Chapter 17

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 by _hearing_ the 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 in _Vanity 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 poem _Childe 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. In _The 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 to _Saul_. 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 in _Abt 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 of _Saul_ contains 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.

SAUL

1845-1855

I

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 his cheek. And he: "Since the King, O my friend, for thy countenance sent, Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until from his tent Thou return with the joyful assurance the King liveth yet, Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the water be wet For 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."

II

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III

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 on Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once more I prayed, And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not afraid But spoke, "Here is David, thy servant!" And no voice replied. At the first I saw naught but the blackness: but soon I descried A something more black than the blackness--the vast, the upright Main prop which sustains the pavilion: and slow into sight Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of all. Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, showed Saul.

IV

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes to each side; He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his pangs And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs, Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come With the spring-time,--so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

V

Then I tuned my harp,--took off the lilies we twine round its chords Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide--those sunbeams like 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 fed Where the long grasses stifle the water within the stream's bed; And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star follows star Into eve and the blue far above us,--so blue and so far!

VI

--Then the tune for which quails on the corn-land will each leave his mate To fly after the player; then, what makes the crickets elate Till for boldness they fight one another; and then, what has weight To 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.

VII

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their wine-song, when hand Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, and great hearts expand And grow one in the sense of this world's life.--And then, the last song When the dead man is praised on his journey--"Bear, bear him along, With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"--And then, the glad chaunt Of the marriage,--first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.--And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends? Then, the chorus intoned As the Levites go up to the altar in glory enthroned. But I stopped here: for here in the darkness Saul groaned.

VIII

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart; And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart From 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:--

IX

"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 silver shock Of 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 of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, and all was for best'? 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 grew Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true: 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 the throe That, a-work in the rock, helps its labour and lets the gold go) High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame crowning them,--all Brought to blaze on the head of one creature--King Saul!"

X

And lo, with that leap of my spirit,--heart, hand, harp and voice, Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bidding rejoice Saul'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 hung propped By 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 of stone A year's snow bound about for a breastplate,--leaves grasp of the sheet? Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet, And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, your mountain of old, With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages untold-- Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each furrow and scar Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest--all hail, there they are! --Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold the nest Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the green on his crest For their food in the ardours of summer. One long shudder thrilled All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and was stilled At the King's self left standing before me, released and aware. What was gone, what remained? All to traverse 'twixt hope and despair, Death was past, life not come: so he waited. Awhile his right hand Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forthwith to remand To their place what new objects should enter: 'twas Saul as before. I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was hurt any more Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, we watch from the shore, At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean--a sun's slow decline Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap and entwine Base with base to knit strength more intensely; so, arm folded arm O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided.

XI

What spell or what charm, (For awhile there was trouble within me,) what next should I urge To sustain him where song had restored him?--one filled to the verge His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that it yields Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty; beyond, on what fields, Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten the eye And 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 rife Which had come long ago on the pasture, when round me the sheep Fed 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 the sky: And I laughed--"Since my days are ordained to be passed with my flocks, 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 show Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly shall know! Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the courage that gains, And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." And now these old trains Of vague thought came again; I grew surer; so, once more the string Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus--

XIII

"Yea, my King," I began--"thou dost well in rejecting mere comforts that spring From 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 bears fruit. Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree,--how its stem trembled first Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler; then safely outburst The fan-branches all round; and thou mindest when these too, in turn, Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect: yet more was to learn, E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. Our dates shall we slight, When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow? or care for the plight Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced them? Not so! stem and branch Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the palm-wine shall stanch Every 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 enjoy More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life of a boy. Crush that life, and behold its wine running! Each deed thou hast done Dies, revives, goes to work in the world; until e'en as the sun Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, though tempests efface, Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must everywhere trace The results of his past summer-prime,--so, each ray of thy will, Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they too give forth A like cheer to their sons, who in turn, fill the South and the North With 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 arise A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, built to the skies, Let it mark where the great First King slumbers: whose fame would ye know? Up above see the rock's naked face, where the record shall go In 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 to amend, In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon they shall spend (See, in tablets 'tis level before them) their praise, and record With the gold of the graver, Saul's story,--the statesman's great word Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The river's a-wave With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when prophet-winds rave: So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part In thy being! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art!"

XIV

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 sword In that act where my soul was thy servant, thy word was my word,-- Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavour And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever On the new stretch of heaven above me--till, mighty to save, Just one lift of thy hand cleared that distance--God's throne from man's grave! Let me tell out my tale to its ending--my voice to my heart Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last night I took part, 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 upheaves The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder, and Kidron retrieves Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine.

XV

I say then,--my song While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever more strong Made a proffer of good to console him--he slowly resumed His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right hand re-plumed His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted the swathes Of 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 bent The broad brow from the daily communion; and still, though much spent Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, God did choose, To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never quite lose. So sank he along by the tent-prop till, stayed by the pile Of his armour and war-cloak and garments, he leaned there awhile, And sat out my singing,--one arm round the tent-prop, to raise His bent head, and the other hung slack--till I touched on the praise I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient there; And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then first I was 'ware That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his vast knees Which were thrust out on each side around me, like oak roots which please To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up to know If the best I could do had brought solace: he spoke not, but slow Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: through my hair The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power-- 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!"

XVI

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more--no song more! outbroke--

XVII