Just so!
So we resolve on a thing and sleep:
So did the lady, ages ago.
That night the Duke said, ‘Dear or cheap
As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove
To body or soul, I will drain it deep.’
And on the morrow, bold with love,
He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,
[90] As his duty bade, by the Duke’s alcove)
And smiled ‘’Twas a very funeral,
Your lady will think, this feast of ours, –
A shame to efface, whate’er befall!
‘What if we break from the Arno bowers,
And try if Petraja, cool and green,
Cure last night’s fault with this morning’s flowers?’
The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen
On his steady brow and quiet mouth,
Said, ‘Too much favour for me so mean!
[100] ‘But, alas! my lady leaves the South;
Each wind that comes from the Apennine
Is a menace to her tender youth:
‘Nor a way exists, the wise opine,
If she quits her palace twice this year,
To avert the flower of life’s decline.’
Quoth the Duke, ‘A sage and a kindly fear.
Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:
Be our feast tonight as usual here!’
And then to himself – ‘Which night shall bring
[110] Thy bride to her lover’s embraces, fool –
Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!
‘Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool –
For tonight the Envoy arrives from France
Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.
‘I need thee still and might miss perchance.
Today is not wholly lost, beside,
With its hope of my lady’s countenance:
‘For I ride – what should I do but ride?
And passing her palace, if I list,
[120] May glance at its window – well betide!’
So said, so done: nor the lady missed
One ray that broke from the ardent brow,
Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.
Be sure that each renewed the vow,
No morrow’s sun should arise and set
And leave them then as it left them now.
But next day passed, and next day yet,
With still fresh cause to wait one day more
Ere each leaped over the parapet.
[130] And still, as love’s brief morning wore,
With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,
They found love not as it seemed before.
They thought it would work infallibly,
But not in despite of heaven and earth:
The rose would blow when the storm passed by.
Meantime they could profit in winter’s dearth
By store of fruits that supplant the rose:
The world and its ways have a certain worth:
And to press a point while these oppose
[140] Were simple policy; better wait:
We lose no friends and we gain no foes.
Meantime, worse fates than a lover’s fate,
Who daily may ride and pass and look
Where his lady watches behind the grate!
And she – she watched the square like a book
Holding one picture and only one,
Which daily to find she undertook:
When the picture was reached the book was done,
And she turned from the picture at night to scheme
[150] Of tearing it out for herself next sun.
So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
The glory dropped from their youth and love,
And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;
Which hovered as dreams do, still above:
But who can take a dream for a truth?
Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!
One day as the lady saw her youth
Depart, and the silver thread that streaked
Her hair, and, worn by the serpent’s tooth,
[160] The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, –
And wondered who the woman was,
Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,
Fronting her silent in the glass –
‘Summon here,’ she suddenly said,
‘Before the rest of my old self pass,
‘Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,
Who fashions the clay no love will change,
And fixes a beauty never to fade.
‘Let Robbia’s craft so apt and strange
[170] Arrest the remains of young and fair,
And rivet them while the seasons range.
‘Make me a face on the window there,
Waiting as ever, mute the while,
My love to pass below in the square!
‘And let me think that it may beguile
Dreary days which the dead must spend
Down in their darkness under the aisle,
‘To say, “What matters it at the end?
I did no more while my heart was warm
[180] Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.”
‘Where is the use of the lip’s red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm –
‘Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?
A lady of clay is as good, I trow.’
But long ere Robbia’s cornice, fine,
With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,
Was set where now is the empty shrine –
[190] (And, leaning out of a bright blue space,
As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,
The passionate pale lady’s face –
Eyeing ever, with earnest eye
And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,
Some one who ever is passing by –)
The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch
In Florence, ‘Youth – my dream escapes!
Will its record stay?’ And he bade them fetch
Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes –
[200] ‘Can the soul, the will, die out of a man
Ere his body find the grave that gapes?
‘John of Douay shall effect my plan,
Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,
‘In the very square I have crossed so oft:
That men may admire, when future suns
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,
‘While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze –
Admire and say, “When he was alive
[210] How he would take his pleasure once!”
‘And it shall go hard but I contrive
To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
At idleness which aspires to strive.’
