1889
So, the three Court-ladies beganTheir trial of who judged bestIn esteeming the love of a man:Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessedBoy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and cager;An Abbé crossed legs to decide on the wager.
First the Duchesse: "Mine for me—Who were it but God's for Him,And the King's for—who but he?Both faithful and loyal, one grace more shall brimHis cup with perfection: a lady's true lover,He holds—save his God and his king—none above her."
"I require"—outspoke the Marquise—"Pure thoughts, ay, but also fine deeds:Play the paladin must he, to pleaseMy whim, and—to prove my knight's service exceedsYour saint's and your loyalist's praying and kneeling—Show wounds, each wide mouth to my mercy appealing."
Then the Comtesse: "My choice be a wretch,Mere losel in body and soul,Thrice accurst! What care I, so he stretchArms to me his sole saviour, love's ultimate goal,Out of earth and men's noise—names of 'infidel,' 'traitor,'Cast up at him? Crown me, crown's adjudicator!"
And the Abbé uncrossed his legs,Took snuff, a reflective pinch,Broke silence: "The question begsMuch pondering ere I pronounce. Shall I flinch?The love which to one and one only has referenceSeems terribly like what perhaps gains God's preference."
Among all modern thinkers and writers, Browning is the foremost optimist. He has left not the slightest doubt on this point; his belief is stated over and over again, running like a vein of gold through all his poems fromPaulinetoAsolando. The shattered man inPaulinecries at the very last,
I believe in God and Truth and Love.
This staunch affirmation, "I believe!" is the common chord in Browning's music. His optimism is in striking contrast to the attitude of his contemporaries, for the general tone of nineteenth century literature is pessimistic. Amidst the wails and lamentations of the poets, the clear, triumphant voice of Browning is refreshing even to those who are not convinced.
Browning suffered for his optimism. It is generally thought that the optimist must be shallow and superficial; whilst pessimism is associated with profound and sincere thinking. Browning felt this criticism, and replied to it with a scriptural insult in his poemAt the Mermaid. I cannot possibly be a great poet, he said sneeringly, because I have never said I longed for death; I have enjoyed life and loved it, and have never assumed a peevish attitude. In another poem he declared that pessimists were liars, because they really loved life while pretending it was all suffering.
It is only fair to Browning to remember that his optimism has a philosophical basis, and is the logical result of a firmly-held view of the universe. Many unthinking persons declare that Browning, with his jaunty good spirits, gets on their nerves; he dodges or leaps over the real obstacles in life, and thinks he has solved difficulties when he has only forgotten them. They miss in Browning the note of sorrow, of internal struggle, of despair; and insist that he has never accurately portrayed the real bitterness of the heart's sufferings. These critics have never read attentively Browning's first poem.
The poemPaulineshows that Browning had hisSturm und Drang, in common with all thoughtful young men. Keats' immortal preface toEndymionwould be equally applicable to this youthful work. "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages." The astonishing thing is, that Browning emerged from the slough of despond at just the time when most young men are entering it. He not only climbed out, but set his face resolutely toward the Celestial City.
The poemPaulineshows that young Browning passed through skepticism, atheism, pessimism, cynicism, and that particularly dark state when the mind reacts on itself; when enthusiasms, high hopes, and true faith seem childish; when wit and mockery take the place of zeal, this diabolical substitution seeming for the moment to be an intellectual advance. But although he suffered from all these diseases of the soul, he quickly became convalescent andParacelsusproves that his cure was complete.
Browning's optimism is not based on any discount of the sufferings of life, nor any attempt to overlook such gross realities as sin and pain. No pessimist has realised these facts more keenly than he. The Pope, who is the poet's mouthpiece, calls the world a dread machinery of sin and sorrow. The world is full of sin and sorrow, but it is machinery—and machinery is meant to make something; in this instance the product is human character, which can not be made without obstacles, struggles, and torment. InReverie, Browning goes even farther than this in his description of terrestrial existence.
Head praises, but heart refrainsFrom loving's acknowledgmentWhole losses outweigh half-gains:Earth's good is with evil blent:Good struggles but evil reigns.
