— 1. Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!: "The Bishop on his death-bed has reached Solomon's conclusion that 'all is vanity'. So he proceeds to specify his particular vanity in the choice of a tombstone." —N. Brit. Rev. 34, p. 367. "In 'The Palace of Art', Mr. Tennyson has shown the despair and isolation of a soul surrounded by all luxuries of beauty, and living in and for them; but in the end the soul is redeemed and converted to the simple humanities of earth. Mr. Browning has shown that such a sense of isolation and such despair are by no means inevitable; there is a death in life which consists in tranquil satisfaction, a calm pride in the soul's dwelling among the world's gathered treasures of stateliness and beauty. . . . So the unbelieving and worldly spirit of the dying Bishop, who orders his tomb at Saint Praxed's, his sense of the vanity of the world simply because the world is passing out of his reach, the regretful memory of the pleasures of his youth, the envious spite towards Gandolf, who robbed him of the best position for a tomb, and the dread lest his reputed sons should play him false and fail to carry out his designs, are united with a perfect appreciation of Renaissance art, and a luxurious satisfaction, which even a death-bed cannot destroy, in the splendor of voluptuous form and color." —Edward Dowden.

46. Frascati: a town of central Italy, near the site of the ancient Tusculum, ten or twelve miles S. E. of Rome; it has many fine old villas.

53. Did I say, basalt for my slab, sons?: Note how all things else, even such reflections as are expressed in the two preceding verses, are incidental with the Bishop; his poor, art-besotted mind turns abruptly to the black basalt which he craves for the slab of his tomb; and see vv. 101, 102.

66. travertine: see note to v. 67 of 'Pictor Ignotus'.

71. pistachio-nut: or, green almond.

79. Ulpian: Domitius Ulpianus, one of the greatest of Roman jurists, and chief adviser of the emperor, Alexander Severus; born about 170, died 228; belongs to the Brazen age of Roman literature.

95. Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount: the poor dying Bishop, in the disorder of his mind, makes a 'lapsus linguae' here; see v. 59.

99. elucescebat: "he was beginning to shine forth"; a late Latin word not found in the Ciceronian vocabulary, and therefore condemned by the Bishop; this word is, perhaps, what is meant by the "gaudy ware" in the second line of Gandolf's epitaph, referred to in v. 78.



A Toccata of Galuppi's.



1.

Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find! I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But, although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

— St. 1. Galuppi, Baldassaro (rather Baldassare): b. 1703, in Burano, an island near Venice, and thence called Buranello; d. 1785; a distinguished composer, whose operas, about fifty in number, and mostly comic, were at one time the most popular in Italy; Galuppi is regarded as the father of the Italian comic opera.

2.

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings. What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

— St. 2. Saint Mark's: see Ruskin's description of this glorious basilica, in 'The Stones of Venice'.

3.

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by. . . what you call . . .Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival: I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all.

4.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May? Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

5.

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,— On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed, O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

6.

Well, and it was graceful of them: they'd break talk off and afford —She, to bite her mask's black velvet, he, to finger on his sword, While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

— St. 6. Toccatas: the Toccata was a form of musical composition for the organ or harpsichord, somewhat in the free and brilliant style of the modern fantasia or capriccio; clavichord: "a keyed stringed instrument, now superseded by the pianoforte {now called a piano}."—Webster.

7.

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh, Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?" Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!"

— St. 7. The musical technicalities used in this stanza, any musician can explain and illustrate.

8.

"Were you happy?"—"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?" —"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?" Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

— St. 8. The questions in this stanza must be supposed to be caused by the effect upon the revellers of the "plaintive lesser thirds", the "diminished sixths", the "commiserating sevenths", etc., of the preceding stanza.

9.

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

10.

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly, and took them where they never see the sun.

11.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

— St. 11. While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve: the secret of the soul's immortality.

12.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: "Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

13.

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!

— St. 13. The idea is involved in this stanza that the soul's continued existence is dependent on its development in this life; the ironic character of the stanza is indicated by the merely intellectual subjects named, physics, geology, mathematics, which do not of themselves, necessarily, contribute to SOUL-development. All from the 2d verse of the 12th stanza down to "Dust and ashes" in the 15th, is what the music, "like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned", says to the speaker, in the monologue, of the men and women for whom life meant simply a butterfly enjoyment.

14.

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

15.

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.



Abt Vogler.

(After he has been extemporizing upon the Musical Instrument of his Invention.)



1.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,— Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

— St. 1. The leading sentence, "Would that the structure brave", etc., is interrupted by the comparison, "as when Solomon willed", etc., and continued in the 2d stanza, "Would it might tarry like his", etc.; the construction of the comparison is, "as when Solomon willed that armies of angels, legions of devils, etc., should rush into sight and pile him a palace straight"; the reference is to the legends of the Koran in regard to Solomon's magical powers.

2.

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine, Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, Burrow a while and build, broad on the roots of things, Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

— St. 2. the beautiful building of mine: "Of all our senses, hearing seems to be the most poetical; and because it requires most imagination. We do not simply listen to sounds, but whether they be articulate or inarticulate, we are constantly translating them into the language of sight, with which we are better acquainted; and this is a work of the imaginative faculty." —'Poetics: an Essay on Poetry'. By E. S. Dallas.

The idea expressed in the above extract is beautifully embodied in the following lines from Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan':—

"It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome, with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight 'twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who HEARD should SEE them there", etc.

3.

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass, Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, When a great illumination surprises a festal night— Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire) Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.

4.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth, Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I; And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth, As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found, but fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

5.

