1855Karshish, 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 spaceThat 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 cracksBefall the flesh through too much stress and strain,      10Whereby the wily vapor fain would slipBack 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 homeSends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)Three samples of true snakestone—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.                   20My journeyings were brought to Jericho:Thus I resume. Who studious in our artShall count a little labor un-repaid?I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and boneOn many a flinty furlong of this land.Also, the country-side is all on fireWith rumors of a marching hitherward:Some say Vespasian comes, some, his son.A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:               30I 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 thenceA man with plague-sores at the third degreeRuns till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip                   40And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.A viscid choler is observableIn tertians, I was nearly bold to say;And falling-sickness hath a happier cureThan our school wots of: there's a spider hereWeaves 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                         50Blown 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-tragacanthScales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-diseaseConfounds me, crossing so with leprosy—Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar—            60But 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 elseThe Man had something in the look of him—His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.          70So, pardon if—(lest presently I loseIn the great press of novelty at handThe 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—subinducedBy epilepsy, at the turning-point                         80Of trance prolonged unduly some three days:When, by the exhibition of some drugOr spell, exorcisation, stroke of artUnknown to me and which 't were well to know,The evil thing out-breaking all at onceLeft 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 inscribeWhatever it was minded on the wall                        90So plainly at that vantage, as it were,(First come, first served) that nothing subsequentAttaineth to erase those fancy-scrawlsThe just-returned and new-established soulHath gotten now so thoroughly by heartThat henceforth she will read or these or none.And first—the man's own firm conviction restsThat he was dead (in fact they buried him)—That he was dead and then restored to lifeBy 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,                        110As much, indeed, beyond the common healthAs he were made and put aside to show.Think, could we penetrate by any drugAnd 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,               120Now 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 sameWith straitened habits and with tastes starved small,And take at once to his impoverished brainThe sudden element that changes things,                  130That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his handAnd 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 befitsThe 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—                   140Heaven 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 armamentsAssembled to besiege his city now,And of the passing of a mule with gourds—'T is one! Then take it on the other side,Speak of some trifling fact, he will gaze rapt           150With stupor at its very littleness,(Far as I see) as if in that indeedHe caught prodigious import, whole results;And so will turn to us the bystandersIn 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, lookFor scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,                160Or pretermission of the daily craft!While a word, gesture, glance from that same childAt play or in the school or laid asleep,Will startle him to an agony of fear,Exasperation, just as like. DemandThe reason why—"'t is but a word," object—"A gesture"—he regards thee as our lordWho lived there in the pyramid alone,Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,We both would unadvisedly recite                         170Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,Able to bid the sun throb wide and burstAll into stars, as suns grown old are wont.Thou and the child have each a veil alikeThrown o'er your heads, from under which ye bothStretch your blind hands and trifle with a matchOver 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              180Of 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 impulsesSudden 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."            190And oft the man's soul springs into his faceAs if he saw again and heard againHis sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.Something, a word, a tick o' the blood withinAdmonishes: then back he sinks at onceTo ashes, who was very fire before,In sedulous recurrence to his tradeWhereby he earneth him the daily bread;And studiously the humbler for that pride,Professedly the faultier that he knows                   200God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.Indeed the especial marking of the manIs prone submission to the heavenly will—Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the lastFor that same death which must restore his beingTo equilibrium, body loosening soulDivorced even now by premature full growth:He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to liveSo long as God please, and just how God please.          