Such an appraisal of life can hardly be called a blind and jaunty optimism.
Browning declares repeatedly that the world shows clearly two attributes of God: immense force and immense intelligence. We can not worship God, however, merely because He is strong and wise; He must be better than we are to win our respect and homage. The third necessary attribute, Love, is not at all clear in the spectacle furnished by science and history. Where then shall we seek it? His answer is, in the revelation of God's love through Jesus Christ.
What lacks then of perfection fit for GodBut just the instance which this tale suppliesOf love without a limit?
Browning's philosophy therefore is purely Christian. The love of God revealed in the Incarnation and in our own ethical natures—our imperfect souls containing here and now the possibilities of infinite development—makes Browning believe that this is God's world and we are God's children. He conceives of our life as an eternal one, our existence here being merely probation. No one has ever believed more rationally and more steadfastly in the future life than our poet; and his optimism is based solidly on this faith. The man who believes in the future life, he seems to say, may enjoy whole-heartedly and enthusiastically the positive pleasures of this world, and may endure with a firm mind its evils and its terrible sufferings. Take Christianity out of Browning, and his whole philosophy, with its cheerful outlook, falls to the ground. Of all true English poets, he is the most definitely Christian, the most sure of his ground. He wrote out his own evangelical creed inChristmas-EveandEaster Day; but even if we did not have these definite assurances, poems likeA Death in the DesertandGold Hairwould be sufficient.
Sequels are usually failures: the sequel toSaulis a notable exception to the rule. The first part of the poem, including the first nine stanzas, was published among theDramatic Romancesin 1845: in 1855, among theMen and Women, appeared the whole work, containing ten additional stanzas. This sequel is fully up to the standard of the original in artistic beauty, and contains a quite new climax, of even greater intensity. The ninth stanza closes with the cry "King Saul!"—he represents the last word of physical manhood, the finest specimen on earth of the athlete. The eighteenth stanza closes with the cry "See the Christ stand!"—He represents the climax of all human history, the appearance on earth of God in man. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.
No modern Pagan has ever sung the joy of life with more gusto than Browning trolls it out in the ninth stanza. The glorious play of the muscles, the rapture of the chase, the delight of the plunge into cold water, the delicious taste of food and wine, the unique sweetness of deep sleep. No shame attaches to earthly delights: let us rejoice in our health and strength, in exercise, recreation, eating and sleeping. Saul was a cowboy before he was a King; and young David in his music takes the great monarch back to the happy carefree days on the pasture, before the responsibilities of the crown had given him melancholia. The effect of music on patients suffering from nervous depression is as well known now as it was in Saul's day; Shakespeare knew something about it. His physicians are sometimes admirable; the great nervous specialist called in on Lady Macbeth's case is a model of wisdom and discretion: the specialist that Queen Cordelia summoned to prescribe for her father, after giving him trional, or something of that nature, was careful to have his return to consciousness accompanied by suitable music. Such terrible fits of melancholy as afflicted Saul were called in the Old Testament the visitations of an evil spirit; and there is no better diagnosis today. The Russian novelist Turgenev suffered exactly in the manner in which Browning describes Saul's sickness of heart: for several days he would remain in an absolute lethargy, like the king-serpent in his winter sleep. And, as in the case of Saul, music helped him more than medicine.
When David had carried the music to its fullest extent, the spirit of prophecy came upon him, as in the Messianic Psalms, and in the eighteenth stanza, he joyfully infers from the combination of man's love and man's weakness, that God's love is equal to God's power. Man's will is powerless to change the world of atoms: from God's will stream the stars. Yet if man's will were equal in power to his benevolence, how quickly would I, David, restore Saul to happiness! The fact that I love my King with such intensity, whilst I am powerless to change his condition, makes me believe in the coming of Him who shall have my wish to help humanity with the accompanying power. Man is contemptible in his strength, but divine in his ideals. 'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
The last stanza of the poem has been thought by some critics to be a mistake, worse than superfluous. For my part, I am very glad that Browning added it. Up to this point, we have had exhibited the effect of the music on Saul: now we see the effect on the man who produced it, David. While it is of course impossible even to imagine how a genius must feel immediately after releasing some immortal work that has swollen his heart, we can not help making conjectures. If we are so affected byhearingthe Ninth Symphony, what must have been the sensations of Beethoven at its birth? When Händel wrote the Hallelujah Chorus, he declared that he saw the heavens opened, and the Son of God sitting in glory, and I think he spoke the truth. After Thackeray had written a certain passage inVanity Fair, he rushed wildly about the room, shouting "That's Genius!"
