Selections From The Poems And Plays Of Robert Browning Part 8

No Virgin by him the somewhat petty, Of finical touch and tempera crumbly-- Could not Ales...o...b..ldovinetti 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 h.o.a.rding it does you but little honor.

They pa.s.s; 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 plat.i.tude) 245 Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Sofi's eye; So, in antic.i.p.ative grat.i.tude, 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 "G.o.d 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 pa.s.s, 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 h.o.a.ry dew, All will be gay when noontide wakes anew The b.u.t.tercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! 20

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM THE SEA

n.o.bly, n.o.bly 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.surance 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 s.p.a.ce 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! G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s-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 gra.s.ses 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