210He even seeketh not to please God more(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.Hence, I perceive not he affects to preachThe 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" reassureth him.I probed the sore as thy disciple should:                220"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessnessSufficeth thee, when Rome is on her marchTo 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 brutesAnd birds—how say I? flowers of the field—As a wise workman recognizes tools                      230In 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 feignedTo be an ignoramus in our artAccording to some preconceived design,And happed to hear the land's practitionersSteeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,                240Prattle fantastically on disease,Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!Thou wilt object—Why have I not ere thisSought out the sage himself, the NazareneWho wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,Conferring with the frankness that befits?Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leechPerished in a tumult many years ago,Accused—our learning's fate—of wizardry,Rebellion, to the setting up a rule                      250And creed prodigious as described to me.His death, which happened when the earthquake fell(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the lossTo occult learning in our lord the sageWho 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;                      260But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,In mere respect for any good man's fame.(And after all, our patient LazarusIs 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 awhile!               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 LazarusWho saith—but why all this of what he saith?Why write of trivial matters, things of priceCalling at every moment for remark?I noticed on the margin of a pool                        280Blue-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 seemUnduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!Nor I myself discern in what is writGood cause for the peculiar interestAnd awe indeed this man has touched me with.Perhaps the journey's end, the wearinessHad wrought upon me first. I met him thus:              290I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hillsLike an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there cameA moon made like a face with certain spotsMultiform, manifold and menacing:Then a wind rose behind me. So we metIn this old sleepy town at unaware,The man and I. I send thee what is writ.Regard it as a chance, a matter riskedTo this ambiguous Syrian—he may lose,Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.               300Jerusalem's repose shall make amendsFor 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 voiceSaying, "0 heart I made, a heart beats here!Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine,But love I gave thee, with myself to love,               310And thou must love me who have died for thee!"The madman saith He said so: it is strange.NOTES"An Epistle" gives the observations and opinions of Karshish, theArab physician, writing to Abib, his master, upon meeting withLazarus after he has been raised from the dead. Well versed inEastern medical lore, he tries to explain the extraordinaryphenomenon according to his knowledge. He attributes Lazarus'version of the miracle to mania induced by trance, and the meansused by the Nazarene physician to awaken him, and strengthens hisview by describing the strange state of mind in which he findsLazarus—like a child with no appreciation of the relative values ofthings. Through his renewal of life he had caught a glimpse of itfrom the infinite point of view, and lives now only with the desireto please God. His sole active quality is a great love for allhumanity, his impatience manifests itself only at sin and ignorance,and is quickly curbed. Karshish, not able to realize this new planeof vision in which had been revealed to Lazarus the equal worth ofall things in the divine plan, is incapable of understandingLazarus; but in spite of his attempt to make light of the case, heis deeply impressed by the character of Lazarus, and has besides ahardly acknowledged desire to believe in this revelation, told of byLazarus, of God as Love. Professor Corson says of this poem: "Itmay be said to polarize the idea, so often presented in Browning'spoetry, that doubt is a condition of the vitality of faith."17. Snakestone: a name given to any substance used as a remedy forsnake-bites; for example, some are of chalk, some of animalcharcoal, and some of vegetable substances.28. Vespasian: Nero's general who marched against Palestine in 66,and was succeeded in the command, when he was proclaimed Emperor(70-79), by his son, Titus.29. Black lynx: the Syrian lynx is distinguished by black ears.43. Tertians: fevers, recurring every third day; hence the name.44. Falling-sickness: epilepsy. Caesar's disease ("Julius Caesar,"I. 2, 258).45. There's a spider here: "The habits of the aranead heredescribed point very clearly to some one of the Wandering group,which stalk their prey in the open field or in diverslurking-places, and are distinguished by this habit from the othergreat group, known as the Sedentary spiders, because they sit orhang upon their webs and capture their prey by means of silkensnares. The next line is not determinative of the species, forthere is a great number of spiders any one of which might bedescribed as 'Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back.' We havea little Saltigrade