Now no man in the history of literature has been more reticent than Browning in describing his emotions after virtue had passed out of him. He never talked about his poetry if he could help it; and the hundreds of people who met him casually met a fluent and pleasant conversationalist, who gave not the slightest sign of ever having been on the heights. We know, for example, that on the third day of January, 1852, Browning wrote in his Paris lodgings to the accompaniment of street omnibuses the wonderful poemChilde Roland: what a marvellous day that must have been in his spiritual life! In what a frenzy of poetic passion must have passed the hours when he saw those astounding visions, and heard the blast of the horn in the horrible sunset! He must have been inspired by the very demon of poetry. And yet, so far as we know, he never told any one about that day, nor left any written record either of that or any other of the great moments in his life. InThe Ring and the Book, he tells us of the passion, mystery and wonder that filled his soul on the night of the day when he had found the old yellow volume: but he has said nothing of his sensations when he wrote the speech of Pompilia.
This is why I am glad he added the last stanza toSaul. It purports to be a picture of David's drunken rapture, when, after the inspiration had flowed through his soul, he staggered home through the night. About him were angels, powers, unuttered, unseen, alive, aware. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with her crews; the stars of night beat with emotion. David is Browning himself; and the poet is trying to tell us, in the only way possible to a man like Browning, how the floods of his own genius affected him. He gives a somewhat similar picture inAbt Vogler. It is not in the least surprising that he could not write or talk to his friends about such marvellous experiences. Can a man who has looked on the face of God, and dwelt in the heavenly places, talk about it to others?
Furthermore this nineteenth stanza ofSaulcontains a picture of the dawn that has never been surpassed in poetry. Only those who have spent nights in the great woods can really understand it.
1845-1855
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 hischeek.And he: "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent,Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tentThou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet,Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wetFor 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."
"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dewOn thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blueJust broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heatWere now raging to torture the desert!"
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 onTill I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed,And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraidBut spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied.At the first I saw naught but the blackness: but soon I descriedA something more black than the blackness—the vast, the uprightMain prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sightGrew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all.Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul.
He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wideOn the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side;He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangsAnd waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs,Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance comeWith the spring-time,—so agonized Saul, drear and stark,blind and dumb.
Then I tuned my harp,—took off the lilies we twine roundits chordsLest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide—those sunbeamslike 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 fedWhere the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed;And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows starInto eve and the blue far above us,—so blue and so far!
—Then the tune for which quails on the corn-land will each leavehis mateTo fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elateTill for boldness they fight one another; and then, what has weightTo 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.
Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, whenhandGrasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and greathearts expandAnd grow one in the sense of this world's life.—And then, thelast songWhen the dead man is praised on his journey—"Bear, bear him along,With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seedsnot hereTo console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier.Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the gladchauntOf the marriage,—first go the young maidens, next, she whom wevauntAs the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the greatmarchWherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an archNaught can break; who shall harm them, our friends? Then, thechorus intonedAs the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned.But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.
And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart;And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gandartFrom 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:—
"Oh, our manhood's prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock,The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silvershockOf 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 ofwine,And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tellThat the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employAll the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thoudidst guardWhen he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward?Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sungThe low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongueJoining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest,I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was forbest'?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 grewSuch result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strainedtrue:And the friends of thy boyhood—that boyhood of wonder and hope,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 thethroeThat, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go)High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,—allBrought to blaze on the head of one creature—King Saul!"
