Chapter 9
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 When, lights at prow, the seamen haul their net. 50 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. For music--why, I have combined the moods, 60 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 With some whole man of the heroic age, 70 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 analyzed to parts, But each part having reference to all-- How shall a certain part, pronounced complete, Endure effacement by another part? 80 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, The portions of mankind; and after, so, 90 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 labor 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 At some one point the inside of a sphere, 100 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 Up to the visible height--and after, void; 110 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, The worth both absolute and relative 120 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 judgment which should give the due to each, Show where the labor 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. The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, 130 Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock; The wave 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-- Nor swept string like Terpander, no--nor carved 140 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, And show a better flower if not so large: 150 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, 0 king, My works, in all these varicolored kinds, 160 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. Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing, 170 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, See 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. I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!" 180
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 On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird, 190 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, The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims 200 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 't is 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) That a third thing should stand apart from both, 210 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. Thus man, who hath this quality, is best. 220
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, Take each step higher over the brute's head. 230 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 ('t is no dream-- We know this, which we had not else perceived) That there's a world of capability For joy, spread round about us, meant for us, 240 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, As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take. 250 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? She cannot lift beyond her first thin thread; 260 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. If care--where is the sign? I ask, And get no answer, and agree in sum, 0 king, with thy profound discouragement, 270 Who seest the wider but to sigh the more. Most progress is most failure: thou sayest well.
The last point now:--thou dost except a case-- Holding joy not impossible to one With artist-gifts--to such a man as I Who leave behind me living works indeed; For, such a poem, such a painting lives. What? dost thou verily trip upon a word, Confound the accurate view of what joy is (Caught somewhat clearer by my eyes than thine) 280 With feeling joy? confound the knowing how And showing how to live (my faculty) With actually living?--Otherwise Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king? Because in my great epos I display How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act-- Is this as though I acted? if I paint, Carve the young Phoebus, am I therefore young? Methinks I'm older that I bowed myself The many years of pain that taught me art! 290 Indeed, to know is something, and to prove How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more; But, knowing naught, to enjoy is something too. Yon rower, with the moulded muscles there, Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I. I can write love-odes: thy fair slave's an ode. I get to sing of love, when grown too gray For being beloved: she turns to that young man, The muscles all a-ripple on his back. I know the joy of kingship: well, thou art king! 300
"But," sayest thou--(and I marvel, I repeat, To find thee trip on such a mere word) "what Thou writest, paintest, stays; that does not die: Sappho survives, because we sing her songs, And AEschylus, because we read his plays!" Why, if they live still, let them come and take Thy slave in my despite, drink from thy cup, Speak in my place. Thou diest while I survive? Say rather that my fate is deadlier still, In this, that every day my sense of joy 310 Grows more acute, my soul (intensified By power and insight) more enlarged, more keen; While every day my hairs fall more and more, My hand shakes, and the heavy years increase-- The horror quickening still from year to year, The consummation coming past escape When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy-- When all my works wherein I prove my worth, Being present still to mock me in men's mouths, Alive still, in the praise of such as thou, 320 I, I the feeling, thinking, acting man, The man who loved his life so over-much, Sleep in my urn. It is so horrible, I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus, Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy, --To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us: That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose to make prized the life at large-- 330 Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, We burst there as the worm into the fly, Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no! Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, He must have done so, were it possible!
Live long and happy, and in that thought die; Glad for what was! Farewell. And for the rest, I cannot tell thy messenger aright Where to deliver what he bears of thine To one called Paulus; we have heard his fame 340 Indeed, if Christus be not one with him-- I know not, nor am troubled much to know. Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew, As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised, Hath access to a secret shut from us? Thou wrongest our philosophy, 0 king, In stooping to inquire of such an one, As if his answer could impose at all! He writeth, doth he? well, and he may write. Oh, the Jew findeth scholars! certain slaves 350 Who touched on this same isle, preached him and Christ; And (as I gathered from a bystander) Their doctrine could be held by no sane man.
NOTES
"Cleon" expresses the approach of Greek thought at the time of Christ towards the idea of immortality as made known by Cleon, a Greek poet writing in reply to a Greek patron whose princely gifts and letter asking comment on the philosophical significance of death have just reached him. The important conclusions reached by Cleon in his answer are that the composite mind is greater than the minds of the past, because it is capable of accomplishing much in many lines of activity, and of sympathizing with each of those simple great minds that had reached the highest possible perfection "at one point." It is, indeed, the necessary next step in development, though all classes of mind fit into the perfected mosaic of life, no one achievement blotting out any other. This soul and mind development he deduces from the physical development he sees about him. But since with the growth of human consciousness and the increase of knowledge comes greater capability to the soul for joy while the failure of physical powers shuts off the possibility of realizing joy, it would have been better had man been left with nothing higher than mere sense like the brutes. Dismissing the idea of immortality through one's works as unsatisfactory to the individual, he finally concludes that a long and happy life is all there is to be hoped for, since, had the future life which he has sometimes dared to hope for been possible, Zeus would long before have revealed it. He dismisses the preaching of one Paulus as untenable.
"As certain also of your own poets have said": this motto hints that Paul's speech at Athens (Acts 17.22-28) suggests and justifies Browning's conception of such Greek poets as Cleon seeking "the Lord, if haply they might feel after him." Paul's quotation, "For we are also his offspring," is from the "Phoenomena" by Aratus, a Greek poet of his own town of Tarsus.