So! While these wait the trump of doom,
How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
Nights and days in the narrow room?
Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
What a gift life was, ages ago,
Six steps out of the chapel yonder.
[220] Only they see not God, I know,
Nor all that chivalry of his,
The soldier-saints who, row on row,
Burn upward each to his point of bliss –
Since, the end of life being manifest,
He had burned his way through the world to this.
I hear you reproach, ‘But delay was best,
For their end was a crime.’ – Oh, a crime will do
As well, I reply, to serve for a test,
As a virtue golden through and through,
[230] Sufficient to vindicate itself
And prove its worth at a moment’s view!
Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?
Where a button goes, ’twere an epigram
To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.
The true has no value beyond the sham:
As well the counter as coin, I submit,
When your table’s a hat, and your prize a dram.
Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
Venture as warily, use the same skill,
[240] Do your best, whether winning or losing it,
If you choose to play! – is my principle.
Let a man contend to the uttermost
For his life’s set prize, be it what it will!
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is – the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
You of the virtue (we issue join)
[250] How strive you? De te, fabula.
How It Strikes a Contemporary
I only knew one poet in my life:
And this, or something like it, was his way.
You saw go up and down Valladolid,
A man of mark, to know next time you saw.
His very serviceable suit of black
Was courtly once and conscientious still,
And many might have worn it, though none did:
The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,
Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.
[10] He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,
Scenting the world, looking it full in face,
An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.
They turned up, now, the alley by the church,
That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves
On the main promenade just at the wrong time:
You’d come upon his scrutinizing hat,
Making a peaked shade blacker than itself
Against the single window spared some house
Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work, –
[20] Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick
Trying the mortar’s temper ’tween the chinks
Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.
He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,
The man who slices lemons into drink,
The coffee-roaster’s brazier, and the boys
That volunteer to help him turn its winch.
He glanced o’er books on stalls with half an eye,
And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor’s string,
And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.
[30] He took such cognizance of men and things,
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;
If any cursed a woman, he took note;
Yet stared at nobody, – you stared at him,
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,
He seemed to know you and expect as much.
So, next time that a neighbour’s tongue was loosed,
It marked the shameful and notorious fact,
We had among us, not so much a spy,
As a recording chief-inquisitor,
[40] The town’s true master if the town but knew!
We merely kept a governor for form,
While this man walked about and took account
Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,
And wrote it fully to our Lord the King
Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,
And reads them in his bedroom of a night.
Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,
A tang of … well, it was not wholly ease
As back into your mind the man’s look came.
[50] Stricken in years a little, – such a brow
His eyes had to live under! – clear as flint
On either side the formidable nose
Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle’s claw.
Had he to do with A.’s surprising fate?
When altogether old B. disappeared
And young C. got his mistress, – was’t our friend,
His letter to the King, that did it all?
What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?
Our Lord the King has favourites manifold,
[60] And shifts his ministry some once a month;
Our city gets new governors at whiles, –
But never word or sign, that I could hear,
Notified to this man about the streets
The King’s approval of those letters conned
The last thing duly at the dead of night.
Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,
Exhorting when none heard – ‘Beseech me not!
Too far above my people, – beneath me!
I set the watch, – how should the people know?
[70] Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!’
Was some such understanding ’twixt the two?
I found no truth in one report at least –
That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes
Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,
You found he ate his supper in a room
Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,
And twenty naked girls to change his plate!
Poor man, he lived another kind of life
In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,
[80] Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!
The whole street might o’erlook him as he sat,
Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog’s back,
Playing a decent cribbage with his maid
(Jacynth, you’re sure her name was) o’er the cheese
And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,
Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,
Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.
My father, like the man of sense he was,
Would point him out to me a dozen times;
[90] ‘’St –’St,’ he’d whisper, ‘the Corregidor!’
I had been used to think that personage
Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,
And feathers like a forest in his hat,
Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,
Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,
And memorized the miracle in vogue!
He had a great observance from us boys;
We were in error; that was not the man.
I’d like now, yet had haply been afraid,
[100] To have just looked, when this man came to die,
And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides
And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,
With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.
Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,
Through a whole campaign of the world’s life and death,
Doing the King’s work all the dim day long,
In his old coat and up to knees in mud,
Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust, –
And, now the day was won, relieved at once!