And lo, with that leap of my spirit,—heart, hand, harp and voice,Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoiceSaul's fame in the light it was made for—as when, dare I say,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 hungproppedBy 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 ofstoneA year's snow bound about for a breastplate,—leaves grasp of thesheet?Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet,And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountainof old,With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold—Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scarOf his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest—all hail, therethey are!—Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nestOf the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crestFor their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilledAll the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilledAt the King's self left standing before me, released and aware.What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope anddespair,Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right handHeld the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remandTo their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before.I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any moreThan by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, we watch from the shore,At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean—a sun's slow declineOver hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwineBase with base to knit strength more intensely; so, arm folded armO'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.
What spell or what charm,(For awhile there was trouble within me,) what next should I urgeTo sustain him where song had restored him?—one filled to thevergeHis cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yieldsOf mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty; beyond, on whatfields,Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eyeAnd 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.XII
Then fancies grew rifeWhich had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheepFed 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 thesky:And I laughed—"Since my days are ordained to be passed with myflocks,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 showOf mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know!Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage thatgains,And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now theseold trainsOf vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the stringOf my harp made response to my spirit, as thus—
"Yea, my King,"I began—"thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that springFrom the mere mortal life held in common by man and by brute:In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul it bearsfruit.Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,—how its stem trembledfirstTill it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safelyoutburstThe fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, inturn,Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was tolearn,E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shallwe slight,When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for theplightOf the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stemand branchShall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wineshall stanchEvery wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee such wine.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 enjoyMore indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy.Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hastdoneDies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sunLooking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, thoughtempests efface,Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere traceThe results of his past summer-prime,—so, each ray of thy will,Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrillThy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too giveforthA like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and theNorthWith 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 ariseA gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to theskies,Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame wouldye know?Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall goIn 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 toamend,In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shallspend(See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and recordWith the gold of the graver, Saul's story,—the statesman's greatwordSide by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-waveWith smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave:So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their partIn thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!"
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 swordIn that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,—Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavourAnd scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless aseverOn the new stretch of heaven above me—till, mighty to save,Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance—God's throne fromman's grave!Let me tell out my tale to its ending—my voice to my heartWhich can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I tookpart,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 upheavesThe dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and KidronretrievesSlow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.
I say then,—my songWhile I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strongMade a proffer of good to console him—he slowly resumedHis old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand re-plumedHis black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathesOf 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 bentThe broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though muchspentBe the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God didchoose,To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose.So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pileOf his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile,And sat out my singing,—one arm round the tent-prop, to raiseHis bent head, and the other hung slack—till I touched on thepraiseI foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there;And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'wareThat he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast kneesWhich were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots whichpleaseTo encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to knowIf the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slowLifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with careSoft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: through myhairThe large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kindpower—All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower.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!"
Then the truth came upon me. No harp more—no song more! outbroke—
"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 brainAnd pronounced on the rest of his handwork—returned him againHis 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 taskedTo 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 GodIn 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 worstE'en the Giver in one gift—Behold, I could love if I durst!But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertakeGod'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 andsmall,Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the hundredth appall?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 partsshift?Here, the creature surpass the Creator,—the end, what Began?Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this man,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 dowerOf 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, thebest?Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at the heightThis perfection,—succeed with life's day-spring, death's minuteof night?Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul the mistake,Saul the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awakeFrom the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself setClear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yetTo 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."
"I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe.All's one gift: thou canst grant it moreover, as prompt to myprayerAs I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air.From thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, thy dread Sabaoth:Iwill?—the mere atoms despise me! Why am I not lothTo look that, even that in the face too? Why is it I dareThink but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?This;—'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Woulddo!See the King—I would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would—knowing which,I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou—so wilt thou!So shall crown thee the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown—And thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor downOne spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath,Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death!As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be provedThy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved!He who did most, shall bear most; the strongest shall stand themost weak.'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that IseekIn the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall beA Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me,Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this handShall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christstand!"
I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,As a runner beset by the populace famished for news—Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed with hercrews;And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shotOut in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressedAll the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth—Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;In the gathered intensity brought to the grey of the hills;In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidlingstillThough averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chillThat rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:E'en the serpent that slid away silent,—he felt the new law.The same stared in the white humid faces upturned by the flowers;The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine-bowers:And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,With their obstinate, all but hushed voices—"E'en so, it is so!"