1. Sprinkled isles: probably the Sporades, so named because they were scattered, and in opposition to the Cyclades, which formed a circle around Delos.
51. Phare: light-house. The French authority, Allard, says that though there is no mention in classical writings of any light-house in Greece proper, it is probable that there was one at the port of Athens as well as at other points in Greece. There were certainly several along both shores of the Hellespont, besides the famous father of all light-houses, on the island of Pharos, near Alexandria. Hence the French name for light-house, phare.
53. Poecile: the portico at Athens painted with battle pictures by Polygnotus the Thasian.
60. Combined the moods: in Greek music the scales were called moods or modes, and were subject to great variation in the arrangement of tones and semitones.
83. Rhomb . . . lozenge . . . trapezoid: all four-sided forms, but differing as to the parallel arrangement of their sides and the obliquity of their angles.
140. Terpander: musician of Lesbos (about 650 B. C.), who added three strings to the four-stringed Greek lyre.
141. Phidias: the Athenian sculptor (about 430 B. C.) --and his friend: Pericles, ruler of Athens (444-429 B.C.). Plutarch speaks of their friendship in his Life of Pericles.
304. Sappho: poet of Lesbos, supreme among lyricists (about 600 B. C.). Only fragments of her verse remain.
305. AEschylus: oldest of the three great Athenian dramatists (525-472 B. C.).
340. Paulus; we have have heard his fame: Paul's mission to the Gentiles carried him to many of the islands in the AEgean Sea as well as to Athens and Corinth (Acts 13-21).
RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI
1842
I I know a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves The world; and, vainly favored, it repays The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze By no change of its large calm front of snow. And underneath the Mount, a Flower I know, He cannot have perceived, that changes ever At his approach; and, in the lost endeavor To live his life, has parted, one by one, With all a flower's true graces, for the grace 10 Of being but a foolish mimic sun, With ray-like florets round a disk-like face. Men nobly call by many a name the Mount As over many a land of theirs its large Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie, Each to its proper praise and own account: Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively.
II Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look Across the waters to this twilight nook, 20 --The far sad waters. Angel, to this nook!
III Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed? Go!--saying ever as thou dost proceed, That I, French Rudel, choose for my device A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice Before its idol. See! These inexpert And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt The woven picture; 't is a woman's skill Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed 30 On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees On my flower's breast as on a platform broad: But, as the flower's concern is not for these But solely for the sun, so men applaud In vain this Rudel, he not looking here But to the East--the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!
NOTES
"Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli": Rudel symbolizes his love as the aspiration of the sunflower that longs only to become like the sun, so losing a flower's true grace, while the sun does not even perceive the flower. He imagines himself as a pilgrim revealing to the Lady of Tripoli by means of this symbol the entire sinking of self in his love for her. Even men's praise of his songs is no more to him than the bees which bask on a sunflower are to it.
Rudel was a Provencal troubadour, and lived in the twelfth century. The Crusaders, returning from the East, spread abroad wonderful reports of the beauty, learning, and wit of the Countess of Tripoli, a small duchy on the Mediterranean, north of Palestine. Rudel, although never having seen her, fell in love with her and composed songs in honor of her beauty, and finally set out to the East in pilgrim's garb. On his way he was taken ill, but lived to reach the port of Tripoli. The countess, being told of his arrival, went on board the vessel. When Rudel heard she was coming, he revived, said she had restored him to life by her coming, and that he was willing to die, having seen her. He died in her arms; she gave him a rich and honorable burial in a sepulchre of porphyry on which were engraved verses in Arabic.
ONE WORD MORE
TO E. B. B.
1855
[Originally appended to the collection of Poems called "Men and Women," the greater portion of which has now been, more correctly, distributed under the other titles of this edition.-R. B.]
I There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished! Take them, Love, the book and me together: Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.
II Rafael made a century of sonnets, Made and wrote them in a certain volume Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil Else he only used to draw Madonnas: These, the world might view--but one, the volume. Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. 10 Did she live and love it all her life-time? Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, Die, and let it drop beside her pillow Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving-- Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's? You and I would rather read that volume, (Taken to his beating bosom by it) Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 20 Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas-- Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, Her, that visits Florence in a vision, Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre-- Seen by us and all the world in circle.
IV You and I will never read that volume. Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. Guido Reni dying, all Bologna Cried, and the world cried too, "Ours, the treasure!" 30 Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
V Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice." While he mused and traced it and retraced it, (Peradventure with a pen corroded Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked, Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, Bit into the live man's flesh, for parchment, Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 40 Let the wretch go festering through Florence)-- Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving, Dante standing, studying his angel-- In there broke the folk of his Inferno. Says he--"Certain people of importance" Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) "Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." Says the poet--"Then I stopped my painting." You and I would rather see that angel, 50 Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not?--than read a fresh Inferno.
VII You and I will never see that picture. While he mused on love and Beatrice, While he softened o'er his outlined angel, In they broke, those "people of importance;" We and Bice bear the loss forever.
VIII What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture? This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not Once, and only once, and for one only, 60 (Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language Fit and fair and simple and sufficient-- Using nature that's an art to others, Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. Ay, of all the artists living, loving, None but would forego his proper dowry-- Does he paint? he fain would write a poem-- Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, Put to proof art alien to the artist's, Once, and only once, and for one only, 70 So to be the man and leave the artist, Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.