought, "The gladlier
    Lives my friend because I love him still!"

Ah, but there's a menace some one utters!
    "What and if your friend at home play tricks?
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters?
40    Mean your eyes should pierce thro' solid bricks?

'What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy?
    Lay on you the blame that bricks—conceal?
Say 'At least I saw who did not see me,[page 82]
    Does see now, and presently shall feel'?"

"Why, that makes your friend a monster!" say you;
    "Had his house no window? At first nod,
Would you not have hailed him?" Hush, I pray you!
    What if this friend happen to be—God?

Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.

I struck him, he grovelled of course—
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate;
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
10As his lot might be worse.

"Were the object less mean? would he stand
At the swing of my hand!
For obscurity helps him, and blots[page 83]
The hole where he squats."
So, I set my five wits on the stretch.
To inveigle the wretch.
All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw,
Still he couched there perdue;
I tempted his blood and his flesh,
20Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth:
Still he kept to his filth.

Had he kith now or kin, were access
To his heart, did I press:
Just a son or a mother to seize!
No such booty as these.
Were it simply a friend to pursue
'Mid my million or two,
Who could pay me, in person or pelf,
30What he owes me himself!
No: I could not but smile thro' my chafe:
For the fellow lay safe
As his mates do, the midge and the nit,
—Thro' minuteness, to wit.

Then a humour more great took its place
At the thought of his face:
The droop, the low cares of the mouth,[page 84]
The trouble uncouth
'Twixt the brows, all that air one is fain
40To put out of its pain,
And, "no!" I admonished myself,
"Is one mocked by an elf.
Is one baffled by toad or by rat?
°44The gravamen's° in that!
How the lion, who crouches to suit
His back to my foot,
Would admire that I stand in debate!
But the small turns the great
If it vexes you,—that is the thing!
50Toad or rat vex the king?
Tho' I waste half my realm to unearth
Toad or rat, 'tis well worth!"

So, I soberly laid my last plan
To extinguish the man.
Round his creep-hole, with never a break
Ran my fires for his sake;
Overhead, did my thunder combine
With my under-ground mine:
Till I looked from my labour content
60To enjoy the event.

When sudden ... how think ye, the end?[page 85]
Did I say "without friend?"
Say rather, from marge to blue marge
The whole sky grew his targe
With the sun's self for visible boss,
While an Arm ran across
Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast!
Where the wretch was safe prest!
°69 Do you see! Just my vengeance complete,
70The man sprang to his feet,
Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed!
—So, I was afraid!

It was roses, roses, all the way,
    With myrtle mixed in my path like mad;
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
    The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,
    The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels— [page 86]
    But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
10They had answered "And afterward, what else?"

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
    To give it my loving friends to keep!
Naught man could do, have I left undone:
    And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

There's nobody on the house-tops now—
    Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
    At the Shambles' Gate—or, better yet,
20By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
    A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
    For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.

Thus I entered, and thus I go!
    In triumphs, people have dropped down dead,
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
    Me? "—God might question; now instead,
30'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

Morning, evening, noon, and night,
"Praise God!" sang Theocrite.

Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.

Hard he laboured, long and well;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.

But ever, at each period,
He stopped and sang, "Praise God!"

Then back again his curls he threw,
10And cheerful turned to work anew.

Said Blaise, the listening monk, "Well done;
I doubt not thou art heard, my son:

"As well as if thy voice to-day
Were praising God, the Pope's great way.

"This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome
Praises God from Peter's dome."

Said Theocrite, "Would God that I[page 88]
Might praise Him that great way, and die!"

Night passed, day shone,
20And Theocrite was gone.

With God a day endures alway,
A thousand years are but a day.

God said in heaven, "Nor day nor night
°24 Now brings the voice of my delight."°

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth,
Spread his wings and sank to earth;

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell,
Lived there, and played the craftsman well;

And morning, evening, noon, and night,
30Praised God in place of Theocrite.

And from a boy, to youth he grew:
The man put off the stripling's hue:

The man matured and fell away
Into the season of decay:

And ever o'er the trade he bent,[page 89]
And ever lived on earth content.

(He did God's will; to him, all one
If on the earth or in the sun.)

God said, "A praise is in mine ear;
40There is no doubt in it, no fear:

"So sing old worlds, and so
New worlds that from my footstool go.

"Clearer loves sound other ways:
I miss my little human praise."

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell
The flesh disguise, remained the cell.

'Twas Easter day: he flew to Rome,
And paused above Saint Peter's dome.

In the tiring-room close by
50The great outer gallery,

With his holy vestments dight,
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite:

And all his past career[page 90]
Came back upon him clear,

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade,
Till on his life the sickness weighed;

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer:

And rising from the sickness drear,
60He grew a priest, and now stood here.

