15.And now, what took place at the very first of all,I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fallOn that little head of hers and burn itIf she knew how she came to drop so soundlyAsleep of a sudden, and there continueThe whole time, sleeping as profoundly {500}As one of the boars my father would pin you‘Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,—Jacynth, forgive me the comparison!But where I begin my own narrationIs a little after I took my stationTo breathe the fresh air from the balcony,And, having in those days a falcon eye,To follow the hunt through the open country,From where the bushes thinlier crestedThe hillocks, to a plain where’s not one tree. {510}When, in a moment, my ear was arrestedBy—was it singing, or was it saying,Or a strange musical instrument playingIn the chamber?—and to be certainI pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,And there lay Jacynth asleep,Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,In a rosy sleep along the floorWith her head against the door;While in the midst, on the seat of state, {520}Was a queen—the gypsy woman late,With head and face downbentOn the lady’s head and face intent:For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,The lady sat between her knees,And o’er them the lady’s clasped hands met,And on those hands her chin was set,And her upturned face met the face of the croneWherein the eyes had grown and grownAs if she could double and quadruple {530}At pleasure the play of either pupil—Very like, by her hands’ slow fanning,As up and down like a gor-crow’s flappersThey moved to measure, or bell-clappers.I said, “Is it blessing, is it banning,Do they applaud you or burlesque you—Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?”But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,At once I was stopped by the lady’s expression:For it was life her eyes were drinking {540}From the crone’s wide pair above unwinking,—Life’s pure fire, received without shrinking,Into the heart and breast whose heavingTold you no single drop they were leaving,—Life that, filling her, passed redundantInto her very hair, back swervingOver each shoulder, loose and abundant,As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,Moving to the mystic measure, {550}Bounding as the bosom bounded.I stopped short, more and more confounded,As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,As she listened and she listened:When all at once a hand detained me,The selfsame contagion gained me,And I kept time to the wondrous chime,Making out words and prose and rhyme,Till it seemed that the music furledIts wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped {560}From under the words it first had propped,And left them midway in the world,Word took word as hand takes hand,I could hear at last, and understand,And when I held the unbroken thread,The gypsy said:—“And so at last we find my tribe.And so I set thee in the midst,And to one and all of them describeWhat thou saidst and what thou didst, {570}Our long and terrible journey through,And all thou art ready to say and doIn the trials that remain:I trace them the vein and the other veinThat meet on thy brow and part again,Making our rapid mystic mark;And I bid my people prove and probeEach eye’s profound and glorious globe,Till they detect the kindred sparkIn those depths so dear and dark, {580}Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,Circling over the midnight sea.And on that round young cheek of thineI make them recognize the tinge,As when of the costly scarlet wineThey drip so much as will impingeAnd spread in a thinnest scale afloatOne thick gold drop from the olive’s coatOver a silver plate whose sheenStill through the mixture shall be seen. {590}For so I prove thee, to one and all,Fit, when my people ope their breast,To see the sign, and hear the call,And take the vow, and stand the testWhich adds one more child to the rest—When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,And the world is left outside.For there is probation to decree,And many and long must the trials beThou shalt victoriously endure, {600}If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;Like a jewel-finder’s fierce assayOf the prize he dug from its mountain tomb,—Let once the vindicating rayLeap out amid the anxious gloom,And steel and fire have done their part,And the prize falls on its finder’s heart;So, trial after trial past,Wilt thou fall at the very lastBreathless, half in trance {610}With the thrill of the great deliverance,Into our arms forevermore;And thou shalt know, those arms once curledAbout thee, what we knew before,How love is the only good in the world.Henceforth be loved as heart can love,Or brain devise, or hand approve!Stand up, look below,It is our life at thy feet we throwTo step with into light and joy; {620}Not a power of life but we employTo satisfy thy nature’s want;Art thou the tree that props the plant,Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree—Canst thou help us, must we help thee?If any two creatures grew into one,They would do more than the world has done;Though each apart were never so weak,Ye vainly through the world should seekFor the knowledge and the might {630}Which in such union grew their right:So, to approach at least that end,And blend,—as much as may be, blendThee with us or us with thee,—As climbing plant or propping tree,Shall some one deck thee over and down,Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?Fix his heart’s fruit for thy garland crown,Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,Die on thy boughs and disappear {640}While not a leaf of thine is sere?Or is the other fate in store,And art thou fitted to adore,To