or Jumping spider, known as the Zebra spider(Epiblemum scenicum), which is found in Europe, and I believe alsoin Syria. One often sees this species and its congeners upon theledges of rocks, the edges of tombstones, the walls of buildings,and like situations, hunting their prey, which they secure byjumping upon it. So common is the Zebra spider, that I might thinkthat Browning referred to it, if I were not in doubt whether hewould express the stripes of white upon its ash-gray abdomen by theword 'mottles.' However, there arc other spiders belonging to thesame tribe (Saltigrades) that really are mottled. There are alsospiders known as the Lycosids or Wolf spiders or Ground spiders,which are often of an ash-gray color, and marked with little whitishspots after the manner of Browning's Syrian species. Perhaps thepoet had one of these in mind, at least he accurately describestheir manner of seeking prey. The next line is an interrupted one,'Take five and drop them. . . .' Take five what? Five of theseash-gray mottled spiders? Certainly. But what can be meant by theexpression 'drop them'? This opens up to us a strange chapter inhuman superstition. It was long a prevalent idea that the spider invarious forms possessed some occult power of healing, and menadministered it internally or applied it externally as a cure formany diseases. Pliny gives a number of such remedies. A certainspider applied in a piece of cloth, or another one ('a white spiderwith very elongated thin legs'), beaten up in oil is said by thisancient writer upon Natural History to form an ointment for theeyes. Similarly, 'the thick pulp of a spider's body, mixed with theoil of roses, is used for the ears.' Sir Matthew Lister, who wasindeed the father of English araneology, is quoted in Dr. James'sMedical Dictionary as using the distilled water of boiled blackspiders as an excellent cure for wounds." (Dr. H. C. McCook inPoet-lore, Nov., 1889.)53. Gum-tragacanth: yielded by the leguminous shrub, Astragalustragacantha.60. Zoar: the only one that was spared of the five cities of theplain (Genesis 14. 2).108. Lazarus . . . fifty years of age: in The Academy, Sept. 16,1896, Dr. Richard Garnett says: "Browning commits an oversight, itseems to me, in making Lazarus fifty years of age at the eve of thesiege of Jerusalem, circa 68 A. D." The miracle is supposed to havebeen wrought about 33 A. D., and Lazarus would then have been onlyfifteen, although according to tradition he was thirty when he wasraised from the dead, and lived only thirty years after. Upon thisProf. Charles B. Wright comments in Poet-lore, April, 1897: "Iincline to think that the oversight is not Browning's. Let us standby the tradition and the resulting age of sixty-five. . . . Karshishis simply stating his professional judgment. Lazarus is given anage suited to his appearance—he seems a man of fifty. The yearshave touched him lightly since 'heaven opened to his soul.'. . . And that marvellous physical freshness deceives the very leechhimself."177. Greek fire: used by the Byzantine Greeks in warfare, firstagainst the Saracens at the siege of Constantinople in 673 A. D.Therefore an anachronism in this poem. Liquid fire was, however,known to the ancients, as Assyrian bas-reliefs testify. Greek firewas made possibly of naphtha, saltpetre, and sulphur, and was thrownupon the enemy from copper tubes; or pledgets of tow were dipped init and attached to arrows.281. Blue-flowering borage: (Borago officianalis). The ancientsdeemed this plant one of the four "cordial flowers," for cheeringthe spirits, the others being the rose, violet, and alkanet. Plinysays it produces very exhilarating effects.
There's heaven above, and night by nightI look right through its gorgeous roof;No suns and moons though e'er so brightAvail to stop me; splendor-proofI keep the broods of stars aloof:For I intend to get to God,For 't is to God I speed so fast,For in God's breast, my own abode,Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed,I lay my spirit down at last.                           10I lie where I have always lain,God smiles as he has always smiled;Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,Ere stars were thundergirt, or piledThe heavens, God thought on me his child;Ordained a life for me, arrayedIts circumstances every oneTo the minutest; ay, God saidThis head this hand should rest uponThus, ere he fashioned star or sun.                     20And having thus created me,Thus rooted me, he bade me grow,Guiltless forever, like a treeThat buds and blooms, nor seeks to knowThe law by which it prospers so:But sure that thought and word and deedAll go to swell his love for me,Me, made because that love had needOf something irreversiblyPledged solely its content to be.                       30Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend,No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop!I have God's warrant, could I blendAll hideous sins, as in a cup,To drink the mingled venoms up;Secure my nature will convertThe draught to blossoming gladness fast:While sweet dews turn to the gourd's hurt,And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,As from the first its lot was cast.                     40For as I lie, smiled on, full-fedBy unexhausted power to bless,I gaze below on hell's fierce bed,And those its waves of flame oppress,Swarming in ghastly wretchedness;Whose life on earth aspired to beOne altar-smoke, so pure!