Chapter 8
You're my friend-- What a thing friendship is, world without end! How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet, And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit, Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids-- Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids; 840 Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease. I have seen my little lady once more, Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it, For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before; I always wanted to make a clean breast of it: And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle, Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets, 850 Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle, And genially floats me about the giblets.
I'll tell you what I intend to do: I must see this fellow his sad life through-- He is our Duke, after all, And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall. My father was born here, and I inherit His fame, a chain he bound his son with; Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it, But there's no mine to blow up and get done with: 860 So, I must stay till the end of the chapter. For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter, Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on, Some day or other, his head in a morion And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up, Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup. And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust, And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust, Then I shall scrape together my earnings; For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes, 870 And our children all went the way of the roses: It's a long lane that knows no turnings. One needs but little tackle to travel in; So, just one stout cloak shall I indue: And for a staff, what beats the javelin With which his boars my father pinned you? And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently, Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful, I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly! Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful. 880 What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold: When we mind labour, then only, we're too old-- What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul? And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees, (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil) I hope to get safely out of the turmoil And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies, And find my lady, or hear the last news of her From some old thief and son of Lucifer, 890 His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop, Sunburned all over like an AEthiop. And when my Cotnar begins to operate And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate, And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent, I shall drop in with--as if by accident-- "You never knew, then, how it all ended, What fortune good or bad attended The little lady your Queen befriended?" --And when that's told me, what's remaining? 900 This world's too hard for my explaining. The same wise judge of matters equine Who still preferred some slim four-year-old To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine, He also must be such a lady's scorner! Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau: Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw. --So, I shall find out some snug corner Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 910 Turn myself round and bid the world good night; And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowing Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen) To a world where will be no further throwing Pearls before swine that can't value them. Amen!
NOTES: "The Flight of the Duchess." A story of the triumph of a free and loving life over a cold and conventional one. The duke's huntsman frees his mind to his friend as to his part in the escape of the gladsome, ardent young duchess from the blighting yoke of a husband whose life consisted in imitating defunct mediaeval customs. An old gipsy is the agency that awakens her to the joy and freedom of love. Her mystic chant and charm claim the duchess as the true heir of gipsy blood, thrill her with life, half-hypnotize the huntsman, too, and seem to transform the gipsy crone herself into an Eastern queen. He helps them off, and looks for no better future, when the duke's death releases him, than to travel to the land of the gipsies and hear the last news of his lady.
The poem grew from the fancies aroused in the poet's heart by the snatch of a woman's song he overheard when a boy--"Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL,
SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE
Let us begin and carry up this corpse, Singing together. Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes Each in its tether Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, Cared-for till cock-crow: Look out if yonder be not day again Rimming the rock-row! That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, Rarer, intenser, 10 Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, Chafes in the censer. Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; Seek we sepulture On a tall mountain, citied to the top, Crowded with culture! All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No! Yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. 20 Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning. Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 'Ware the beholders! This is our master, famous calm and dead, Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft, Safe from the weather! 30 He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, Singing together, He was a man born with thy face and throat, Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note Winter would follow? Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone! Cramped and diminished, Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon! My dance is finished?" 40 No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side, Make for the city!) He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride Over men's pity; Left play for work, and grappled with the world Bent on escaping: "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled? Show me their shaping Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, Give!"--So, he gowned him, 50 Straight got by heart that book to its last page: Learned, we found him. Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead, Accents uncertain: "Time to taste life," another would have said, "Up with the curtain!" This man said rather, "Actual life comes next? Patience a moment! Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text, Still there's the comment. 60 Let me know all! Prate not of most or least, Painful or easy! Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast, Ay, nor feel queasy." Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, When he had learned it, When he had gathered all books had to give! Sooner, he spurned it. Image the whole, then execute the parts-- Fancy the fabric 70 Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz, Ere mortar dab brick!
(Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place Gaping before us.) Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace (Hearten our chorus!) That before living he'd learn how to live-- No end to learning: Earn the means first-God surely will contrive Use for our earning. 80 Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes: Live now or never!" He said, "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes! Man has Forever." Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head: Calculus racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: Tussis attacked him. "Now, master, take a little rest!"--not he! (Caution redoubled, 90 Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!) Not a whit troubled Back to his studies, fresher than at first, Fierce as a dragon He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) Sucked at the flagon. Oh, if we draw a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! 100 Was it not great? did not he throw on God, (He loves the burthen) God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment. He ventured neck or nothing-heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: 110 "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes: Hence with life's pale lure!" That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. 120 That, has the world here-should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him. So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, Ground he at grammar; Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: While he could stammer He settled Hoti's business--let it be!-- Properly based Oun-- 130 Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, Dead from the waist down. Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: Hail to your purlieus, All ye highfliers of the feathered race, Swallows and curlews! Here's the top-peak; the multitude below Live, for they can, there:
This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there? 140 Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily Iying, Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.
NOTES: "A Grammarian's Funeral" is an elegy of a typical pioneer scholar of the Renaissance period, sung by the leader of the chorus of disciples, and interspersed with parenthetical directions to them, while they all bear the body of their master to its appropriate burial-place on the highest mountain-peak. A humorous sense of disproportion in the labors of devoted scholarship to its results heightens their exaltation of the dead humanist's indomitable trust in the supremacy of the immaterial.