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon; And what is,—shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.

6.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth, All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth. Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause, Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled:—

7.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws: that made them, and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught; It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought, And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

8.

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. Never to be again! But many more of the kind As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.

9.

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands? There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.

10.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by.

11.

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized? Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

— St. 11. And what is our failure here: "As long as effort is directed to the highest, that aim, though it is out of reach, is the standard of hope. The existence of a capacity, cherished and quickened, is a pledge that it will find scope. The punishment of the man who has fixed all his thoughts upon earth, a punishment felt on reflection to be overwhelming in view of possibilities of humanity, is the completest gratification of desires unworthily limited:—

"'Thou art shut Out of the heaven of spirit; glut Thy sense upon the world: 'tis thine For ever—take it!' ('Easter Day', xx.).

On the other hand, the soul which has found in success not rest but a starting-point, which refuses to see in the first-fruits of a partial victory the fulness of its rightful triumph, has ever before it a sustaining and elevating vision:—

"'What stops my despair? This:—'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!' ('Saul', 18).

"'What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me; A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.'" ('Rabbi Ben Ezra', 7).—Rev. Prof. Westcott on Browning's View of Life ('Browning Soc. Papers', iv., 405, 406).

12.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes, And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, Surveying a while the heights I rolled from into the deep; Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found, The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.



"Touch him ne'er so lightly."

{Epilogue to Dramatic Idyls. Second Series.}

— * See 'Pages from an Album', in 'The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine' (Scribner's), for November 1882, pp. 159, 160, where is given a fac-simile of the poet's Ms. of these verses and of the ten verses he afterwards added, in response, it seems, to a carping critic. —



"Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: Soil so quick-receptive,—not one feather-seed, Not one flower dust fell but straight its fall awoke Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed Sudden as spontaneous—prove a poet-soul!" Indeed? Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage Vainly both expend,—few flowers awaken there: Quiet in its cleft broods—what the after age Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage.



Memorabilia.



1.

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!

2.

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

3.

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

4.

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



How it strikes a Contemporary.



I only knew one poet in my life: And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid, A man of mark, to know next time you saw. His very serviceable suit of black Was courtly once and conscientious still, And many might have worn it, though none did: The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads, Had purpose, and the ruff, significance. He walked, and tapped the pavement with his cane, {10} Scenting the world, looking it full in face: An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels. They turned up, now, the alley by the church, That leads no whither; now, they breathed themselves On the main promenade just at the wrong time. You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat, Making a peaked shade blacker than itself Against the single window spared some house Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work,— Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick {20} Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks Of some new shop a-building, French and fine. He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade, The man who slices lemons into drink, The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys That volunteer to help him turn its winch. He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, {30} If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note; Yet stared at nobody,—you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you and expect as much. So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed, It marked the shameful and notorious fact, We had among us, not so much a spy, As a recording chief-inquisitor, The town's true master if the town but knew! {40} We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of. . .well, it was not wholly ease, As back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in years a little, such a brow {50} His eyes had to live under!—clear as flint On either side o' the formidable nose Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw. Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate? When altogether old B. disappeared, And young C. got his mistress,—was't our friend, His letter to the King, that did it all? What paid the bloodless man for so much pains? Our Lord the King has favorites manifold, And shifts his ministry some once a month; {60} Our city gets new governors at whiles,— But never word or sign, that I could hear, Notified, to this man about the streets, The King's approval of those letters conned The last thing duly at the dead of night. Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord, Exhorting when none heard—"Beseech me not! Too far above my people,—beneath me! I set the watch,—how should the people know? Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!" {70} Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least— That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace, You found he ate his supper in a room Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall, And twenty naked girls to change his plate! Poor man, he lived another kind of life In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! {80} The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat, Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back, Playing a decent cribbage with his maid (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears, Or treat of radishes in April. Nine, Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was, Would point him out to me a dozen times; "St—St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!" {90} I had been used to think that personage Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt, And feathers like a forest in his hat, Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news, Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn, And memorized the miracle in vogue! He had a great observance from us boys; We were in error; that was not the man.

I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid, To have just looked, when this man came to die, {100} And seen who lined the clean gay garret sides, And stood about the neat low truckle-bed, With the heavenly manner of relieving guard. Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief, Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death, Doing the King's work all the dim day long, In his old coat and up to knees in mud, Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,— And, now the day was won, relieved at once! No further show or need of that old coat, {110} You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I! A second, and the angels alter that. Well, I could never write a verse,—could you? Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.



"Transcendentalism":

A Poem in Twelve Books.

— * Transcendentalism: a poem in twelve books. It must be understood that the poet addressed has written a long poem under this title, and a brother-poet, while admitting that it contains "true thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up", raises the objection that they are naked, instead of being draped, as they should be, in sights and sounds. —



Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak? 'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art: Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. —True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up! But why such long prolusion and display, Such turning and adjustment of the harp, And taking it upon your breast, at length, Only to speak dry words across its strings? Stark-naked thought is in request enough: {10} Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears! The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark, Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp— Exchange our harp for that,—who hinders you? But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think; Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse; Boys seek for images and melody, Men must have reason—so, you aim at men. Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true; We see and hear and do not wonder much: {20} If you could tell us what they mean, indeed! As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed— Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote, {30} (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind) We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss— Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what roses say,— Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt, John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about? He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, {40} Over us, under, round us every side, Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,— Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life. So come, the harp back to your heart again! You are a poem, though your poem's naught. The best of all you showed before, believe, Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords Bent, following the cherub at the top {50} That points to God with his paired half-moon wings.

