Chapter 7

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven-- The better! What's come to perfection perishes. 130 Things learned on earth we shall practice in heaven: Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto! Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) "O!" 135 Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter, But what and where depend on life's minute? Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter Our first step out of the gulf or in it? 140 Shall Man, such step within his endeavor, Man's face, have no more play and action Than joy which is crystallized forever, Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

On which I conclude, that the early painters, 145 To cries of "Greek Art and what more wish you?"-- Replied, "To become now self-acquainters, And paint man, man, whatever the issue! Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray, New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters: 150 To bring the invisible full into play! Let the visible go to the dogs--what matters?"

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory For daring so much, before they well did it. The first of the new, in our race's story, 155 Beats the last of the old; 'tis no idle quiddit. The worthies began a revolution, Which if on earth you intend to acknowledge, Why, honor them now! (ends my allocution) Nor confer your degree when the folk leave college. 160

There's a fancy some lean to and others hate-- That, when this life is ended, begins New work for the soul in another state, Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins: Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, 165 Repeat in large what they practiced in small, Through life after life in unlimited series; Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen By the means of Evil that Good is best, 170 And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene-- When our faith in the same has stood the test-- Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, The uses of labor are surely done; There remaineth a rest for the people of God; 175 And I have had troubles enough, for one.

But at any rate I have loved the season Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy; My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan, My painter--who but Cimabue? 180 Nor ever was a man of them all indeed, From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, Could say that he missed my critic-meed. So, now to my special grievance--heigh-ho!

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before, 185 Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: --No getting again what the church has grasped! The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime!" 190 (I hope they prefer their inheritance Of a bucketful of Italian quicklime.)

When they go at length, with such a shaking Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly Each master his way through the black streets taking, 195 Where many a lost work breathes though badly-- Why don't they bethink them of who has merited? Why not reveal while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted? Why is it they never remember me? 200

Not that I expect the great Bigordi, Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's; But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi, 205 To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye? Not a churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?

Could not the ghost with the close red cap, My Pollajolo, the twice a craftsman, 210 Save me a sample, give me the hap Of a muscular Christ that shows the draftsman? No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly-- Could not Alesso Baldovinetti 215 Contribute so much, I ask him humbly?

Margheritone of Arezzo, With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so, You bald old saturnine poll-clawed parrot?) 220 Not a poor glimmering Crucifixion, Where in the foreground kneels the donor? If such remain, as is my conviction, The hoarding it does you but little honor.

They pass; for them the panels may thrill, 225 The tempera grow alive and tinglish; Their pictures are left to the mercies still Of dealers and stealers, Jews and the English, Who, seeing mere money's worth in their prize, Will sell it to somebody calm as Zeno 230 At naked High Art, and in ecstasies Before some clay-cold vile Carlino!

No matter for these! But Giotto, you, Have you allowed, as the town-tongues babble it-- Oh, never! it shall not be counted true-- 235 That a certain precious little tablet Which Buonarroti eyed like a lover-- Was buried so long in oblivion's womb And, left for another than I to discover, Turns up at last! and to whom?--to whom? 240

I, that have haunted the dim San Spirito, (Or was it rather the Ognissanti?) Patient on altar-step planting a weary toe! Nay, I shall have it yet! _Detur amanti!_ My Koh-i-noor--or (if that's a platitude) 245 Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye; So, in anticipative gratitude, What if I take up my hope and prophesy?

When the hour grows ripe, and a certain dotard Is pitched, no parcel that needs invoicing, 250 To the worse side of the Mont Saint Gothard, We shall begin by way of rejoicing; None of that shooting the sky (blank cartridge), Nor a civic guard, all plumes and lacquer, Hunting Radetzky's soul like a partridge 255 Over Morello with squib and cracker.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot-- No mere display at the stone of Dante, But a kind of sober Witanagemot (Ex: "Casa Guidi," _quod videas ante_) 260 Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence, How Art may return that departed with her. Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's, And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

How we shall prologuize, how we shall perorate, 265 Utter fit things upon art and history, Feel truth at blood-heat and falsehood at zero rate, Make of the want of the age no mystery; Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras, Show--monarchy ever its uncouth cub licks 270 Out of the bear's shape into Chimaera's, While Pure Art's birth is still the republic's.

Then one shall propose in a speech (curt Tuscan, Expurgate and sober, with scarcely an "_issimo_,") To end now our half-told tale of Cambuscan, 275 And turn the bell-tower's _alt_ to _altissimo_: And find as the beak of a young beccaccia The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally, Shall soar up in gold full fifty braccia, Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy. 280

Shall I be alive that morning the scaffold Is broken away, and the long-pent fire, Like the golden hope of the world, unbaffled Springs from its sleep, and up goes the spire While "God and the People" plain for its motto, 285 Thence the new tricolor flaps at the sky? At least to foresee that glory of Giotto And Florence together, the first am I!

"DE GUSTIBUS----"

Your ghost will walk, you lover of trees, (If our loves remain) In an English lane, By a cornfield-side a-flutter with poppies. Hark, those two in the hazel coppice-- 5 A boy and a girl, if the good fates please, Making love, say-- The happier they! Draw yourself up from the light of the moon, And let them pass, as they will too soon, 10 With the bean-flowers' boon, And the blackbird's tune, And May, and June!

What I love best in all the world Is a castle, precipice-encurled, 15 In a gash of the wind-grieved Apennine. Or look for me, old fellow of mine, (If I get my head from out the mouth O' the grave, and loose my spirit's bands, And come again to the land of lands)-- 20 In a sea-side house to the farther South, Where the baked cicala dies of drouth, And one sharp tree--'tis a cypress--stands, By the many hundred years red-rusted, Rough iron-spiked, ripe fruit-o'ercrusted, 25 My sentinel to guard the sands To the water's edge. For, what expands Before the house, but the great opaque Blue breadth of sea without a break? While, in the house, forever crumbles 30 Some fragment of the frescoed walls, From blisters where a scorpion sprawls. A girl bare-footed brings, and tumbles Down on the pavement, green-flesh melons, And says there's news today--the king 35 Was shot at, touched in the liver-wing, Goes with his Bourbon arm a sling: --She hopes they have not caught the felons. Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me-- 40 (When fortune's malice Lost her--Calais)-- Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, "Italy." Such lovers old are I and she: 45 So it always was, so shall ever be!

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 5 Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now!

And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! 10 Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture 15 The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray; "Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?"--say, 5 Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

SAUL

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, 5 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 10 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, 15 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 20 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 25 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 center, that goes to each side; He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught in his 30 pangs And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily hangs, Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance come With the springtime--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 35 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 40 Into eve and the blue far above us--so blue and so far!

VI

--Then the tune for which quails on the cornland 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-- 45 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 50 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 55 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. 60 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 65 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 vigor! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 70 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 75 divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draft 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! 80 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 85 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 90 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 labor and lets the gold 95 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 100 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 center, was struck by his name. Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes right to the 105 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 110 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 115 crest For their food in the ardors 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 120 right hand Held the brow, held 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, ye watch from the shore, At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean--a sun's slow decline 125 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?--Song filled to 130 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 135 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 140 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 145 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