—to winIf not love like God's love for me,At least to keep his anger in;And all their striving turned to sin.                   50Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown whiteWith prayer, the broken-hearted nun,The martyr, the wan acolyte,The incense-swinging child—undoneBefore God fashioned star or sun!God, whom I praise; how could I praise,If such as I might understand,Make out and reckon on his ways,And bargain for his love, and stand,Paying a price, at his right hand?                        60NOTES"Johannes Agricola in Meditation" presents the doctrine ofpredestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whoseconviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of adivine revelation. Those elected for God's love can do nothing toweaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it isnot his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose wayshe could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.Johannes Agricola: (1492-1566), Luther's secretary, 1519, afterwardin conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Lutherantinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as ofno use under the Gospel dispensation. In a note accompanying thefirst publication of this poem, Browning quotes from "The Dictionaryof All Religions" (1704): "They say that good works do not further,nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin,that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., aresins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace beingonce assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that Goddoth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is noevidence of justification." Though many antinomians taught thus,says George Willis Cooke in his "Browning Guide Book," it does notcorrectly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality heldmoral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but forguidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principlesand motives necessary.
I could have painted pictures like that youth'sYe praise so. How my soul springs up! No barStayed me—ah, thought which saddens while it soothes!—Never did fate forbid me, star by star,To outburst on your night with all my giftOf fires from God: nor would my flesh have shrunkFrom seconding my soul, with eyes upliftAnd wide to heaven, or, straight like thunder, sunkTo the centre, of an instant; or aroundTurned calmly and inquisitive, to scan                  10The license and the limit, space and bound,Allowed to truth made visible in man.And, like that youth ye praise so, all I saw,Over the canvas could my hand have flung,Each face obedient to its passion's law,Each passion clear proclaimed without a tongue;Whether Hope rose at once in all the blood,A-tiptoe for the blessing of embrace,Or Rapture drooped the eyes, as when her broodPull down the nesting dove's heart to its place;        20Or Confidence lit swift the forehead up,And locked the mouth fast, like a castle braved—0 human faces, hath it spilt, my cup?What did ye give me that I have not saved?Nor will I say I have not dreamed (how well!)Of going—I, in each new picture—forth,As, making new hearts beat and bosoms swell,To Pope or Kaiser, East, West, South, or North,Bound for the calmly-satisfied great State,Or glad aspiring little burgh, it went,                 30Flowers cast upon the car which bore the freight,Through old streets named afresh from the event,Till it reached home, where learned age should greetMy face, and youth, the star not yet distinctAbove his hair, lie learning at my feet!—Oh, thus to live, I and my picture, linkedWith love about, and praise, till life should end,And then not go to heaven, but linger here,Here on my earth, earth's every man my friend—The thought grew frightful, 't was so wildly dear!      40But a voice changed it. Glimpses of such sightsHave scared me, like the revels through a doorOf some strange house of idols at its rites!This world seemed not the world it was before:Mixed with my loving trusting ones, there trooped. . . Who summoned those cold faces that begunTo press on me and judge me? Though I stoopedShrinking, as from the soldiery a nun,They drew me forth, and spite of me . . . enough!These buy and sell our pictures, take and give,         50Count them for garniture and household-stuff,And where they live needs must our pictures liveAnd see their faces, listen to their prate,Partakers of their daily pettiness,Discussed of—"This I love, or this I hate,This likes me more, and this affects me less!"Wherefore I chose my portion. If at whilesMy heart sinks, as monotonous I paintThese endless cloisters and eternal aislesWith the same series. Virgin, Babe and Saint,          60With the same cold calm beautiful regard—At least no merchant traffics in my heart;The sanctuary's gloom at least shall wardVain tongues from where my pictures stand apart;Only prayer breaks the silence of the shrineWhile, blackening in the daily candle-smoke,They moulder on the damp wall's travertine,'Mid echoes the light footstep never woke.So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!O youth, men praise so—holds their praise its worth?   70Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?NOTES"Pictor Ignotus" is a reverie characteristic of a monastic painterof the Renaissance who recognizes, in the genius of a youth whosepictures are praised, a gift akin to his own, but which he has neverso exercised, spite of the joy such free human expression andrecognition of his power would have given him, because he could notbear to submit his art to worldly contact. So he has chosen to sinkhis name in unknown service to the Church, and to devote his fancyto pure and beautiful but cold and monotonous repetitions of sacredthemes. His gentle regret that his own pictures will moulderunvisited is half wonderment that the youth can endure the sullyingof his work by secular fame.67. Travertine: a white limestone, the name being a corruption of[Tiburtinus], from [Tibur] , now Tivoli, near Rome, whence thisstone comes.