— 22. German Boehme: Jacob Boehme (or Behmen), a shoemaker and a famous theosophist, b. 1575, at Old Seidenberg, a village near Goerlitz; d. 1624. The 24th verse of the poem, "He noticed all at once that plants could speak", may refer to a remarkable experience of Boehme, related in Dr. Hans Lassen Martensen's 'Jacob Boehme: his life and teaching, or studies in theosophy: translated from the Danish by T. Rhys Evans', London, 1885: "Sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected the sunshine with such marvellous splendor that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things. He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and grass, and that actual nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen." Martensen, in his biography, follows that by Frankenberg, in which the experience may be given more in detail.

37-40. him of Halberstadt, John: "It is not a thinker like Boehme, who will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician like John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."

"The 'magic' symbolized, is that of genuine poetry; but the magician, or 'Mage', is an historical person; and the special feat imputed to him was recorded of other magicians in the Middle Ages, if not of himself. 'Johannes Teutonicus, a canon of Halberstadht in Germany, after he had performed a number of prestigious feats almost incredible, was transported by the Devil in the likeness of a black horse, and was both seen and heard upon one and the same Christmas day, to say mass in Halberstadht, in Mayntz, and in Cologne' ('Heywood's Hierarchy', Bk. IV., p. 253). The 'prestigious feat' of causing flowers to appear in winter, was a common one." —Mrs. Sutherland Orr's 'Handbook to the works of Robert Browning', p. 209.

It may be said that the advice given in this poem, Browning has not sufficiently followed in his own poetry. On this point, a writer in the 'British Quarterly Review' (Vol. 23, p. 162) justly remarks: "Browning's thought is always that of a poet. Subtle, nimble, and powerful as is the intellect, and various as is the learning, all is manifested through the imagination, and comes forth shaped and tinted by it. Thus, even in the foregoing passages {cited from 'Transcendentalism' and 'Bishop Blougram's Apology'}, where the matter is almost as purely as it can be the produce of the mere understanding, it is still evident that the method of the thought is poetic. The notions take the form of images. For example, the poet means to say that Prose is a good and mighty vehicle in its way, but that it is not Poetry; and how does the conception shape itself in his mind? Why, in an image. All at once it is not Prose that is thought about, but a huge six-foot speaking-trumpet braced round with bark, through which the Swiss hunters help their voices from Alp to Alp— Poetry, on the other hand, being no such big and blaring instrument, but a harp taken to the breast of youth and swept by ecstatic fingers. And so with the images of Boehme and his book, and John of Halberstadt with his magic rose—still a concrete body to enshrine an abstract meaning."



Apparent Failure.

"We shall soon lose a celebrated building."—Paris Newspaper.



1.

No, for I'll save it! Seven years since, I passed through Paris, stopped a day To 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, Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies, So sauntered till—what met my eyes?

— St. 1. To see the baptism of your Prince: the Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie, born March 16, 1856. the Congress: the Congress of Paris.

Gortschakoff: Prince Alexander Michaelowitsch Gortschakoff; while representing Russia at the Court of Vienna, he kept Austria neutral during the Crimean War.

Cavour: Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, Italian statesman, b. 1810; at the Congress of Paris, brought forward the question of the political consolidation of Italy, which led to the invasion of Italy by the Austrians, who were defeated; d. 6th June, 1861.

Buol: Karl Ferdinand von Buol-Schauenstein, Austrian diplomatist, and minister of foreign affairs from 1852 to 1859.

2.

Only the Doric little Morgue! The dead-house where you show your drowned: Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned. One 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!

— St. 2. Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue: Fontaine de Vaucluse, a celebrated fountain, in the department of Vaucluse, in Southern France, the source of the Sorgues. The village named after it was for some time the residence of Petrarch.

3.

First came the silent gazers; next, 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.

4.

Poor men, God made, and all for that! The reverence struck me; o'er each head Religiously 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 asphalte seemed best.

5.

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

6.

And this—why, he was red in vain, Or black,—poor fellow that is blue! What fancy was it, turned your brain? Oh, women were the prize for you! Money 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!

7.

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; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.



Rabbi Ben Ezra.



1.

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

— St. 1. Grow old along with me!: I understand that the aged Rabbi is addressing some young friend. The best is yet to be, the last of life:

"By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy More indeed, than at first when, unconscious, the life of a boy." —'Saul', 162, 163.

2.

Not that, amassing flowers, Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours, Which lily leave and then as best recall?" Not that, admiring stars, It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars; Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

3.

Not for such hopes and fears Annulling youth's brief years, Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! Rather I prize the doubt Low kinds exist without, Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

— St. 2, 3. The construction is, I do not remonstrate that youth, amassing flowers, sighed, Which rose make ours, which lily leave, etc., nor that, admiring stars, it (youth) yearned, etc.

4.

Poor vaunt of life indeed, Were man but formed to feed On joy, to solely seek and find and feast; Such feasting ended, then As sure an end to men; Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

— St. 4. Irks care: does care irk. . .does doubt fret. . .

5.

Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

— St. 5. Nearer we hold of God: have title to a nearer relationship. See Webster, s.v. Hold, v.i. def. 3. {No edition is given.}

6.

Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

7.

For thence,—a paradox Which comforts while it mocks,— Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail: What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

— St. 7. What I aspired to be: "'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."—'Saul', v. 296.

8.

What is he but a brute Whose flesh hath soul to suit, Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? To man, propose this test— Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

— St. 8. Thy body at its best, How far, etc.: "In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit."—'Saul', v. 151.

9.