To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned.

"I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell,
And set thee here; I did not well.

"Vainly I left my angel-sphere,
Vain was thy dream of many a year,

"Thy voice's praise seemed weak; it dropped—
Creation's chorus stopped!

"Go back and praise again
70The early way, while I remain.

"With that weak voice of our disdain,[page 91]
Take up creation's pausing strain.

"Back to the cell and poor employ:
Resume the craftsman and the boy!"

Theocrite grew old at home;
A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome.

One vanished as the other died:
They sought God side by side.

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
    And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
    How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that,
    And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at—
    My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor with a name of its own[page 92]
10    And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
    'Mid the blank miles round about.

For there I picked upon the heather
    And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
    Well, I forget the rest.

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
    All that I am now, all I hope to be,—
    Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
    Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
    These shall I bid men—each in his degree
Also God-guided—bear, and gayly too?
    But little do or can the best of us: [page 93]
10That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
    Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
His fellow shall continue bound? not I,
    Who live, love, labour freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."

Fear death? to feel the fog in my throat,
    The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
    I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
    The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
    Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
10    And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
    The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,
    The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,[page 94]
    And bade me creep past,
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
    The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
20    Of pain, darkness, and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
    The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
    Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
    Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
    And with God be the rest!

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
    When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
Low he lies who once so loved you whom you loved so,
                             —Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken![page 95]
    What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
                 10            —Being—who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
    Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
    Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
                             Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
    Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
    "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
                 20             There as here!"

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees,
        (If our loves remain)
        In an English lane,
By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies.
Hark, those two in the hazel coppice—
A boy and a girl, if the good fates please,
        Making love, say,—
        The happier they!
Draw yourself up from the light of the moon.
10And let them pass, as they will too soon,
        With the beanflower's boon,
        And the blackbird's tune,
        And May, and June!

What I love best in all the world
Is a castle, precipice-encurled,
In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine.
Or look for me, old fellow of mine,
(If I get my head from out the mouth
O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands,
20And come again to the land of lands)—
In a sea-side house to the farther South,
Where the baked cicala dies of drouth,
And one sharp tree—'tis a cypress—stands,[page 97]
By the many hundred years red-rusted,
Bough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted,
My sentinel to guard the sands
To the water's edge. For, what expands
Before the house, but the great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break?
30While, in the house, forever crumbles
Some fragment of the frescoed walls,
From blisters where a scorpion sprawls.
A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles
Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons,
And says there's news to-day—the king
Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing,
Goes with his Bourbon arm in a sling:
—She hopes they have not caught the felons.
Italy, my Italy!
40Queen Mary's saying serves for me—
        (When fortune's malice
        Lost her, Calais)
Open my heart and you will see
Graved inside of it, "Italy."
Such lovers old are I and she:
So it always was, so shall ever be!

That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds thro' the country-side,
Breathed hot an instant on my trace,—
I made, six days, a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
°8 Where I and Charles,° when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
10Bright creeping thro' the moss they love:
—How long it seems since Charles was lost!
Six days the soldiers crossed, and crossed
The country in my very sight;
And when that peril ceased at night,
The sky broke out in red dismay
With signal-fires. Well, there I lay
Close covered o'er in my recess,
Up to the neck in ferns and cress.
°19 Thinking on Metternich,° our friend,
20And Charles's miserable end,
And much beside, two days; the third,
Hunger o'ercame me when I heard
The peasants from the village go[page 99]
To work among the maize: you know,
°25 With us in Lombardy,° they bring
Provisions packed on mules, a string,
With little bells that cheer their task,
And casks, and boughs on every cask
To keep the sun's heat from the wine;
30These I let pass in jingling line;
And, close on them, dear noisy crew,
The peasants from the village, too;
For at the very rear would troop
Their wives and sisters in a group
To help, I knew. When these had passed,
I threw my glove to strike the last,
Taking the chance: she did not start,
Much less cry out, but stooped apart,
One instant rapidly glanced round,
40And saw me beckon from the ground.
A wild bush grows and hides my crypt;
She picked my glove up while she stripped
A branch off, then rejoined the rest
With that; my glove lay in her breast:
Then I drew breath; they disappeared:
It was for Italy I feared.