[110] No further show or need for that old coat,
You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while
How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!
A second, and the angels alter that.
Well, I could never write a verse, – could you?
Let’s to the Prado and make the most of time.
The Patriot
An Old Story
I
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.
II
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, ‘Good folk, mere noise repels –
But give me your sun from yonder skies!’
[10] They had answered, ‘And afterward, what else?’
III
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Naught man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
IV
There’s nobody on the house-tops now –
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate – or, better yet,
[20] By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
V
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
VI
Thus I entered, and thus I go!
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
‘Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
Me?’ – God might question; now instead,
[30] ’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
Memorabilia
I
Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you
And did you speak to him again?
How strange it seems and new!
II
But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at –
My starting moves your laughter.
III
I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
[10] And a certain use in the world no doubt,
Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone
’Mid the blank miles round about:
IV
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
Andrea del Sarto
(Called ‘The Faultless Painter’)
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
I’ll work then for your friend’s friend, never fear,
Treat his own subject after his own way,
Fix his own time, accept too his own price,
And shut the money into this small hand
When next it takes mine. Will it? tenderly?
[10] Oh, I’ll content him, – but tomorrow, Love!
I often am much wearier than you think,
This evening more than usual, and it seems
As if – forgive now – should you let me sit
Here by the window with your hand in mine
And look a half-hour forth on Fiesole,
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through,
I might get up tomorrow to my work
Cheerful and fresh as ever. Let us try.
[20] Tomorrow, how you shall be glad for this!
Your soft hand is a woman of itself,
And mine the man’s bared breast she curls inside.
Don’t count the time lost, neither; you must serve
For each of the five pictures we require:
It saves a model. So! keep looking so –
My serpentining beauty, rounds on rounds!
– How could you ever prick those perfect ears,
Even to put the pearl there! oh, so sweet –
My face, my moon, my everybody’s moon,
[30] Which everybody looks on and calls his,
And, I suppose, is looked on by in turn,
While she looks – no one’s: very dear, no less.
You smile? why, there’s my picture ready made,
There’s what we painters call our harmony!
A common greyness silvers everything, –
All in a twilight, you and I alike
– You, at the point of your first pride in me
(That’s gone you know), – but I, at every point;
My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down
[40] To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
There’s the bell clinking from the chapel-top;
That length of convent-wall across the way
Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside;
The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease,
And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Eh? the whole seems to fall into a shape
As if I saw alike my work and self
And all that I was born to be and do,
A twilight-piece. Love, we are in God’s hand.
[50] How strange now, looks the life he makes us lead;
So free we seem, so fettered fast we are!
I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie!
This chamber for example – turn your head –
All that’s behind us! You don’t understand
Nor care to understand about my art,
But you can hear at least when people speak:
And that cartoon, the second from the door
– It is the thing, Love! so such things should be –
Behold Madonna! – I am bold to say.
[60] I can do with my pencil what I know,
What I see, what at bottom of my heart
I wish for, if I ever wish so deep –
Do easily, too – when I say, perfectly,
I do not boast, perhaps: yourself are judge,
Who listened to the Legate’s talk last week,
And just as much they used to say in France.
At any rate ’tis easy, all of it!
No sketches first, no studies, that’s long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
[70] – Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive – you don’t know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat, –
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) – so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
[80] In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate’er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman’s hand of mine.
Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know,
Reach many a time a heaven that’s shut to me,
Enter and take their place there sure enough,
Though they come back and cannot tell the world.
My works are nearer heaven, but I sit here.
The sudden blood of these men! at a word –
Praise them, it boils, or blame them, it boils too.
[90] I, painting from myself and to myself,
Know what I do, am unmoved by men’s blame
Or their praise either. Somebody remarks
Morello’s outline there is wrongly traced,
His hue mistaken; what of that? or else,
Rightly traced and well ordered; what of that?
Speak as they please, what does the mountain care?
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for? All is silver-grey
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse!
[100] I know both what I want and what might gain,
And yet how profitless to know, to sigh
‘Had I been two, another and myself,
Our head would have o’erlooked the world!’ No doubt.
Yonder’s a work now, of that famous youth
The Urbinate who died five years ago.