Yet gifts should prove their use: I own the Past profuse Of power each side, perfection every turn: Eyes, ears took in their dole, Brain treasured up the whole; Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn"?

— St. 9. the Past: he means the past of his own life.

10.

Not once beat "Praise be Thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw Power, see now Love perfect too: Perfect I call Thy plan: Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!"

— St. 10. The original reading of the 3d verse was, "I, who saw Power, SHALL see Love perfect too." The change has cleared up a difficulty. The All-Great is now to me, in my age, the All-Loving too. Maker, remake, complete: there seems to be an anticipation here of the metaphor of the Potter's wheel, in stanzas 25-32, and see Jer. 18:4.

11.

For pleasant is this flesh; Our soul, in its rose-mesh Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest: Would we some prize might hold To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!

12.

Let us not always say "Spite of this flesh to-day I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!" As the bird wings and sings, Let us cry "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

13.

Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

— St. 13. Thence shall I pass, etc.: It will be observed that here and in some of the following stanzas, the Rabbi speaks in the person of youth; so youth should say to itself.

14.

And I shall thereupon Take rest, ere I be gone Once more on my adventure brave and new: Fearless and unperplexed, When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

15.

Youth ended, I shall try My gain or loss thereby; Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: And I shall weigh the same, Give life its praise or blame: Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

16.

For, note when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: A whisper from the west Shoots—"Add this to the rest, Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

17.

So, still within this life, Though lifted o'er its strife, Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, "This rage was right i' the main, That acquiescence vain: The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

18.

For more is not reserved To man, with soul just nerved To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: Here, work enough to watch The Master work, and catch Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

19.

As it was better, youth Should strive, through acts uncouth, Toward making, than repose on aught found made: So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death, nor be afraid!

20.

Enough now, if the Right And Good and Infinite Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, With knowledge absolute, Subject to no dispute From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

— St. 20. knowledge absolute: soul knowledge, which is reached through direct assimilation by the soul of the hidden principles of things, as distinguished from intellectual knowledge, which is based on the phenominal, and must be more or less subject to dispute.

21.

Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

— St. 21, vv. 4, 5. The relatives are suppressed;—Was I whom the world arraigned, or were they whom my soul disdained, right?

22.

Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes Match me: we all surmise, They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe?

23.

Not on the vulgar mass Called "work", must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

24.

But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account: All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

25.

Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped: All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

26.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

— St. 26. Potter's wheel: "But now, O Lord, thou art our Father: we are the clay, and thou our Potter; and we are all the work of thy hand."—Is. 64:8; and see Jer. 18:2-6.

27.

Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, THAT was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

28.

He fixed thee mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try thee, and turn thee forth sufficiently impressed.

29.

What though the earlier grooves Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press? What though, about thy rim, Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

30.

Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?

31.

But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men! And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I,—to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily,—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

32.

So, take and use Thy work, Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!



A Grammarian's Funeral.

Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe.



Let us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes, Each in its tether Sleeping safe in the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, {10} Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. {20} Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights! Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's: He's for the morning. Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous, calm, and dead, Borne on our shoulders.

Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft Safe from the weather! {30} He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo! Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! "My dance is finished?" {40} No, that's the world's way; (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping, Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,— Give!"—So, he gowned him, {50} Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: "Time to taste life," another would have said, "Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still there's the comment. {60} Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric {70} Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick!

(Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market-place Gaping before us.) Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus!) That before living he'd learn how to live— No end to learning: Earn the means first—God surely will contrive Use for our earning. {80} Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes! Live now or never!" He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: CALCULUS racked him: Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: TUSSIS attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"—not he! (Caution redoubled! {90} Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled, Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon. Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! {100} Was it not great? did not he throw on God (He loves the burthen)— God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment. He ventured neck or nothing—heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: {110} "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered, "Yes! Hence with life's pale lure!" That low man seeks a little thing to do. Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. {120} That, has the world here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled HOTI's business—let it be!— Properly based OUN— {130} Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic 'De', Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there: This man decided not to Live but Know— Bury this man there? {140} Here—here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily lying, Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.

— 18. overcome: pass over, overhang, overshadow; used as in Macbeth III. IV. 3, "overcome us like a summer's cloud".

39, 40. New measures, . . .finished?: do you say? not at all.

42. All in parentheses, throughout the poem, is addressed by the speaker directly to his companions.

57. Actual life comes next: do you say? No. I have more to do first.

86. Calculus: the stone.

88. Tussis: a cough.

95. hydroptic: hydropic, dropsical.

129. Hoti: the Greek particle '/Oti, conj. that, etc.

130. Oun: Greek particle Ou^'n, then, now then, etc.

131. the enclitic De: Greek De {Delta epsilon}; in regard to this, the following letter by Browning appeared in the London 'Daily News' of Nov. 21, 1874: "To the Editor of 'The Daily News'. Sir,— In a clever article this morning you speak of 'the doctrine of the enclitic De'—'which, with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of fact does not exist.' No, not to Mr. Browning: but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose fifth list of 'enclitics' ends 'with the inseparable De'—or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with 'De (meaning 'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage)'. That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated 'De, meaning BUT', was the 'doctrine' which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it.— I am, sir, yours obediently, R. B."—'Browning Soc. Papers', Part I., p. 56.



An Epistle containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician.



Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, The not-incurious in God's handiwork (This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul) —To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, {10} Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip Back and rejoin its source before the term,— And aptest in contrivance (under God) To baffle it by deftly stopping such:— The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) Three samples of true snake-stone—rarer still, One of the other sort, the melon-shaped (But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs), And writeth now the twenty-second time. {20}

My journeyings were brought to Jericho: Thus I resume. Who, studious in our art, Shall count a little labor unrepaid? I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone On many a flinty furlong of this land. Also, the country-side is all on fire With rumors of a marching hitherward: Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear; Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls: {30} I cried and threw my staff, and he was gone. Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, And once a town declared me for a spy; But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, Since this poor covert where I pass the night, This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence A man with plague-sores at the third degree Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here! 'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip, {40} And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. A viscid choler is observable In tertians, I was nearly bold to say; And falling-sickness hath a happier cure Than our school wots of: there's a spider here Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back; Take five and drop them. . .but who knows his mind, The Syrian runagate I trust this to? His service payeth me a sublimate {50} Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn, There set in order my experiences, Gather what most deserves, and give thee all— Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanth Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar— {60} But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.

Yet stay! my Syrian blinketh gratefully, Protesteth his devotion is my price— Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal? I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, What set me off a-writing first of all. An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang! For, be it this town's barrenness,—or else The Man had something in the look of him,— His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth. {70} So, pardon if—(lest presently I lose, In the great press of novelty at hand, The care and pains this somehow stole from me) I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth? The very man is gone from me but now, Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!

'Tis but a case of mania: subinduced By epilepsy, at the turning-point {80} Of trance prolonged unduly some three days; When, by the exhibition of some drug Or spell, exorcization, stroke of art Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know, The evil thing, out-breaking, all at once, Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,— But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, Making a clear house of it too suddenly, The first conceit that entered might inscribe Whatever it was minded on the wall {90} So plainly at that vantage, as it were (First come, first served), that nothing subsequent Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls The just-returned and new-established soul Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart That henceforth she will read or these or none. And first—the man's own firm conviction rests That he was dead (in fact they buried him) —That he was dead and then restored to life By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: {100} —'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise", and he did rise. "Such cases are diurnal", thou wilt cry. Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume, Instead of giving way to time and health, Should eat itself into the life of life, As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all! For see, how he takes up the after-life. The man—it is one Lazarus a Jew, Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, The body's habit wholly laudable, {110} As much, indeed, beyond the common health As he were made and put aside to show. Think, could we penetrate by any drug And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep! Whence has the man the balm that brightens all? This grown man eyes the world now like a child. Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, {120} Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,— He listened not except I spoke to him, But folded his two hands and let them talk, Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool. And that's a sample how his years must go. Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, Should find a treasure,—can he use the same With straitened habits and with tastes starved small, And take at once to his impoverished brain The sudden element that changes things, {130} That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand, And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust? Is he not such an one as moves to mirth— Warily parsimonious, when no need, Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times? All prudent counsel as to what befits The golden mean, is lost on such an one: The man's fantastic will is the man's law. So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say, Increased beyond the fleshly faculty— {140} Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven: The man is witless of the size, the sum, The value in proportion of all things, Or whether it be little or be much. Discourse to him of prodigious armaments Assembled to besiege his city now, And of the passing of a mule with gourds— 'Tis one! Then take it on the other side, Speak of some trifling fact,—he will gaze rapt {150} With stupor at its very littleness (Far as I see), as if in that indeed He caught prodigious import, whole results; And so will turn to us the by-standers In ever the same stupor (note this point), That we, too, see not with his opened eyes. Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, Preposterously, at cross purposes. Should his child sicken unto death,—why, look For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, {160} Or pretermission of the daily craft! While a word, gesture, glance from that same child At play or in the school or laid asleep, Will startle him to an agony of fear, Exasperation, just as like. Demand The reason why—"'tis but a word," object— "A gesture"—he regards thee as our lord Who lived there in the pyramid alone, Looked at us (does thou mind?) when, being young, We both would unadvisedly recite {170} Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. Thou and the child have each a veil alike Thrown o'er your heads, from under which ye both Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! He holds on firmly to some thread of life— (It is the life to lead perforcedly) Which runs across some vast, distracting orb {180} Of glory on either side that meagre thread, Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet— The spiritual life around the earthly life: The law of that is known to him as this, His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, And not along, this black thread through the blaze— "It should be" balked by "here it cannot be". {190} And oft the man's soul springs into his face As if he saw again and heard again His sage that bade him "Rise", and he did rise. Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes: then back he sinks at once To ashes, who was very fire before, In sedulous recurrence to his trade Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; And studiously the humbler for that pride, Professedly the faultier that he knows {200} God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. Indeed the especial marking of the man Is prone submission to the heavenly will— Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last For that same death which must restore his being To equilibrium, body loosening soul Divorced even now by premature full growth: He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live So long as God please, and just how God please. {210} He even seeketh not to please God more (Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be, Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do: How can he give his neighbor the real ground, His own conviction? Ardent as he is— Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old "Be it as God please" re-assureth him. I probed the sore as thy disciple should: {220} "How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march To stamp out like a little spark thy town, Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?" He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The man is apathetic, you deduce? Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, Able and weak, affects the very brutes And birds—how say I? flowers of the field— As a wise workman recognizes tools {230} In a master's workshop, loving what they make. Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb: Only impatient, let him do his best, At ignorance and carelessness and sin— An indignation which is promptly curbed: As when in certain travel I have feigned To be an ignoramus in our art According to some preconceived design, And happed to hear the land's practitioners Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, {240} Prattle fantastically on disease, Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!