give thy wondrous self away,And take a stronger nature’s sway?I foresee and could foretellThy future portion, sure and well:But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,Let them say what thou shalt do!Only be sure thy daily life, {650}In its peace or in its strife,Never shall be unobserved;We pursue thy whole career,And hope for it, or doubt, or fear,—Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,We are beside thee in all thy ways,With our blame, with our praise,Our shame to feel, our pride to show,Glad, angry—but indifferent, no!Whether it be thy lot to go, {660}For the good of us all, where the haters meetIn the crowded city’s horrible street;Or thou step alone through the morassWhere never sound yet wasSave the dry quick clap of the stork’s bill,For the air is still, and the water still,When the blue breast of the dipping cootDives under, and all is mute.So at the last shall come old age,Decrepit as befits that stage; {670}How else wouldst thou retire apartWith the hoarded memories of thy heart,And gather all the very leastOf the fragments of life’s earlier feast,Let fall through eagerness to findThe crowning dainties yet behind?Ponder on the entire pastLaid together thus at last,When the twilight helps to fuseThe first fresh with the faded hues, {680}And the outline of the whole,As round eve’s shades their framework roll,Grandly fronts for once thy soul.And then as, ‘mid the dark, a gleamOf yet another morning breaks,And like the hand which ends a dream,Death, with the might of his sunbeam,Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,Then”—Ay, then indeed something would happen!But what? For here her voice changed like a bird’s; {690}There grew more of the music and less of the words;Had Jacynth only been by me to clap penTo paper and put you down every syllableWith those clever clerkly fingers,All I’ve forgotten as well as what lingersIn this old brain of mine that’s but ill ableTo give you even this poor versionOf the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering!—More fault of those who had the hammeringOr prosody into me and syntax, {700}And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!But to return from this excursion,—Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,The peace most deep and the charm completest,There came, shall I say, a snap—And the charm vanished!And my sense returned, so strangely banished,And, starting as from a nap,I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I {710}Down from the casement, round to the portal,Another minute and I had entered,—When the door opened, and more than mortalStood, with a face where to my mind centredAll beauties I ever saw or shall see,The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.She was so different, happy and beautiful,I felt at once that all was best,And that I had nothing to do, for the rest,But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful. {720}Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;I saw the glory of her eye,And the brow’s height and the breast’s expanding,And I was hers to live or to die.As for finding what she wanted,You know God Almighty grantedSuch little signs should serve wild creaturesTo tell one another all their desires,So that each knows what his friend requires,And does its bidding without teachers. {730}I preceded her; the croneFollowed silent and alone;I spoke to her, but she merely jabberedIn the old style; both her eyes had slunkBack to their pits; her stature shrunk;In short, the soul in its body sunkLike a blade sent home to its scabbard.We descended, I preceding;Crossed the court with nobody heeding;All the world was at the chase, {740}The court-yard like a desert-place,The stable emptied of its small fry;I saddled myself the very palfreyI remember patting while it carried her,The day she arrived and the Duke married her.And, do you know, though it’s easy deceivingOne’s self in such matters, I can’t help believingThe lady had not forgotten it either,And knew the poor devil so much beneath herWould have been only too glad, for her service, {750}To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,But, unable to pay proper duty where owing it,Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it.For though, the moment I began settingHis saddle on my own nag of Berold’s begetting(Not that I meant to be obtrusive),She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,By a single rapid finger’s lifting,And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,And a little shake of the head, refused me,— {760}I say, although she never used me,Yet when she was mounted, the gypsy behind her,And I ventured to remind her,I suppose with a voice of less steadinessThan usual, for my feeling exceeded me,—Something to the effect that I was in readinessWhenever God should please she needed me,—Then, do you know, her face looked down on meWith a look that placed a crown on me,And she felt in her bosom,—mark, her bosom— {770}And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,Dropped me. . .ah! had it been a purseOf silver, my friend, or gold that’s worse,Why, you see, as soon as I found myselfSo understood,—that a true heart so may gainSuch a reward,—I should have gone home again,Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!It was a little plait of hairSuch as friends in a convent makeTo wear, each for the other’s sake,— {780}This, see, which at my breast I wear,Ever did (rather to Jacynth’s grudgment),And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.And then,—and then,—to cut short,—this is idle,These are feelings it is not good to foster,—I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,And the palfrey bounded,—and so we lost her.