(’Tis copied, George Vasari sent it me.)
Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
[110] Above and through his art – for it gives way;
That arm is wrongly put – and there again –
A fault to pardon in the drawing’s lines,
Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
He means right – that, a child may understand.
Still, what an arm! and I could alter it:
But all the play, the insight and the stretch –
Out of me, out of me! And wherefore out?
Had you enjoined them on me, given me soul,
We might have risen to Rafael, I and you!
[120] Nay, Love, you did give all I asked, I think –
More than I merit, yes, by many times.
But had you – oh, with the same perfect brow,
And perfect eyes, and more than perfect mouth,
And the low voice my soul hears, as a bird
The fowler’s pipe, and follows to the snare –
Had you, with these the same, but brought a mind!
Some women do so. Had the mouth there urged
‘God and the glory! never care for gain.
The present by the future, what is that?
[130] Live for fame, side by side with Agnolo!
Rafael is waiting: up to God, all three!’
I might have done it for you. So it seems:
Perhaps not. All is as God over-rules.
Beside, incentives come from the soul’s self;
The rest avail not. Why do I need you?
What wife had Rafael, or has Agnolo?
In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will’s somewhat – somewhat, too, the power –
[140] And thus we half-men struggle. At the end,
God, I conclude, compensates, punishes.
’Tis safer for me, if the award be strict,
That I am something underrated here,
Poor this long while, despised, to speak the truth.
I dared not, do you know, leave home all day,
For fear of chancing on the Paris lords.
The best is when they pass and look aside;
But they speak sometimes; I must bear it all.
Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time,
[150] And that long festal year at Fontainebleau!
I surely then could sometimes leave the ground,
Put on the glory, Rafael’s daily wear,
In that humane great monarch’s golden look, –
One finger in his beard or twisted curl
Over his mouth’s good mark that made the smile,
One arm about my shoulder, round my neck,
The jingle of his gold chain in my ear,
I painting proudly with his breath on me,
All his court round him, seeing with his eyes,
[160] Such frank French eyes, and such a fire of souls
Profuse, my hand kept plying by those hearts, –
And, best of all, this, this, this face beyond,
This in the background, waiting on my work,
To crown the issue with a last reward!
A good time, was it not, my kingly days?
And had you not grown restless … but I know –
’Tis done and past; ’twas right, my instinct said;
Too live the life grew, golden and not grey,
And I’m the weak-eyed bat no sun should tempt
[170] Out of the grange whose four walls make his world.
How could it end in any other way?
You called me, and I came home to your heart.
The triumph was – to reach and stay there; since
I reached it ere the triumph, what is lost?
Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold,
You beautiful Lucrezia that are mine!
‘Rafael did this, Andrea painted that;
The Roman’s is the better when you pray,
But still the other’s Virgin was his wife –’
[180] Men will excuse me. I am glad to judge
Both pictures in your presence; clearer grows
My better fortune, I resolve to think.
For, do you know, Lucrezia, as God lives,
Said one day Agnolo, his very self,
To Rafael … I have known it all these years …
(When the young man was flaming out his thoughts
Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see,
Too lifted up in heart because of it)
‘Friend, there’s a certain sorry little scrub
[190] Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how,
Who, were he set to plan and execute
As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings,
Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!’
To Rafael’s! – And indeed the arm is wrong.
I hardly dare … yet, only you to see,
Give the chalk here – quick, thus the line should go!
Ay, but the soul! he’s Rafael! rub it out!
Still, all I care for, if he spoke the truth,
(What he? why, who but Michel Agnolo?
[200] Do you forget already words like those?)
If really there was such a chance, so lost, –
Is, whether you’re – not grateful – but more pleased.
Well, let me think so. And you smile indeed!
This hour has been an hour! Another smile?
If you would sit thus by me every night
I should work better, do you comprehend?
I mean that I should earn more, give you more.
See, it is settled dusk now; there’s a star;
Morello’s gone, the watch-lights show the wall,
[210] The cue-owls speak the name we call them by.
Come from the window, love, – come in, at last,
Inside the melancholy little house
We built to be so gay with. God is just.