Thou wilt object—Why have I not ere this Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, Conferring with the frankness that befits? Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech Perished in a tumult many years ago, Accused,—our learning's fate,—of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule {250} And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone), Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help— How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way! The other imputations must be lies: {260} But take one, though I loath to give it thee, In mere respect for any good man's fame. (And after all, our patient Lazarus Is stark mad; should we count on what he says? Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech 'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.) This man so cured regards the curer, then, As—God forgive me! who but God himself, Creator and sustainer of the world, That came and dwelt in flesh on it a while! {270} —'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived, Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was. . .what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith—but why all this of what he saith? Why write of trivial matters, things of price Calling at every moment for remark? I noticed on the margin of a pool {280} Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, Which, now that I review it, needs must seem Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth! Nor I myself discern in what is writ Good cause for the peculiar interest And awe indeed this man has touched me with. Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus: {290} I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came A moon made like a face with certain spots Multiform, manifold, and menacing: Then a wind rose behind me. So we met In this old sleepy town at unaware, The man and I. I send thee what is writ. Regard it as a chance, a matter risked To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose, Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. {300} Jerusalem's repose shall make amends For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine; Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too— So, through the thunder comes a human voice Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here! Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine: But love I gave thee, with myself to love, {310} And thou must love me who have died for thee!" The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

— 1. Karshish. . .To Abib. {that is, phrase finishes on line 7.}

17. snake-stone: a certain kind of stone supposed to be efficacious when placed upon the bite of a snake, in absorbing or charming away the poison.

21. My journeyings were brought to Jericho: i.e., in his last letter.

28. Vespasian: T. Flavius Sabinus Vespasianus, Roman emperor, A.D. 70-79; sent by Nero in 66 to conduct the war against the Jews; when proclaimed emperor, left his son Titus to continue the war.

24-33. his ardent scientific interest has caused him to brave all dangers.

49. The Syrian runagate: perhaps I'm writing for nothing in trusting my letter to him.

60. Thou hadst: wouldst have. Zoar: one of the "cities of the plain", S. E. of the Dead Sea (Gen. 19:22).

65-78. Though he's deeply impressed with the subject, he approaches it with extreme diffidence, writing to the "all-sagacious" Abib.

82. exhibition: used in its medical sense of administering a remedy.

103. fume: vaporish fancy.

106. As saffron tingeth: Chaucer uses "saffron" metaphorically as a verb:—

"And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe, To saffron with my predicacioun, And for to stire men to devocioun."—'The Pardoner's Prologue'.

113. Think, could WE penetrate by any drug.

141, 142. "Browning has drawn the portraiture of one to whom the eternal is sensibly present, whose spirit has gained prematurely absolute predominance: . . .and the result is. . .a being 'Professedly the faultier that he knows God's secret, while he holds the thread of life' (vv. 200, 201). Lazarus therefore, while he moves in the world, has lost all sense of proportion in things about him, all measure of and faculty of dealing with that which sways his fellows. He has no power or will to win them to his faith, but he simply stands among men as a patient witness of the overwhelming reality of the divine: a witness whose authority is confessed, even against his inclination, by the student of nature, who turns again and again to the phenomenon which he affects to disparage.

"In this crucial example Browning shows how the exclusive dominance of the spirit destroys the fulness of human life, its uses and powers, while it leaves a passive life, crowned with an unearthly beauty. On the other hand, he shows in his study of Cleon that the richest results of earth in art and speculation, and pleasure and power, are unable to remove from life the desolation of final gloom. . . . The contrast is of the deepest significance. The Jewish peasant endures earth, being in possession of heaven: the Greek poet, in possession of earth, feels that heaven, some future state,

'Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy',

is a necessity for man; but no,

'Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, He must have done so, were it possible!'

But we must not pause to follow out the contrast into details. It is enough to see broadly that flesh and spirit each claim recognition in connection with their proper spheres, in order that the present life may bear its true result."—Rev. Prof. Westcott on 'Browning's View of Life' ('B. Soc. Papers', IV., pp. 401, 402).

166. object: offer in opposition; see v. 243.

167. our lord: some sage under whom they had learned; see v. 254.

174. Thou and the child have: i.e., for him, Lazarus.

177. Greek fire: see Gibbon, chap. 52. {a flammable liquid, kept so secret that its exact constitution is still unknown.}

281. Aleppo: a city of Syria; the blue-flowering borage was supposed to possess valuable medicinal virtues and exhilarating qualities.

301. Jerusalem's repose shall make amends: he will avail himself of it to write a better letter than this one.



A Martyr's Epitaph.

(From 'Easter Day'.)



I was born sickly, poor, and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price From Caesar's envy; therefore twice I fought with beasts, and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At last my own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew {10} My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me This testimony on the wall— For me, I have forgot it all.



Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.



1.

Gr-r-r—there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims— Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!

2.

At the meal we sit together: 'Salve tibi!' I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: 'Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt: What's the Latin name for "parsley"?' What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

3.

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf! With a fire-new spoon we're furnished, And a goblet for ourself, Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps— Marked with L. for our initial! (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

4.

SAINT, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the Convent bank With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs, —Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's? (That is, if he'd let it show!)

5.

When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange-pulp— In three sips the Arian frustrate; While he drains his at one gulp.

— St. 5. the Arian: a follower of Arius (died 336 A.D.), who denied that the Son was co-essential and co-eternal with the Father.

6.

Oh, those melons? If he's able We're to have a feast! so nice! One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice. How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

7.

There's a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails: If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee?

— St. 7. text in Galatians: chap. 5, vv. 19-21, where are enumerated "the works of the flesh". There are seventeen named; he uses twenty-nine indefinitely; it's common in French to use trente-six (36) for any pretty big number. If I trip him: What if I; and so in next stanza. a Manichee: a follower of Mani, who aimed to unite Parseeism, or Parsism, with Christianity.