1 am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!You need not clap your torches to my face.Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,And here you catch me at an alley's endWhere sportive ladies leave their doors ajar?The Carmine's my cloister: hunt it up,Do—harry out, if you must show your zeal,Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole,And nip each softling of a wee white mouse,               10[Weke], [weke], that's crept to keep him company!Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll takeYour hand away that's fiddling on my throat,And please to know me likewise. Who am I?Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friendThree streets off—he's a certain . . . how d'ye call?Master—a . . . Cosimo of the Medici,I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best!Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged,How you affected such a gullet's-gripe!                   20But you, sir, it concerns you that your knavesPick up a manner nor discredit you:Zooks, are we pilchards, that they sweep the streetsAnd count fair prize what comes into their net?He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends.Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs goDrink out this quarter-florin to the healthOf the munificent House that harbors me(And many more beside, lads! more beside!)                30And all's come square again. I'd like his face—His, elbowing on his comrade in the doorWith the pike and lantern—for the slave that holdsJohn Baptist's head a-dangle by the hairWith one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say)And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped!It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk,A wood-coal or the like? or you should see!Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so.What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down,                40You know them and they take you? like enough!I saw the proper twinkle in your eye—'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first.Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.Here's spring come, and the nights one makes up bandsTo roam the town and sing out carnival,And I've been three weeks shut within my mew,A-painting for the great man, saints and saintsAnd saints again. I could not paint all night—Ouf! I leaned out of window for fresh air.                50There came a hurry of feet and little feet,A sweep of lute-strings, laughs, and whifts of song—[Flower o' the broom,Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!Flower o' the quince,I let Lisa go, and what good is life since?Flower o' the thyme]—and so on. Round they went.Scarce had they turned the corner when a titterLike the skipping of rabbits by moonlight—three slim shapes,And a face that looked up . . . zooks, sir, flesh and blood,That's all I'm made of! Into shreds it went,              61Curtain and counterpane and coverlet,All the bed-furniture—a dozen knots,There was a ladder! Down I let myself,Hands and feet, scrambling somehow, and so dropped,And after them. I came up with the funHard by Saint Laurence, hail fellow, well met—[Flower o' the rose,If I've been merry, what matter who knows?]And so as I was stealing back again                       70To get to bed and have a bit of sleepEre I rise up to-morrow and go workOn Jerome knocking at his poor old breastWith his great round stone to subdue the flesh,You snap me of the sudden. Ah, I see!Though your eye twinkles still, you shake your head—Mine's shaved—a  monk, you say—the sting's in that!If Master Cosimo announced himself,Mum's the word naturally; but a monk!Come, what am I a beast for? tell us, now!                80I was a baby when my mother diedAnd father died and left me in the street.I starved there. God knows how, a year or twoOn fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and shucks,Refuse and rubbish. One fine frosty day,My stomach being empty as your hat,The wind doubled me up and down I went.Old Aunt Lapaccia trussed me with one hand,(Its fellow was a stinger as I knew)And so along the wall, over the bridge,                   90By the straight cut to the convent. Six words there,While I stood munching my first bread that month:"So, boy, you're minded," quoth the good fat fatherWiping his own mouth, 't was refection-time—"To quit this very miserable world?Will you renounce" . . . "the mouthful of bread?" thought I;By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me;1 did renounce the world, its pride and greed,Palace, farm, villa, shop and banking-house,Trash, such as these poor devils of Medici               100Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old.Well, sir, I found in time, you may be sure,'T was not for nothing—the good bellyful,The warm serge and the rope that goes all round,And day-long blessed idleness beside!"Let's see what the urchin's fit for"—that came next,Not overmuch their way, I must confess.Such a to-do! They tried me with their books:Lord, they'd have taught me Latin in pure waste![Flower o' the clove,                                    110All the Latin I construe is, "amo" I love!]But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streetsEight years together, as my fortune was,Watching folk's faces to know who will flingThe bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,And who will curse or kick him for his pains,Which gentleman processional and fine,Holding a candle to the Sacrament,Will wink and let him lift a plate and catchThe droppings of the wax to sell again,                  120Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,How say I?