— 501. you: ethical dative; there are several examples in the poem, and of “me”; see especially v. 876.
586. impinge: to strike or fall upon or against; in the following passage used ethically:—
“For I find this black mark impinge the man, That he believes in just the vile of life.”—The Ring and the Book: The Pope, v. 511.
567-689. “When higher laws draw the spirit out of itself into the life of others; when grief has waked in it, not a self-centred despair, but a divine sympathy; when it looks from the narrow limits of its own suffering to the largeness of the world and the sorrows it can lighten, we can dimly apprehend that it has taken flight and has found its freedom in a region whither earth-bound spirits cannot follow it. Surely the Gypsy’s message was this—if the Duchess would leave her own troubles and throw herself into the life of others, she would be free. None can give true sympathy but those who have suffered and learnt to love, therefore she must be proved,—‘Fit when my people ope their breast’, etc. (vv. 592-601). Passing from the bondage she has endured she will still have trials, but the old pain will have no power to touch her. She has learnt all it can teach, and the world will be richer for it. The Gypsy Queen will not foretell what her future life may be; the true powers of self-less love are not yet gauged, and the power of the union of those that truly love has never been tried. ‘If any two creatures grew into one’, etc. (vv. 626-631). Love at its highest is not yet known to us, but the passionate eyes of the Duchess tell us it will not be a life of quiescence. Giving herself out freely for the good of all she can never be alone again,—‘We are beside thee in all thy ways’. The great company of those who need her, the gypsy band of all human claims. Death to such a life is but ‘the hand that ends a dream’. What was to come after not even the Gypsy Queen could tell.”— Mrs. Owen (‘Browning Soc. Papers’, Part IV. p. 52*).
712. had: past subj., should have.
753. that pitiful method: i.e., patting her palfrey.
784. And then,—and then: his feelings overcome him.
16.When the liquor’s out why clink the cannikin?I did think to describe you the panic inThe redoubtable breast of our master the manikin, {790}And what was the pitch of his mother’s yellowness,How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-ribClean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness—But it seems such child’s play,What they said and did with the lady away!And to dance on, when we’ve lost the music,Always made me—and no doubt makes you—sick.Nay, to my mind, the world’s face looked so sternAs that sweet form disappeared through the postern, {800}She that kept it in constant good humor,It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.But the world thought otherwise and went on,And my head’s one that its spite was spent on:Thirty years are fled since that morning,And with them all my head’s adorning.Nor did the old Duchess die outright,As you expect, of suppressed spite,The natural end of every adderNot suffered to empty its poison-bladder: {810}But she and her son agreed, I take it,That no one should touch on the story to wake it,For the wound in the Duke’s pride rankled fiery;So, they made no search and small inquiry:And when fresh gypsies have paid us a visit, I’veNoticed the couple were never inquisitive,But told them they’re folks the Duke don’t want here,And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,And the old one was in the young one’s stead, {820}And took, in her place, the household’s head,And a blessed time the household had of it!And were I not, as a man may say, cautiousHow I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,I could favor you with sundry touchesOf the paint-smutches with which the DuchessHeightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness(To get on faster) until at last herCheek grew to be one master-plasterOf mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse: {830}In short, she grew from scalp to udderJust the object to make you shudder.
— 793. Carib: a Caribbee, a native of the Caribbean islands.