86. Calculus: the stone.
88. Tussis: a cough.
95. Hydroptic: dropsical.
129. Hoti: Greek particle, conjunction, that.
130. Oun: Greek particle, then, now then.
131. Enclitic De: Greek, concerning which Browning wrote to the Editor of The News, London, Nov. 21, 1874: "In a clever article you speak of 'the doctrine of the enclitic De--which, with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of fact, does not exist.' No, not to Mr. Browning, but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose fifth list of 'enclitics' ends with the inseparable De,'-- or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning 'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage). That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated 'De, meaning but,' was the 'Doctrine' which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it."
THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY
A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE
ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS. A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT, CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS-BY- THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS ERAM, Jessides.
(It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314, as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a couple of centuries.)
[Molay was Grand Master of the Templars when that order was suppressed in 1312.]
I
PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.
The Lord, we look to once for all, Is the Lord we should look at, all at once: He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul, Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce. See him no other than as he is! Give both the infinitudes their due-- Infinite mercy, but, I wis, As infinite a justice too.
[Organ: plagal-cadence.]
As infinite a justice too.
II
[ONE SINGETH] John, Master of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth-- We bring John now to be burned alive.
III
In the midst is a goodly gallows built; 'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck; 20 But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt, Make a trench all round with the city muck; Inside they pile log upon log, good store; Faggots no few, blocks great and small, Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,-- For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.
CHORUS.
We mean he should roast in the sight of all.
IV
Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith; Billets that blaze substantial and slow; Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith; 30 Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow: They up they hoist me John in a chafe, Sling him fast like a hog to scorch, Spit in his face, then leap back safe, Sing "Laudes" and bid clap-to the torch.
CHORUS.
Laus deo--who bids clap-to the torch.
V
John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged, Is burning alive in Paris square! How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged? Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there? 40 Or heave his chest, which a band goes round? Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced? Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound? --Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ. [Here one crosseth himself.]
VI
Jesus Christ--John had bought and sold, Jesus Christ--John had eaten and drunk; To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold. (Salva reverentia.) Now it was, "Saviour, bountiful lamb, "I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me! 50 "See thy servant, the plight wherein I am! "Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!"
CHORUS.
'Tis John the mocker cries, "Save thou me!"
VII
Who maketh God's menace an idle word? --Saith, it no more means what it proclaims, Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird? For she too prattles of ugly names. --Saith, he knoweth but one thing--what he knows? That God is good and the rest is breath; Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose? 60 Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.
CHORUS.
O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!
VIII
Alack, there be roses and roses, John! Some, honied of taste like your leman's tongue: Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!) Their tree struck root in devil's-dung. When Paul once reasoned of righteousness And of temperance and of judgment to come, Good Felix trembled, he could no less: John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb. 70
CHORUS.
What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?
IX
Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose To rid himself of a sorrow at heart! Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose; Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart; And with blood for dew, the bosom boils; And a gust of sulphur is all its smell; And lo, he is horribly in the toils Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!
CHORUS.
What maketh heaven, That maketh hell. 80
X
So, as John called now, through the fire amain, On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life-- To the Person, he bought and sold again-- For the Face, with his daily buffets rife-- Feature by feature It took its place: And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark, At the steady whole of the Judge's face-- Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.
SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.
God help all poor souls lost in the dark!
NOTES: "The Heretic's Tragedy" is an Interlude imagined in the manner of the Middle Ages, and typically representing this period of human development in its quaint piety and prejudice, its childish delight in cruelty, and its cumulative legend-making during the course of two centuries as reflected through the Flemish nature. It is supposed to be sung by an abbot, a choir-singer, and a chorus, in celebration of the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last Grand Master of the wealthy and powerful secular order of Knights Templar, which came into rivalry with the Church after the Crusades and was finally suppressed by Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, Molay's burning at Paris in 1314 being a final scene in their discomfiture and the Church's triumph.
8. Plagal-cadence: a closing progression of chords in which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree of the scale. The name arises from the modes used in early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the fourth degree of the authentic modes.
12. Bought of... Aldabrod, etc.: Clement's arraignment of Jacques or John being that the riches won piously by the order during the Crusades, he had not scrupled to sell again to Saladin, the Sultan, who is portrayed by Scott in "The Talisman.''
14. Pope Clement: the fifth Clement (1305-1314).
18. Clavicithern: a cithern with keys like a harpsichord.
25. Sing "Laudes": Sing the seven Psalms of praise making up the service of the Church called Lauds.
48. Salva, etc. the bidding to greet here with a reverence, according to custom, the Host, or Christ's flesh, which had been mentioned.
60. Sharon's rose: Solomon's Song 2.1.
HOLY-CROSS DAY
ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME
[" Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous table here in Rome should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally brought-nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in') haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory."-Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.]
What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect:--
I
Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives us the summons--'tis sermon-time!
II
Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you? Up stumps Solomon--bustling too? Shame, man! greedy beyond your years To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears? Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch? 10 Stand on a line ere you start for the church!
III
Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie, Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye, Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve, Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve. Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs And buzz for the bishop--here he comes.
IV
Bow, wow, wow--a bone for the dog! I liken his Grace to an acorned hog. 20 What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass, To help and handle my lord's hour-glass! Didst ever behold so lithe a chine? His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.
V
Aaron's asleep--shove hip to haunch, Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch! Look at the purse with the tassel and knob And the gown with the angel and thingumbob! What's he at, quotha? reading his text! Now you've his curtsey--and what comes next? 30
VI
See to our converts--you doomed black dozen-- No stealing away--nor cog nor cozen! You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly; You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely; You took your turn and dipped in the hat, Got fortune--and fortune gets you; mind that!
VII