King Francis may forgive me: oft at nights
When I look up from painting, eyes tired out,
The walls become illumined, brick from brick
Distinct, instead of mortar, fierce bright gold,
That gold of his I did cement them with!
Let us but love each other. Must you go?
[220] That Cousin here again? he waits outside?
Must see you – you, and not with me? Those loans?
More gaming debts to pay? you smiled for that?
Well, let smiles buy me! have you more to spend?
While hand and eye and something of a heart
Are left me, work’s my ware, and what’s it worth?
I’ll pay my fancy. Only let me sit
The grey remainder of the evening out,
Idle, you call it, and muse perfectly
How I could paint, were I but back in France,
[230] One picture, just one more – the Virgin’s face,
Not yours this time! I want you at my side
To hear them – that is, Michel Agnolo –
Judge all I do and tell you of its worth.
Will you? Tomorrow, satisfy your friend.
I take the subjects for his corridor,
Finish the portrait out of hand – there, there,
And throw him in another thing or two
If he demurs; the whole should prove enough
To pay for this same Cousin’s freak. Beside,
[240] What’s better and what’s all I care about,
Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff!
Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he,
The Cousin! what does he to please you more?
I am grown peaceful as old age tonight.
I regret little, I would change still less.
Since there my past life lies, why alter it?
The very wrong to Francis! – it is true
I took his coin, was tempted and complied,
And built this house and sinned, and all is said.
[250] My father and my mother died of want.
Well, had I riches of my own? you see
How one gets rich! Let each one bear his lot.
They were born poor, lived poor, and poor they died:
And I have laboured somewhat in my time
And not been paid profusely. Some good son
Paint my two hundred pictures – let him try!
No doubt, there’s something strikes a balance. Yes,
You loved me quite enough, it seems tonight.
This must suffice me here. What would one have?
[260] In heaven, perhaps, new chances, one more chance –
Four great walls in the New Jerusalem,
Meted on each side by the angel’s reed,
For Leonard, Rafael, Agnolo and me
To cover – the three first without a wife,
While I have mine! So – still they overcome
Because there’s still Lucrezia, – as I choose.
Again the Cousin’s whistle! Go, my Love.
In a Year
I
Never any more,
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive:
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
II
Was it something said,
[10] Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun: I as little understand
Love’s decay.
III
When I sewed or drew,
I recall
How he looked as if I sung,
[20] – Sweetly too.
If I spoke a word,
First of all
Up his cheek the colour sprung,
Then he heard.
IV
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed but air I breathed,
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
[30] Touched the sweet:
I would die if death bequeathed
Sweet to him.
V
‘Speak, I love thee best!’
He exclaimed: ‘Let thy love my own foretell!’
I confessed: ‘Clasp my heart on thine
Now unblamed, Since upon thy soul as well
[40] Hangeth mine!’
VI
Was it wrong to own,
Being truth?
Why should all the giving prove
His alone?
I had wealth and ease,
Beauty, youth:
Since my lover gave me love,
I gave these.
VII
That was all I meant,
[50] – To be just,
And the passion I had raised,
To content.
Since he chose to change
Gold for dust,
If I gave him what he praised
Was it strange?
VIII
Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
[60] – Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till, all gone,
He should smile ‘She never seemed
Mine before.
IX
‘What, she felt the while,
Must I think?
Love’s so different with us men!’
He should smile:
‘Dying for my sake –
[70] White and pink!
Can’t we touch these bubbles then
But they break?’
X
Dear, the pang is brief,
Do thy part,
Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
Grows belief!
Well, this cold clay clod
Was man’s heart:
Crumble it, and what comes next?
[80] Is it God?
Cleon
‘As certain also of your own poets have said’ –
Cleon the poet (from the sprinkled isles,
Lily on lily, that o’erlace the sea,
And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps ‘Greece’) –
To Protus in his Tyranny: much health!
They give thy letter to me, even now:
I read and seem as if I heard thee speak.
The master of thy galley still unlades
Gift after gift; they block my court at last
And pile themselves along its portico
[10] Royal with sunset, like a thought of thee:
And one white she-slave from the group dispersed
Of black and white slaves (like the chequer-work
Pavement, at once my nation’s work and gift,
Now covered with this settle-down of doves),
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands
Commends to me the strainer and the cup
Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.