8.

Or, my scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

9.

Or, there's Satan!—one might venture Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he'd miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine. . . 'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r—you swine!

— St. 9. Hy, Zy, Hine: represent the sound of the vesper bell.



Holy-Cross Day.

On which the Jews were forced to attend an Annual Christian Sermon in Rome.

— * "By a bull of Gregory XIII. in the year 1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian priest; usually an exposition of some passages of the Old Testament, and especially those relating to the Messiah, from the Christian point of view. This burden is not yet wholly removed from them; and to this day, several times in the course of a year, a Jewish congregation is gathered together in the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, and constrained to listen to a homily from a Dominican friar, to whom, unless his zeal have eaten up his good feelings and his good taste, the ceremony must be as painful as to his hearers. In the same spirit of vulgar persecution, there is upon the gable of a church, opposite one of the gates of the Ghetto, a fresco painting of the Crucifixion, and, underneath, an inscription in Hebrew and Latin, from the 2d and 3d verses of the 65th chapter of Isaiah— 'I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; a people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face.'" —George S. Hillard's Six Months in Italy. (1853.) —

{"Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb, at least, from her conspicuous table here in Rome, should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally brought —nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in'), haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory."—Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.}

What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:—

1.

Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savory, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives us the summons—'tis sermon-time!

2.

Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you? Up stumps Solomon—bustling too? Shame, man! greedy beyond your years To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears? Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch? Stand on a line ere you start for the church!

3.

Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie, Rats in a hamper, swine in a sty, Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve, Worms in a carcass, fleas in a sleeve. Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs And buzz for the bishop—here he comes.

4.

Bow, wow, wow—a bone for the dog! I liken his Grace to an acorned hog. What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass, To help and handle my lord's hour-glass! Didst ever behold so lithe a chine? His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.

5.

Aaron's asleep—shove hip to haunch, Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch! Look at the purse with the tassel and knob, And the gown with the angel and thingumbob! What's he at, quotha? reading his text! Now you've his curtsey—and what comes next?

6.

See to our converts—you doomed black dozen— No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen! You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly; You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely; You took your turn and dipped in the hat, Got fortune—and fortune gets you; mind that!

7.

Give your first groan—compunction's at work; And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk. Lo, Micah,—the selfsame beard on chin He was four times already converted in! Here's a knife, clip quick—it's a sign of grace— Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.

8.

Whom now is the bishop a-leering at? I know a point where his text falls pat. I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now Went to my heart and made me vow To meddle no more with the worst of trades: Let somebody else play his serenades!

9.

Groan all together now, whee—hee—hee! It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me! It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed, Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist; Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent To usher in worthily Christian Lent.

10.

It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds: It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed Which gutted my purse, would throttle my creed: And it overflows, when, to even the odd, Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God.

11.

But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock, And the rest sit silent and count the clock, Since forced to muse the appointed time On these precious facts and truths sublime,— Let us fitly employ it, under our breath, In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.

12.

For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died, Called sons and sons' sons to his side, And spoke, "This world has been harsh and strange; Something is wrong: there needeth a change. But what, or where? at the last or first? In one point only we sinned, at worst.

— St. 12. Rabbi Ben Ezra: see biographical sketch subjoined to the Argument of the Monologue entitled 'Rabbi Ben Ezra'.

13.

"The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet, And again in his border see Israel set. When Judah beholds Jerusalem, The stranger-seed shall be joined to them: To Jacob's house shall the Gentiles cleave, So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.

14.

"Ay, the children of the chosen race Shall carry and bring them to their place: In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er The oppressor triumph for evermore!

15.

"God spoke, and gave us the word to keep: Bade never fold the hands nor sleep 'Mid a faithless world,—at watch and ward, Till Christ at the end relieve our guard. By his servant Moses the watch was set: Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet.

16.

"Thou! if thou wast he, who at mid-watch came, By the starlight, naming a dubious name! And if, too heavy with sleep—too rash With fear—O thou, if that martyr-gash Fell on thee coming to take thine own, And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne—

17.

"Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus. But, the Judgment over, join sides with us! Thine too is the cause! and not more thine Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine, Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed, Who maintain thee in word, and defy thee in deed!

18.

"We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how At least we withstand Barabbas now! Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared, To have called these—Christians, had we dared! Let defiance to them pay mistrust of thee, And Rome make amends for Calvary!

19.

"By the torture, prolonged from age to age, By the infamy, Israel's heritage, By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace, By the badge of shame, by the felon's place, By the branding-tool, the bloody whip, And the summons to Christian fellowship,—

— St. 19. Ghetto: the Jews' quarter in Rome, Venice, and other cities. The name is supposed to be derived from the Hebrew 'ghet', meaning division, separation, divorce.

20.

"We boast our proof that at least the Jew Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew. Thy face took never so deep a shade But we fought them in it, God our aid! A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!"

{The late Pope abolished this bad business of the sermon.—R. B.}

— The late Pope: Gregory XVI.



Saul.



1.

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak, Kiss my cheek, wish me well!" Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek. And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent, Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet. For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of three days, Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer nor of praise, To betoken that Saul and the spirit have ended their strife, And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks back upon life. {10}

2.

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert!"

3.

Then I, as was meet, Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on my feet, And ran o'er the sand burnt to powder. The tent was unlooped; I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I stooped; Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all withered and gone, That extends to the second enclosure, I groped my way on {20} Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed, And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied. At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but soon I descried A something more black than the blackness—the vast, the upright Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul.

4.