17.You’re my friend—What a thing friendship is, world without end!How it gives the heart and soul a stir-upAs if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids—Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; {840}Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,Gives your life’s hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubtsWhether to run on or stop short, and guaranteesAge is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease.I have seen my little lady once more,Jacynth, the gypsy, Berold, and the rest of it,For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:And now it is made—why, my heart’s blood, that went trickle,Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, {850}Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,And genially floats me about the giblets.I’ll tell you what I intend to do:I must see this fellow his sad life through—He is our Duke, after all,And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.My father was born here, and I inheritHis fame, a chain he bound his son with;Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,But there’s no mine to blow up and get done with: {860}So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,Some day or other, his head in a morionAnd breast in a hauberk, his heels he’ll kick up,Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,And its leathern sheath lie o’ergrown with a blue crust,Then I shall scrape together my earnings;For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes, {870}And our children all went the way of the roses:It’s a long lane that knows no turnings.One needs but little tackle to travel in;So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:And for a staff, what beats the javelinWith which his boars my father pinned you?And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful. {880}What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all;Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:When we mind labor, then only, we’re too old—What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees(Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil),I hope to get safely out of the turmoilAnd arrive one day at the land of the gypsies,And find my lady, or hear the last news of herFrom some old thief and son of Lucifer, {890}His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,Sunburned all over like an Aethiop.And when my Cotnar begins to operateAnd the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,I shall drop in with—as if by accident—“You never knew, then, how it all ended,What fortune good or bad attendedThe little lady your Queen befriended?”—And when that’s told me, what’s remaining? {900}This world’s too hard for my explaining.The same wise judge of matters equineWho still preferred some slim four-year-oldTo the big-boned stock of mighty Berold,And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,He also must be such a lady’s scorner!Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau:Now up, now down, the world’s one seesaw.—So, I shall find out some snug cornerUnder a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, {910}Turn myself round and bid the world goodnight;And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet’s blowingWakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)To a world where will be no further throwingPearls before swine that can’t value them. Amen!
— 845. I have seen: i.e., in imagination, while telling the story.
864. morion: a sort of helmet.
884. What age had Methusalem: the old man forgets his Bible.
906. He also must be such a lady’s scorner: he who is such a poor judge of horses and wines.
910. Orson the wood-knight (Fr. ‘ourson’, a small bear): twin-brother of Valentine, and son of Bellisant. The brothers were born in a wood near Orleans, and Orson was carried off by a bear, which suckled him with her cubs. When he grew up, he became the terror of France, and was called “The Wild Man of the Forest”. Ultimately he was reclaimed by his brother Valentine, overthrew the Green Knight, his rival in love, and married Fezon, daughter of the duke of Savary, in Aquitaine.—‘Romance of Valentine and Orson’ (15th cent.). Brewer’s ‘Reader’s Handbook’ and ‘Dictionary of Phrase and Fable’.
1.I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,Since now at length my fate I know,Since nothing all my love avails,Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,Since this was written and needs must be—My whole heart rises up to blessYour name in pride and thankfulness!Take back the hope you gave,—I claimOnly a memory of the same,—And this beside, if you will not blame,Your leave for one more last ride with me.
— St. 1. Browning has no moping melancholy lovers. His lovers generally reflect his own manliness; and when their passion is unrequited, they acknowledge the absolute value of love to their own souls. As Mr. James Thomson, in his ‘Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning’, remarks (‘B. Soc. Papers’, Part II., p. 246), “Browning’s passion is as intense, noble, and manly as his intellect is profound and subtle, and therefore original. I would especially insist on its manliness, because our present literature abounds in so-called passion which is but half-sincere or wholly insincere sentimentalism, if it be not thinly disguised prurient lust, and in so-called pathos which is maudlin to nauseousness. The great unappreciated poet last cited {George Meredith} has defined passion as ‘noble strength on fire’; and this is the true passion of great natures and great poets; while sentimentalism is ignoble weakness dallying with fire; . . . Browning’s passion is of utter self-sacrifice, self-annihilation, self-vindicated by its irresistible intensity. So we read it in ‘Time’s Revenges’, so in the scornful condemnation of the weak lovers in ‘The Statue and the Bust’, so in ‘In a Balcony’, and ‘Two in the Campagna’, with its
“‘Infinite passion and the painOf finite hearts that yearn.’
Is the love rejected, unreturned? No weak and mean upbraidings of the beloved, no futile complaints; a solemn resignation to immitigable Fate; intense gratitude for inspiring love to the unloving beloved. So in ‘A Serenade at the Villa’; so in ‘One Way of Love’, with its
“‘My whole life long I learned to love.This hour my utmost art I proveAnd speak my passion.—Heaven or Hell?She will not give me Heaven? ‘Tis well!Lose who may—I still can say,Those who win Heaven, blest are they!’
So in ‘The Last Ride Together’, with its
“‘I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,’” etc.
2.My mistress bent that brow of hers;Those deep dark eyes where pride demursWhen pity would be softening through,Fixed me a breathing-while or twoWith life or death in the balance: right!The blood replenished me again;My last thought was at least not vain:I and my mistress, side by side,Shall be together, breathe and ride,So, one day more am I deified.Who knows but the world may end to-night?