—nay, which dog bites?, which lets dropHis bone from the heap of offal in the street—Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,He learns the look of things, and none the lessFor admonition from the hunger-pinch.I had a store of such remarks, be sure,Which, after I found leisure, turned to use.I drew men's faces on my copy-books,Scrawled them within the antiphonary's marge,            130Joined legs and arms to the long music-notes,Found eyes and nose and chin for A's and B's,And made a string of pictures of the worldBetwixt the ins and outs of verb and noun,On the wall, the bench, the door. The monks looked black."Nay," quoth the Prior, "turn him out, d' ye say?In no wise. Lose a crow and catch a lark.What if at last we get our man of parts,We Carmelites, like those CamaldoleseAnd Preaching Friars, to do our church up fine           140And put the front on it that ought to be!"And hereupon he bade me daub away.Thank you! my head being crammed, the walls a blank,Never was such prompt disemburdening.First, every sort of monk, the black and white,I drew them, fat and lean : then, folk at church,From good old gossips waiting to confessTheir cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends—To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there            150With the little children round him in a rowOf admiration, half for his beard and halfFor that white anger of his victim's sonShaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,Signing himself with the other because of Christ(Whose sad face on the cross sees only thisAfter the passion of a thousand years)Till some poor girl, her apron o'er her head,(Which the intense eyes looked through) came at eveOn tiptoe, said a word, dropped in a loaf,               160Her pair of earrings and a bunch of flowers(The brute took growling), prayed, and so was gone,I painted all, then cried "'T is ask and have;Choose, for more's ready!"—laid the ladder flat,And showed my covered bit of cloister-wall.The monks closed in a circle and praised loudTill checked, taught what to see and not to see,Being simple bodies—"That's the very man!Look at the boy who stoops to pat the dog!That woman's like the Prior's niece who comes            170To care about his asthma: it's the life!"But there my triumph's straw-fire flared and funked;Their betters took their turn to see and say:The Prior and the learned pulled a faceAnd stopped all that in no time. "How? what's here?Quite from the mark of painting, bless us all!Faces, arms, legs and bodies like the trueAs much as pea and pea! it's devil's-game!Your business is not to catch men with show,With homage to the perishable clay,                      180But lift them over it, ignore it all,Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh.Your business is to paint the souls of men—Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . .It's vapor done up like a new-born babe—(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth)It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul!Give us no more of body than shows soul!Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God,That sets us praising—why not stop with him?            190Why put all thoughts of praise out of our headWith wonder at lines, colors, and what not?Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms!Rub all out, try at it a second time.Oh, that white smallish female with the breasts,She's just my niece . . . Herodias, I would say—Who went and danced and got men's heads cut off!Have it all out! "Now, is this sense, I ask?A fine way to paint soul, by painting bodySo ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further        200And can't fare worse! Thus, yellow does for whiteWhen what you put for yellow's simply black,And any sort of meaning looks intenseWhen all beside itself means and looks naught.Why can't a painter lift each foot in turn,Left foot and right foot, go a double step,Make his flesh liker and his soul more like,Both in their order? Take the prettiest face,The Prior's niece . . . patron-saint—is it so prettyYou can't discover if it means hope, fear,              210Sorrow or joy? won't beauty go with these?Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,Can't I take breath and try to add life's flash,And then add soul and heighten them three-fold?Or say there's beauty with no soul at all—(I never saw it—put the case the same—)If you get simple beauty and naught else,You get about the best thing God invents:That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed,Within yourself, when you return him thanks.             220"Rub all out! "Well, well, there's my life, in short,And so the thing has gone on ever since.I'm grown a man no doubt, I've broken bounds:You should not take a fellow eight years oldAnd make him swear to never kiss the girls.I'm my own master, paint now as I please—Having a friend, you see, in the Corner-house!Lord, it's fast holding by the rings in front—Those great rings serve more purposes than justTo plant a flag in, or tie up a horse!                   230And yet the old schooling sticks, the old grave eyesAre peeping o'er my shoulder as I work,The heads shake still—"It's art's decline, my son!You're not of the true painters, great and old;Brother Angelico's the man, you'll find;Brother Lorenzo stands his single peer:Fag on at flesh, you'll never make the third!"