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side; {30} He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs And waiting his change, the king serpent all heavily hangs, Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come With the spring-time,—so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

5.

Then I tuned my harp,—took off the lilies we twine round its chords Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide—those sunbeams like swords! And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, one after one, So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be done. They are white, and untorn by the bushes, for lo, they have fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; {40} And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star Into eve and the blue far above us,—so blue and so far!

6.

—Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will each leave his mate To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate Till for boldness they fight one another: and then, what has weight To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand house— There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird and half mouse! God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.

7.

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand {50} Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand And grow one in the sense of this world's life.—And then, the last song When the dead man is praised on his journey—"Bear, bear him along With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the glad chant Of the marriage,—first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends?—Then, the chorus intoned {60} As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

8.

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart; And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart From the jewels that woke in his turban at once with a start All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart. So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect. And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked, As I sang,—

9.

"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. {70} Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! {80} Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best!' Then they sung through their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest. And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true: And the friends of thy boyhood—that boyhood of wonder and hope, {90} Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,— Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine; And all gifts, which the world offers singly, on one head combine! On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (like the throe That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor and lets the gold go) High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,—all Brought to blaze on the head of one creature—King Saul!"

10.

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,—heart, hand, harp, and voice, Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice Saul's fame in the light it was made for—as when, dare I say, {100} The Lord's army, in rapture of service, strains through its array, And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot—"Saul!" cried I, and stopped, And waited the thing that should follow. Then Saul, who hung propped By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name. Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the aim, And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that held (he alone, While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on a broad bust of stone A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,—leaves grasp of the sheet? Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, {110} With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold— Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest—all hail, there they are! —Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest For their food in the ardors of summer. One long shudder thrilled All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware. What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope and despair. Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right hand {120} Held the brow, helped the eyes, left too vacant, forthwith to remand To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before. I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch from the shore, At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean—a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and intwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely: so, arm folded arm O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

11.

What spell or what charm (For, a while there was trouble within me), what next should I urge To sustain him where song had restored him?—Song filled to the verge {130} His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty: beyond, on what fields, Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the cup they put by? He saith, "It is good"; still he drinks not: he lets me praise life, Gives assent, yet would die for his own part.

12.

Then fancies grew rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed in silence—above, the one eagle wheeled slow as in sleep; And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that might lie 'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill and the sky. {140} And I laughed—"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, Let me people at least, with my fancies, the plains and the rocks, Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image the show Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know! Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus—

13.

"Yea, my King," I began—"thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring From the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute: {150} In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bears fruit. Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,—how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall stanch Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine. {160} Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for! the spirit be thine! By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou still shalt enjoy More indeed, than at first when, inconscious, the life of a boy. Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface, Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace The results of his past summer-prime,—so, each ray of thy will, Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too give forth {170} A like cheer to their sons: who in turn, fill the South and the North With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past! But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last. As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height, So with man—so his power and his beauty forever take flight. No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years! Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's! Is Saul dead? In the depth of the vale make his tomb—bid arise A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies, Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know? Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go {181} In great characters cut by the scribe,—Such was Saul, so he did; With the sages directing the work, by the populace chid,— For not half, they'll affirm, is comprised there! Which fault to amend, In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend (See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,—the statesman's great word Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave: So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part {190} In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!"

14.

And behold while I sang. . .but O Thou who didst grant me, that day, And, before it, not seldom hast granted thy help to essay, Carry on and complete an adventure,—my shield and my sword In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,— Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavor And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever On the new stretch of heaven above me—till, mighty to save, Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance—God's throne from man's grave! Let me tell out my tale to its ending—my voice to my heart {200} Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part, As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with my sheep! And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like sleep, For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron upheaves The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

15.

I say then,—my song While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and, ever more strong, Made a proffer of good to console him—he slowly resumed His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand replumed His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes {210} Of his turban, and see—the huge sweat that his countenance bathes, He wipes off with the robe; and he girds now his loins as of yore, And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the clasp set before. He is Saul, ye remember in glory,—ere error had bent The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose, To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the pile Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raise {220} His bent head, and the other hung slack—till I touched on the praise I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there; And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak-roots which please To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: through my hair The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power— All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. {231} Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine— And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign? I yearned—"Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss, I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this; I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence, As this moment,—had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!"

16.

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more—no song more! outbroke—

17.

"I have gone the whole round of creation: I saw and I spoke; I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received in my brain {240} And pronounced on the rest of his handwork—returned him again His creation's approval or censure: I spoke as I saw. I report, as a man may of God's work—all's love, yet all's law. Now I lay down the judgeship he lent me. Each faculty tasked To perceive him, has gained an abyss, where a dewdrop was asked. Have I knowledge? confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care! Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God {250} In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to his feet. Yet with all this abounding experience, this deity known, I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of my own. There's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to hoodwink, I am fain to keep still in abeyance (I laugh as I think), Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst {260} E'en the Giver in one gift.—Behold, I could love if I durst! But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake. —What, my soul? see thus far and no farther? when doors great and small, Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appal? In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the greatest of all? Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, That I doubt his own love can compete with it? Here the parts shift? Here, the creature surpass the creator,—the end, what began? Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man, {270} And dare doubt he alone shall not help him, who yet alone can? Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, much less power, To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvellous dower Of the life he was gifted and filled with? to make such a soul, Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering the whole? And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears attest) These good things being given, to go on, and give one more, the best? Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the height This perfection,—succeed, with life's dayspring, death's minute of night? Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the mistake, {280} Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set Clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet To be run and continued, and ended—who knows?—or endure! The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to make sure; By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles in this.