3.Hush! if you saw some western cloudAll billowy-bosomed, over-bowedBy many benedictions—sun’sAnd moon’s and evening-star’s at once—And so, you, looking and loving best,Conscious grew, your passion drewCloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,Down on you, near and yet more near,Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!—Thus leant she and lingered—joy and fearThus lay she a moment on my breast.
4.Then we began to ride. My soulSmoothed itself out, a long-cramped scrollFreshening and fluttering in the wind.Past hopes already lay behind.What need to strive with a life awry?Had I said that, had I done this,So might I gain, so might I miss.Might she have loved me? just as wellShe might have hated, who can tell!Where had I been now if the worst befell?And here we are riding, she and I.
5.Fail I alone, in words and deeds?Why, all men strive and who succeeds?We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,Saw other regions, cities new,As the world rushed by on either side.I thought,—All labor, yet no lessBear up beneath their unsuccess.Look at the end of work, contrastThe petty done, the undone vast,This present of theirs with the hopeful past!I hoped she would love me: here we ride.
6.What hand and brain went ever paired?What heart alike conceived and dared?What act proved all its thought had been?What will but felt the fleshy screen?We ride and I see her bosom heave.There’s many a crown for who can reach.Ten lines, a statesman’s life in each!The flag stuck on a heap of bones,A soldier’s doing! what atones?They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.My riding is better, by their leave.
7.What does it all mean, poet? Well,Your brains beat into rhythm, you tellWhat we felt only; you expressedYou hold things beautiful the best,And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.‘Tis something, nay ‘tis much: but then,Have you yourself what’s best for men?Are you—poor, sick, old ere your time—Nearer one whit your own sublimeThan we who have never turned a rhyme?Sing, riding’s a joy! For me, I ride.
8.And you, great sculptor—so, you gaveA score of years to Art, her slave,And that’s your Venus, whence we turnTo yonder girl that fords the burn!You acquiesce, and shall I repine?What, man of music, you grown grayWith notes and nothing else to say,Is this your sole praise from a friend,“Greatly his opera’s strains intend,But in music we know how fashions end!”I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.
9.Who knows what’s fit for us? Had fateProposed bliss here should sublimateMy being—had I signed the bond—Still one must lead some life beyond,Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried.This foot once planted on the goal,This glory-garland round my soul,Could I descry such? Try and test!I sink back shuddering from the quest.Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.
10.And yet—she has not spoke so long!What if heaven be that, fair and strongAt life’s best, with our eyes upturnedWhither life’s flower is first discerned,We, fixed so, ever should so abide?What if we still ride on, we two,With life forever old yet new,Changed not in kind but in degree,The instant made eternity,—And heaven just prove that I and sheRide, ride together, forever ride?
1.How well I know what I mean to doWhen the long dark autumn evenings come;And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life’s November too!—St. 1, v. 3. is: present used for the future, shall then be.
2.I shall be found by the fire, suppose,O’er a great wise book, as beseemeth age;While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!—St. 2. Not verse now, only prose: he shall have reachedthe “years which bring the philosophic mind”.
3.Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,“There he is at it, deep in Greek:Now then, or never, out we slipTo cut from the hazels by the creekA mainmast for our ship!”
4.I shall be at it indeed, my friends!Greek puts already on either sideSuch a branch-work forth as soon extendsTo a vista opening far and wide,And I pass out where it ends.—St. 4. Greek puts already such a branch-work forth as will soon extendto a vista opening far and wide, and he will pass out where it endsand retrace the paths he has trod through life’s pleasant wood.
5.The outside frame, like your hazel-trees—But the inside-archway widens fast,And a rarer sort succeeds to these,And we slope to Italy at lastAnd youth, by green degrees.
6.I follow wherever I am led,Knowing so well the leader’s hand:Oh woman-country, wooed not wed,Loved all the more by earth’s male-lands,Laid to their hearts instead!—St. 5, 6. He will pass first through his childhood, in England,represented by the hazels, and on, by green degrees, to youth and Italy,where, knowing so well the leader’s hand, and assured as to whithershe will conduct him, he will follow wherever he is led.