On a clear, warm day in March, 1912, I stood on the Piazza Michel Angelo in Florence, with a copy of Browning in my hand, and gazed with delight on the panorama of the fair city below. Then I read aloud the first two stanzas ofOld Pictures in Florence, and realised for the thousandth time the definiteness of Browning's poetry. This particular poem is a mixture of art and doggerel; but even the latter is interesting to lovers of Florence.
Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
Did you ever stand in front of the picture by Lorenzo that Browning had in mind, and observe the churlish saints? Most saints in Italian pictures look either happy or complacent; because they have just been elected to the society of heaven and are in for life. But for some strange reason, Lorenzo's saints, although in the Presence, and worshipping with music, look as if they were suffering from acute indigestion. If one will wander about the galleries of Florence, and take along Browning, one will find the poet more specifically informing than Baedeker.
The philosophy of this poem is Browning's favorite philosophy of development. He compares the perfection of Greek art with the imperfection of the real human body. We know what a man ought to look like; and if we have forgotten, we may behold a representation by a Greek sculptor. Stand at the corner of a city street, and watch the men pass; they are caricatures of the manly form. Yet ludicrously ugly as they are, the intention is clear; we see even in these degradations, what the figure of a man ought to be. In Greek art:
The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken,Which the actual generations garble,Was reuttered.
Which the actual generations garble—men as we see them are clumsy and garbled versions of the original. But there is no value in lamenting this; it is idle for men to gaze with regret and longing at the Apollo Belvedere. It is much better to remember that Perfection and Completion spell Death: only Imperfection has a future. What if the souls in our ridiculously ugly bodies become greater and grander than the marble men of Pheidias? Giotto's unfinished Campanile is nobler than the perfect zero he drew for the Pope. In our imperfect minds, housed in our over-fat, over-lean, and always commonplace bodies, exists the principle of development, for whose steady advance eternity is not too long. Statues belong to time: man has Forever.
For some strange reason, no tourist ever goes to Fano. One reason why I went there was simply because I had never met a person of any nationality who had ever seen the town. Yet it is easily accessible, very near Ancona, the scene of theGrammarian's Funeral, and the place where Browning wroteThe Guardian Angel. One day Mr. and Mrs. Browning, walking about Fano, came to the church of San Agostino, in no way a remarkable edifice, and there in the tiny chapel, over the altar, they found Guercino's masterpiece. Its calm and serene beauty struck an immortal poem out of Browning's heart; and thanks to the poet, the picture is now one of the most familiar in the world. But no copy comes near the ineffable charm of the original, as one sees it in the dim light of the chapel.
The child on the tomb is looking past the angel's face into the glory of heaven; but the poet, who wishes that he might take the place of the little child, declares that he would gaze, not toward heaven, but into the gracious face of the bird of God. If we could only see life as the angel sees it, if we could only see the whole course of history, we should then realise that:
All is beauty:And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
We can not see the forest for the trees: the last place to obtain an idea of the range, grandeur, and beauty of a forest, is in it: one should climb a high mountain and look over its vast extent. So we, in life, "where men sit and hear each other groan," believe that the world is some dreadful mistake, full of meaningless anguish. This is because we are in the midst of it all: we can not see far: the nearest objects, though infinitesimal in size, loom enormous, as with the palm of your hand you can cut off the sun. But if we could only see the end from the beginning, if we could get the angel's view-point, the final result would be beauty. Browning is not satisfied with Keats's doctrine:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"—that is allYe know on earth, and all ye need to know.
He shows us what happened to Aprile with this philosophy. Browning adds the doctrine of love. The moment we realise that the universe is conceived in terms of beauty, love fills our hearts: love for our fellow-beings, who are making the journey through life with us; and love for God, the author of it all, just as a child loves one who gives it the gift of its heart's desire. That the supreme duty of life is love is simply one more illustration of Browning's steadfast adherence to the Gospel of Christ.