[Flower o' the pine,You keep your mistr . . . manners, and I'll stick to mine!]I'm not the third, then: bless us, they must know!       240Don't you think they're the likeliest to know,They with their Latin? So, I swallow my rage,Clench my teeth, suck my lips in tight, and paintTo please them—sometimes do and sometimes don't;For, doing most, there's pretty sure to comeA turn, some warm eve finds me at my saints—A laugh, a cry, the business of the world—[(Flower o' the peach,Death for us all, and his own life for each!)]And my whole soul revolves, the cup runs over,           250The world and life's too big to pass for a dream,And I do these wild things in sheer despite,And play the fooleries you catch me at,In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grassAfter hard years, throws up his stiff heels so,Although the miller does not preach to himThe only good of grass is to make chaff.What would men have? Do they like grass or no—May they or may n't they? all I want's the thingSettled forever one way. As it is,                      260You tell too many lies and hurt yourself:You don't like what you only like too much,You do like what, if given you at your word,You find abundantly detestable.For me, I think I speak as I was taught;I always see the garden and God thereA-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned,The value and significance of flesh,I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards,You understand me: I'm a beast, I know.                  270But see, now—why, I see as certainlyAs that the morning-star's about to shine,What will hap some day. We've a youngster hereComes to our convent, studies what I do,Slouches and stares and lets no atom drop:His name is Guidi—he'll not mind the monks—They call him Hulking Tom, he lets them talk—He picks my practice up—he'll paint apace,I hope so—though I never live so long,I know what's sure to follow. You be judge!             280You speak no Latin more than I, belike;However, you're my man, you've seen the world—The beauty and the wonder and the power,The shapes of things, their colors, lights and shades,Changes, surprises,—and God made it all!—For what? Do you feel thankful, ay or no,For this fair town's face, yonder river's line,The mountain round it and the sky above,Much more the figures of man, woman, child,These are the frame to? What's it all about?             290To be passed over, despised? or dwelt upon,Wondered at? oh, this last of course!—you say.But why not do as well as say—paint theseJust as they are, careless what comes of it?God's works—paint any one, and count it crimeTo let a truth slip. Don't object, "His worksAre here already; nature is complete:Suppose you reproduce her (which you can't)There's no advantage! you must beat her, then."For, don't you mark? we're made so that we love          300First when we see them painted, things we have passedPerhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;And so they are better, painted—better to us,Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;God uses us to help each other so,Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,Your cullion's hanging face? A bit of chalk,And trust me but you should, though! How much more,If I drew higher things with the same truth!That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,              310Interpret God to all of you! Oh, oh,It makes me mad to see what men shall doAnd we in our graves! This world's no blot for us,Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink."Ay, but you don't so instigate to prayer!"Strikes in the Prior: "when your meaning's plainIt does not say to folk—remember matins,Or, mind you fast next Friday! "Why, for thisWhat need of art at all? A skull and bones,             320Two bits of stick nailed crosswise, or, what's best,A bell to chime the hour with, does as well.I painted a Saint Laurence six months sinceAt Prato, splashed the fresco in fine style:" How looks my painting, now the scaffold's down?"I ask a brother: "Hugely," he returns—"Already not one phiz of your three slavesWho turn the Deacon off his toasted side,But's scratched and prodded to our heart's content,The pious people have so eased their own                 330With coming to say prayers there in a rage:We get on fast to see the bricks beneath.Expect another job this time next year,For pity and religion grow i' the crowd—Your painting serves its purpose! Hang the fools!—That is—you'll not mistake an idle wordSpoke in a huff by a poor monk. God wot,Tasting the air this spicy night which turnsThe unaccustomed head like Chianti wine!Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now!           340It's natural a poor monk out of boundsShould have his apt word to excuse himself:And hearken how I plot to make amends.I have bethought me: I shall paint a piece. . . There's for you! Give me six months, then go, seeSomething in Sant' Ambrogio's! Bless the nuns!They want a cast o' my office. I shall paintGod in the midst. Madonna and her babe,Ringed by a bowery flowery angel-brood,Lilies and vestments and white faces, sweet              350As puff on puff of grated orris-rootWhen ladies crowd to Church at midsummer.And then i' the front, of course a saint or two—Saint John, because he saves the Florentines,Saint Ambrose, who puts down in black and whiteThe convent's friends and gives them a long day,And Job, I must have him there past mistake,The man of Uz (and Us without the z,Painters who need his patience). Well, all theseSecured at their devotion, up shall come                 360Out of a corner when you least expect,As one by a dark stair into a great light,Music and talking, who but Lippo! I!