7.Look at the ruined chapel againHalf-way up in the Alpine gorge!Is that a tower, I point you plain,Or is it a mill, or an iron forgeBreaks solitude in vain?—St. 7. Look: to be construed with “follow”.
8.A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;The woods are round us, heaped and dim;From slab to slab how it slips and springs,The thread of water single and slim,Through the ravage some torrent brings!
9.Does it feed the little lake below?That speck of white just on its margeIs Pella; see, in the evening-glow,How sharp the silver spear-heads chargeWhen Alp meets heaven in snow!
10.On our other side is the straight-up rock;And a path is kept ‘twixt the gorge and itBy bowlder-stones, where lichens mockThe marks on a moth, and small ferns fitTheir teeth to the polished block.
11.Oh the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,And thorny balls, each three in one,The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!For the drop of the woodland fruit’s begun,These early November hours,
12.That crimson the creeper’s leaf acrossLike a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,O’er a shield else gold from rim to boss,And lay it for show on the fairy-cuppedElf-needled mat of moss,
13.By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulgedLast evening—nay, in to-day’s first dewYon sudden coral nipple bulged,Where a freaked fawn-colored flaky crewOf toad-stools peep indulged.
14.And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridgeThat takes the turn to a range beyond,Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge,Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pondDanced over by the midge.
15.The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,Blackish-gray and mostly wet;Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dike.See here again, how the lichens fretAnd the roots of the ivy strike!
16.Poor little place, where its one priest comesOn a festa-day, if he comes at all,To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,Gathered within that precinct smallBy the dozen ways one roams—
17.To drop from the charcoal-burners’ huts,Or climb from the hemp-dressers’ low shed,Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spreadTheir gear on the rock’s bare juts.
18.It has some pretension too, this front,With its bit of fresco half-moon-wiseSet over the porch, Art’s early wont:‘Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,But has borne the weather’s brunt—
19.Not from the fault of the builder, though,For a pent-house properly projectsWhere three carved beams make a certain show,Dating—good thought of our architect’s—‘Five, six, nine, he lets you know.
20.And all day long a bird sings there,And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;The place is silent and aware;It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,But that is its own affair.—St. 20. aware: self-conscious.“. . .in green ruins, in the desolate wallsOf antique palaces, where Man hath been,
There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.”—Hood’s ‘Sonnet on Silence’.
21.My perfect wife, my Leonor,O heart, my own, Oh eyes, mine too,Whom else could I dare look backward for,With whom beside should I dare pursueThe path gray heads abhor?
— St. 21. He digresses here, and does not return to the subject till the 31st stanza, “What did I say?—that a small bird sings”. The path gray heads abhor: this verse and the following stanza are, with most readers, the CRUX of the poem; “gray heads” must be understood with some restriction: many gray heads, not all, abhor —gray heads who went along through their flowery youth as if it had no limit, and without insuring, in Love’s true season, the happiness of their lives beyond youth’s limit, “life’s safe hem”, which to cross without such insurance, is often fatal. And these, when they reach old age, shun retracing the path which led to the gulf wherein their youth dropped.
22.For it leads to a crag’s sheer edge with them;Youth, flowery all the way, there stops—Not they; age threatens and they contemn,Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,One inch from our life’s safe hem!
23.With me, youth led. . .I will speak now,No longer watch you as you sitReading by firelight, that great browAnd the spirit-small hand propping it,Mutely, my heart knows how——St. 23. With me: the speaker continues,youth led:—we are told whither, in St. 25, v. 4, “to an ageso blest that, by its side, youth seems the waste instead”.I will speak now: up to this point his reflections have been silent,his wife, the while, reading, mutely, by fire-light,his heart knows how, that is, with her heart secretly responsiveto his own. The mutual responsiveness of their hearts is expressedin St. 24.
24.When, if I think but deep enough,You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;And you, too, find without rebuffResponse your soul seeks many a time,Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.
25.My own, confirm me! If I treadThis path back, is it not in prideTo think how little I dreamed it ledTo an age so blest that, by its side,Youth seems the waste instead?
26.My own, see where the years conduct!At first, ‘twas something our two soulsShould mix as mists do; each is suckedIn each now: on, the new stream rolls,Whatever rocks obstruct.
27.Think, when our one soul understandsThe great Word which makes all things new,When earth breaks up and heaven expands,How will the change strike me and youIn the house not made with hands?