    An hour, and she returned alone[page 100]
Exactly where my glove was thrown.
Meanwhile came many thoughts: on me
50Rested the hopes of Italy.
I had devised a certain tale
Which, when 'twas told her, could not fail
Persuade a peasant of its truth;
I meant to call a freak of youth
This hiding, and give hopes of pay,
And no temptation to betray.
But when I saw that woman's face,
Its calm simplicity of grace,
Our Italy's own attitude
60In which she walked thus far, and stood,
Planting each naked foot so firm,
To crush the snake and spare the worm—
At first sight of her eyes, I said,
"I am that man upon whose head
They fix the price, because I hate
The Austrians over us; the State
Will give you gold—oh, gold so much!—
If you betray me to their clutch.
And be your death, for aught I know,
70If once they find you saved their foe.
Now, you must bring me food and drink,
And also paper, pen and ink,[page 101]
And carry safe what I shall write
To Padua, which you'll reach at night
Before the duomo shuts; go in,
°76 And wait till Tenebrae° begin;
Walk to the third confessional,
Between the pillar and the wall,
And kneeling whisper, Whence comes peace?
80Say it a second time, then cease;
And if the voice inside returns,
From Christ and Freedom; what concerns
The cause of Peace?—for answer, slip
My letter where you placed your lip;
Then come back happy we have done
Our mother service—I, the son,
As you the daughter of our land!"

    Three mornings more, she took her stand
In the same place, with the same eyes:
90I was no surer of sun-rise
Than of her coming. We conferred
Of her own prospects, and I heard
She had a lover—stout and tall,
She said—then let her eyelids fall,
"He could do much"—as if some doubt
Entered her heart,—then, passing out,[page 102]
"She could not speak for others, who
Had other thoughts; herself she knew;"
And so she brought me drink and food.
100After four days, the scouts pursued
Another path; at last arrived
The help my Paduan friends contrived
To furnish me: she brought the news.
For the first time I could not choose
But kiss her hand, and lay my own
Upon her head—"This faith was shown
To Italy, our mother; she
Uses my hand and blesses thee."
She followed down to the sea-shore;
110I left and never saw her more.

    How very long since I have thought
Concerning—much less wished for—aught
Beside the good of Italy,
For which I live and mean to die!
I never was in love; and since
Charles proved false, what shall now convince
My inmost heart I have a friend?
However, if I pleased to spend
Real wishes on myself—say, three—
120I know at least what one should be.[page 103]
I would grasp Metternich until
I felt his red wet throat distil
In blood thro' these two hands. And next,
—Nor much for that am I perplexed—
Charles, perjured traitor, for his part,
Should die slow of a broken heart
Under his new employers. Last
—Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast
Do I grow old and out of strength.
130If I resolved to seek at length
My father's house again, how scared
They all would look, and unprepared!
My brothers live in Austria's pay
—Disowned me long ago, men say;
And all my early mates who used
To praise me so—perhaps induced
More than one early step of mine—
Are turning wise: while some opine
"Freedom grows license," some suspect
140"Haste breeds delay," and recollect
They always said, such premature
Beginnings never could endure!
So, with a sullen "All's for best,"
The land seems settling to its rest.
I think then, I should wish to stand[page 104]
This evening in that dear, lost land,
Over the sea the thousand miles,
And know if yet that woman smiles
With the calm smile; some little farm
150She lives in there, no doubt: what harm
If I sat on the door-side bench,
And while her spindle made a trench
Fantastically in the dust,
Inquired of all her fortunes—just
Her children's ages and their names,
And what may be the husband's aims
For each of them. I'd talk this out,
And sit there, for an hour about,
Then kiss her hand once more, and lay
160Mine on her—head, and go my way.

    So much for idle wishing—how
It steals the time! To business now.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
°3 That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's° hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design: for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
10The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff
20Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had[page 106]
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
30Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let
40Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping: and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;[page 107]
°46 Then all smiles stopped together.° There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
50Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
°56 Which Claus of Innsbruck° cast in bronze for me!

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews—sons mine ... ah God, I know not! Well,
She, men would have to be your mother once,
°5 Old Gandolf° envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since.[page 108]
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.
10Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
—Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
20Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the aery dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk:
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And 'neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
30As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse,
°31 —Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,°
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,[page 109]
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my church
—What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find... Ah God, I know not, I!...
40Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
°41 And corded up in a tight olive-frail,º
°42 Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,º
Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast...
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
°46 That brave Frascatiº villa, with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father's globe on both his hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church, so gay,
50For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
Swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons? Black—
'Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,[page 110]
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
60Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,
°62 And Moses with the tablesº ... but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!
'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
70My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world—
And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
—That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
°77 Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully'sº every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line—
°79 Tully, my masters? Ulpianº serves his need!
80And then how I shall lie thro' centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,[page 111]
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
90Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals, and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,
°99 —Aha, ELUCESCEBATº quoth our friend?
100No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,
They glitter like your mother's for my soul.
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze, [page 112]
Piece out its starved design, and fill iny vase
°108With grapes, and add a visor and a Term°,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
110That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! stone—
Gritstone, a-crumble! clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
120But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch, at leisure if he leers—
Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!