—Mazed, motionless and moonstruck—I'm the man!Back I shrink—what is this I see and hear?I, caught up with my monk's-things by mistake,My old serge gown and rope that goes all round,I, in this presence, this pure company!Where's a hole, where's a corner for escape?Then steps a sweet angelic slip of a thing               370Forward, puts out a soft palm—"Not so fast!"—Addresses the celestial presence, "nay—He made you and devised you, after all,Though he's none of you! Could Saint John there draw—His camel-hair make up a painting-brush?We come to brother Lippo for all that,[Iste perfecit opus.]" So, all smile—I shuffle sideways with my blushing faceUnder the cover of a hundred wingsThrown like a spread of kirtles when you're gay          380And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,Till, wholly unexpected, in there popsThe hothead husband! Thus I scuttle offTo some safe bench behind, not letting goThe palm of her, the little lily thingThat spoke the good word for me in the nick,Like the Prior's niece . . . Saint Lucy, I would say.And so all's saved for me, and for the churchA pretty picture gained. Go, six months hence!Your hand, sir, and good-bye: no lights, no lights!      390The street's hushed, and I know my own way back,Don't fear me! There's the gray beginning. Zooks!NOTES"Fra Lippo Lippi" is a dramatic monologue which incidentally conveysthe whole story of the occurrence the poem starts from—the seizureof Fra Lippo by the City Guards, past midnight, in an equivocalneighborhood—and the lively talk that arose thereupon, outlines thecharacter and past life of the Florentine artist-monk (1412-1469)and the subordinate personalities of the group of officers; andmakes all this contribute towards the presentation of Fra Lippo as atype of the more realistic and secular artist of the Renaissance whovalued flesh, and protested against the ascetic spirit which stroveto isolate the soul.7. The Carmine: monastery of the Del Carmine friars.17. Cosimo: de' Medici (1389-1464), Florentine statesman and patronof the arts.23. Pilchards: a kind of fish.53. Flower o' the broom: of the many varieties of folk-songs inItaly that which furnished Browning with a model for Lippo's songsis called a stornello. The name is variously derived. Some take itas merely short for ritornillo; others derive it from a storno, tosing against each other, because the peasants sing them at theirwork, and as one ends a song, another caps it with a fresh one, andso on. These stornelli consist of three lines. The first usuallycontains the name of a flower which sets the rhyme, and is fivesyllables long. Then the love theme is told in two lines of elevensyllables each, agreeing by rhyme, assonance, or repetition with thefirst. The first line may be looked upon as a burden set at thebeginning instead of, as is more familiar to us, at the end. Thereare also stornelli formed of three lines of eleven syllables withoutany burden. Browning has made Lippo's songs of only two lines, buthe has strictly followed the rule of making the first line,containing the address to the flower, of five syllables. TheTuscany versions of two of the songs used by Browning are asfollows:"Flower of the pine! Call me not ever happy heart again, But callme heavy heart, 0 comrades mine.""Flower of the broom! Unwed thy mother keeps thee not to lose Thatflower from the window of the room."67. Saint Laurence: the church of San Lorenzo.88. Aunt Lapaccia: by the death of Lippo's father, says Vasari, he"was left a friendless orphan at the age of two . . . under the careof Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, who brought him up with very greatdifficulty till his eighth year, when, being no longer able tosupport the burden, she placed him in the Convent of theCarmelites."121. The Eight: the magistrates of Florence.130. Antiphonary: the Roman Service-Book, containing all that issung in the choir—the antiphones, responses, etc.; it was compiledby Gregory the Great.131. joined legs and arms to the long music-notes: the musicalnotation of Lippo's day was entirely different from ours, the notesbeing square and oblong and rather less suited for arms and legsthan the present rounded notes.139. Camaldolese: monks of Camaldoli.—Preaching Friars: theDominicans.189. Giotto: reviver of art in Italy, painter, sculptor, andarchitect (1266-1337).196. Herodias: Matthew xiv.6-11.235. Brother Angelico: Fra Angelico, Giovanni da Fiesole(1387-1455), flower of the monastic school of art, who was said topaint on his knees.236. Brother Lorenzo: Lorenzo Monaco, of the same school.276. Guidi : Tommaso Guidi, or Masaccio, nicknamed "Hulking Tom"(1401-1429). [Vasari makes him Lippo's predecessor. Browningfollowed the best knowledge of his time in making him, instead,Lippo's pupil. Vasari is now thought to be right.]323. A Saint Laurence . . . at Prato: near Florence, where Lippipainted many saints. [Vasari speaks of a Saint Stephen painted therein the same realistic manner as Browning's Saint Laurence, whosemartyrdom of broiling to death on a gridiron affords Lippo's powersa livelier effect.] The legend of this saint makes his fortitudesuch that he bade his persecutors turn him over, as he was "done onone side."346. Something in Sant Ambrogio's: picture of the Virgin crownedwith angels and saints, painted for Saint Ambrose Church, now at theBelle Arti in Florence. Vasari says by means of it he became knownto Cosimo. Browning, on the other hand, crowns his poem withLippo's description of this picture as an expiation for his pranks.354. Saint John: the Baptist; see reference to camel-hair, line 375and Matthew iii. 4.355. Saint Ambrose: (340-397), Archbishop of Milan.358. Man of Uz : Job i. 1.377. [Iste perfecit opus]: this one completed the work.381. Hot cockles: an old-fashioned game.