[20] Well-counselled, king, in thy munificence!
For so shall men remark, in such an act
Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,
Thy recognition of the use of life;
Nor call thy spirit barely adequate
To help on life in straight ways, broad enough
For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest.
Thou, in the daily building of thy tower, –
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil,
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth,
Or when the general work ’mid good acclaim
[30] Climbed with the eye to cheer the architect, –
Didst ne’er engage in work for mere work’s sake –
Had’st ever in thy heart the luring hope
Of some eventual rest a-top of it,
Whence, all the tumult of the building hushed,
Thou first of men mightst look out to the East:
The vulgar saw thy tower, thou sawest the sun.
For this, I promise on thy festival
To pour libation, looking o’er the sea,
Making this slave narrate thy fortunes, speak
[40] Thy great words, and describe thy royal face –
Wishing thee wholly where Zeus lives the most,
Within the eventual element of calm.
Thy letter’s first requirement meets me here.
It is as thou hast heard: in one short life
I, Cleon, have effected all those things
Thou wonderingly dost enumerate.
That epos on thy hundred plates of gold
Is mine, – and also mine the little chant,
So sure to rise from every fishing-bark
[50] When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net.
The image of the sun-god on the phare,
Men turn from the sun’s self to see, is mine;
The Poecile, o’er-storied its whole length,
As thou didst hear, with painting, is mine too.
I know the true proportions of a man
And woman also, not observed before;
And I have written three books on the soul,
Proving absurd all written hitherto,
And putting us to ignorance again.
[60] For music, – why, I have combined the moods,
Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine;
Thus much the people know and recognize,
Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not.
We of these latter days, with greater mind
Than our forerunners, since more composite,
Look not so great, beside their simple way,
To a judge who only sees one way at once,
One mind-point and no other at a time, –
Compares the small part of a man of us
[70] With some whole man of the heroic age,
Great in his way – not ours, nor meant for ours.
And ours is greater, had we skill to know:
For, what we call this life of men on earth,
This sequence of the soul’s achievements here
Being, as I find much reason to conceive,
Intended to be viewed eventually
As a great whole, not analysed to parts,
But each part having reference to all, –
How shall a certain part, pronounced complete,
[80] Endure effacement by another part?
Was the thing done? – then, what’s to do again?
See, in the chequered pavement opposite,
Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb,
And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid –
He did not overlay them, superimpose
The new upon the old and blot it out,
But laid them on a level in his work,
Making at last a picture; there it lies.
So, first the perfect separate forms were made,
[90] The portions of mankind; and after, so,
Occurred the combination of the same.
For where had been a progress, otherwise?
Mankind, made up of all the single men, –
In such a synthesis the labour ends.
Now mark me! those divine men of old time
Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point
The outside verge that rounds our faculty;
And where they reached, who can do more than reach?
It takes but little water just to touch
[100] At some one point the inside of a sphere,
And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest
In due succession: but the finer air
Which not so palpably nor obviously,
Though no less universally, can touch
The whole circumference of that emptied sphere,
Fills it more fully than the water did;
Holds thrice the weight of water in itself
Resolved into a subtler element.
And yet the vulgar call the sphere first full
[110] Up to the visible height – and after, void;
Not knowing air’s more hidden properties.
And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus
To vindicate his purpose in our life:
Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?
Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out,
That he or other god descended here
And, once for all, showed simultaneously
What, in its nature, never can be shown,
Piecemeal or in succession; – showed, I say,
[120] The worth both absolute and relative
Of all his children from the birth of time,
His instruments for all appointed work.
I now go on to image, – might we hear
The judgement which should give the due to each,
Show where the labour lay and where the ease,
And prove Zeus’ self, the latent everywhere!
This is a dream: – but no dream, let us hope,
That years and days, the summers and the springs,
Follow each other with unwaning powers.
[130] The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far,
Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock;
The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe;
The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet;
The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers;
That young and tender crescent-moon, thy slave,
Sleeping above her robe as buoyed by clouds,
Refines upon the women of my youth.
What, and the soul alone deteriorates?
I have not chanted verse like Homer, no –
[140] Nor swept string like Terpander, no – nor carved
And painted men like Phidias and his friend:
I am not great as they are, point by point.
