ROBERT BROWNING Expect another job this time next year, Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, no lights! The street's hushed, and I know my own way 390 back, Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks! ONE WORD MORE TO E. B. B. LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1855 There they are, my fifty men and women II Rafael made a century of sonnets, you. 1"He painted the picture." Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."6 While he mused and traced it and retraced it, (Peradventure with a pen corroded Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, Dante, who loved well because he hated, In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 1 the Sistine Madonna, now in Dresden 2 the Madonna di Foligno, now in the Vatican at Rome 3 the Madonna del Granduca, representing her as appearing to a votary in a vision In the Louvre at Paris, the Madonna called La Belle Jardinière is seated in a garden. 5a Florentine painter (1575-1642) 6 Beatrice Portinari, Dante's ideal love 7cf. Inferno, xxxii, 97 AE None but would forego his proper dowry, IX 70 ROBERT BROWNING When they drank and sneered "A stroke is easy!" When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, Throwing him for thanks "But drought was pleasant." Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; Thus the doing savours of disrelish; Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, Carelessness or consciousness For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90 the gesture. Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prel ude "How shouldst thou of all men, smite, and save us?" Guesses what is like to prove the sequel "Egypt's flesh-pots-nay, the drought was better." XIII -- Yet a semblance of resource avails us Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time. He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 123 Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge 1 with flowerets. Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver, He who writes, may write for once as I do. Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's self! Here in London, yonder late in Florence, crescent of a hair's breadth. 150 1 The margins of missals and other service books were often filled with beautiful pictures of flowers, birds, etc. 2Characters in Browning's Men and Women 3a mountain near Florence Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. XVI What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy? man Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even ! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better! Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain ? Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. Like the bodied heaven in his clearness Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, When they ate and drank and saw God also! XVII What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know. 180 Only this is sure the sight were other, Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, Dying now impoverished here in London. God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her! XVIII This I say of me, but think of you, Love! This to you yourself my moon of poets! 1 the myth of Endymion, beloved of the moon goddess 2 Exodus xxiv: 10 ROBERT BROWNING Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well, Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the 16 And another would mount and march, like the Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but Raising my rampired walls of gold as transpar- Eager to do and die, yield each his place to For higher still and higher (as a runner tips When a great illumination surprises a festal Outlined round and round Rome's dome from Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the 24 In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was And the emulous heaven yearned down, made As the earth had done her best, in my pas sion, to scale the sky: Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star; Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far. Nay more; 32 for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow, Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,1 Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and gone, But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: 1 Creator Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled: 48 But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught: It is everywhere in the world - loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! 56 |