But I have entered into sympathy
With these four, running these into one soul,
Who, separate, ignored each other’s art.
Say, is it nothing that I know them all?
The wild flower was the larger; I have dashed
Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup’s
Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit,
[150] And show a better flower if not so large:
I stand myself. Refer this to the gods
Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare
(All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext
That such a gift by chance lay in my hand,
Discourse of lightly or depreciate?
It might have fallen to another’s hand: what then?
I pass too surely: let at least truth stay!
And next, of what thou followest on to ask.
This being with me as I declare, O king,
[160] My works, in all these varicoloured kinds,
So done by me, accepted so by men –
Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men’s hearts)
I must not be accounted to attain
The very crown and proper end of life?
Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up,
I face death with success in my right hand:
Whether I fear death less than dost thyself
The fortunate of men? ‘For’ (writest thou)
‘Thou leavest much behind, while I leave naught.
[170] Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing,
The pictures men shall study; while my life,
Complete and whole now in its power and joy,
Dies altogether with my brain and arm,
Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself?
The brazen statue to o’erlook my grave,
Set on the promontory which I named.
And that – some supple courtier of my heir
Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps,
To fix the rope to, which best drags it down.
[180] I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!’
Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind.
Is this apparent, when thou turn’st to muse
Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief,
That admiration grows as knowledge grows?
That imperfection means perfection hid,
Reserved in part, to grace the after-time?
If, in the morning of philosophy,
Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived,
Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked
[190] On all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird,
Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage –
Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced
The perfectness of others yet unseen.
Conceding which, – had Zeus then questioned thee
‘Shall I go on a step, improve on this,
Do more for visible creatures than is done?’
Thou wouldst have answered, ‘Ay, by making each
Grow conscious in himself – by that alone.
All’s perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock,
[200] The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims
And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight,
Till life’s mechanics can no further go –
And all this joy in natural life is put
Like fire from off thy finger into each,
So exquisitely perfect is the same.
But ’tis pure fire, and they mere matter are;
It has them, not they it: and so I choose
For man, thy last premeditated work
(If I might add a glory to the scheme)
[210] That a third thing should stand apart from both,
A quality arise within his soul,
Which, intro-active, made to supervise
And feel the force it has, may view itself,
And so be happy.’ Man might live at first
The animal life: but is there nothing more?
In due time, let him critically learn
How he lives; and, the more he gets to know
Of his own life’s adaptabilities,
The more joy-giving will his life become.
[220] Thus man, who hath this quality, is best.
But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said:
‘Let progress end at once, – man make no step
Beyond the natural man, the better beast,
Using his senses, not the sense of sense.’
In man there’s failure, only since he left
The lower and inconscious forms of life.
We called it an advance, the rendering plain
Man’s spirit might grow conscious of man’s life,
And, by new lore so added to the old,
[230] Take each step higher over the brute’s head.
This grew the only life, the pleasure-house,
Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul,
Which whole surrounding flats of natural life
Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to;
A tower that crowns a country. But alas,
The soul now climbs it just to perish there!
For thence we have discovered (’tis no dream –
We know this, which we had not else perceived)
That there’s a world of capability
[240] For joy, spread round about us, meant for us,
Inviting us; and still the soul craves all,
And still the flesh replies, ‘Take no jot more
Than ere thou clombst the tower to look abroad!
Nay, so much less as that fatigue has brought
Deduction to it.’ We struggle, fain to enlarge
Our bounded physical recipiency,
Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,
Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,
It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,
[250] As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.
They praise a fountain in my garden here
Wherein a Naiad sends the water-bow
Thin from her tube; she smiles to see it rise.
What if I told her, it is just a thread
From that great river which the hills shut up,
And mock her with my leave to take the same?
The artificer has given her one small tube
Past power to widen or exchange – what boots
To know she might spout oceans if she could?
[260] She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread:
And so a man can use but a man’s joy
While he sees God’s. Is it for Zeus to boast,
‘See, man, how happy I live, and despair –
That I may be still happier – for thy use!’
If this were so, we could not thank our lord,
As hearts beat on to doing; ’tis not so –
Malice it is not. Is it carelessness?
Still, no.
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