An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 47

He took such cognizance of men and things, {30} If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note; Yet stared at n.o.body,--you stared at him, And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, He seemed to know you and expect as much.

So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed, It marked the shameful and notorious fact, We had among us, not so much a spy, As a recording chief-inquisitor, The town's true master if the town but knew! {40} We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night.

Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of. . .well, it was not wholly ease, As back into your mind the man's look came.

Stricken in years a little, such a brow {50} His eyes had to live under!--clear as flint On either side o' the formidable nose Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw.

Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate?

When altogether old B. disappeared, And young C. got his mistress,--was't our friend, His letter to the King, that did it all?

What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?

Our Lord the King has favorites manifold, And s.h.i.+fts his ministry some once a month; {60} Our city gets new governors at whiles,-- But never word or sign, that I could hear, Notified, to this man about the streets, The King's approval of those letters conned The last thing duly at the dead of night.

Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord, Exhorting when none heard--"Beseech me not!

Too far above my people,--beneath me!

I set the watch,--how should the people know?

Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!" {70} Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least-- That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace, You found he ate his supper in a room Blazing with lights, four t.i.tians on the wall, And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

Poor man, he lived another kind of life In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! {80} The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat, Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back, Playing a decent cribbage with his maid (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears, Or treat of radishes in April. Nine, Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was, Would point him out to me a dozen times; "St--St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!" {90} I had been used to think that personage Was one with lacquered breeches, l.u.s.trous belt, And feathers like a forest in his hat, Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news, Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn, And memorized the miracle in vogue!

He had a great observance from us boys; We were in error; that was not the man.

I'd like now, yet had haply been afraid, To have just looked, when this man came to die, {100} And seen who lined the clean gay garret sides, And stood about the neat low truckle-bed, With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.

Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief, Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death, Doing the King's work all the dim day long, In his old coat and up to knees in mud, Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,-- And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

No further show or need of that old coat, {110} You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

A second, and the angels alter that.

Well, I could never write a verse,--could you?

Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

"Transcendentalism":

A Poem in Twelve Books.

-- * Transcendentalism: a poem in twelve books. It must be understood that the poet addressed has written a long poem under this t.i.tle, and a brother-poet, while admitting that it contains "true thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up", raises the objection that they are naked, instead of being draped, as they should be, in sights and sounds.

Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?

'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art: Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.

--True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up!

But why such long prolusion and display, Such turning and adjustment of the harp, And taking it upon your breast, at length, Only to speak dry words across its strings?

Stark-naked thought is in request enough: {10} Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears!

The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark, Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp-- Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?

But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think; Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse; Boys seek for images and melody, Men must have reason--so, you aim at men.

Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true; We see and hear and do not wonder much: {20} If you could tell us what they mean, indeed!

As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him.

That day the daisy had an eye indeed-- Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes!

We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose.

But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote, {30} (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind) We shut the clasps and find life's summer past.

Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss-- Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what roses say,-- Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt, John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about?

He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, {40} Over us, under, round us every side, Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,-- Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.

So come, the harp back to your heart again!

You are a poem, though your poem's naught.

The best of all you showed before, believe, Was your own boy-face o'er the finer chords Bent, following the cherub at the top {50} That points to G.o.d with his paired half-moon wings.

-- 22. German Boehme: Jacob Boehme (or Behmen), a shoemaker and a famous theosophist, b. 1575, at Old Seidenberg, a village near Goerlitz; d. 1624. The 24th verse of the poem, "He noticed all at once that plants could speak", may refer to a remarkable experience of Boehme, related in Dr. Hans La.s.sen Martensen's 'Jacob Boehme: his life and teaching, or studies in theosophy: translated from the Danish by T. Rhys Evans', London, 1885: "Sitting one day in his room, his eye fell upon a burnished pewter dish, which reflected the suns.h.i.+ne with such marvellous splendor that he fell into an inward ecstasy, and it seemed to him as if he could now look into the principles and deepest foundations of things.

He believed that it was only a fancy, and in order to banish it from his mind he went out upon the green. But here he remarked that he gazed into the very heart of things, the very herbs and gra.s.s, and that actual nature harmonized with what he had inwardly seen."

Martensen, in his biography, follows that by Frankenberg, in which the experience may be given more in detail.

37-40. him of Halberstadt, John: "It is not a thinker like Boehme, who will compensate us for the lost summer of our life; but a magician like John of Halberstadt, who can, at any moment, conjure roses up."

"The 'magic' symbolized, is that of genuine poetry; but the magician, or 'Mage', is an historical person; and the special feat imputed to him was recorded of other magicians in the Middle Ages, if not of himself.

'Johannes Teutonicus, a canon of Halberstadht in Germany, after he had performed a number of prestigious feats almost incredible, was transported by the Devil in the likeness of a black horse, and was both seen and heard upon one and the same Christmas day, to say ma.s.s in Halberstadht, in Mayntz, and in Cologne'

('Heywood's Hierarchy', Bk. IV., p. 253). The 'prestigious feat'

of causing flowers to appear in winter, was a common one."

--Mrs. Sutherland Orr's 'Handbook to the works of Robert Browning', p. 209.

It may be said that the advice given in this poem, Browning has not sufficiently followed in his own poetry. On this point, a writer in the 'British Quarterly Review' (Vol. 23, p. 162) justly remarks: "Browning's thought is always that of a poet. Subtle, nimble, and powerful as is the intellect, and various as is the learning, all is manifested through the imagination, and comes forth shaped and tinted by it. Thus, even in the foregoing pa.s.sages {cited from 'Transcendentalism' and 'Bishop Blougram's Apology'}, where the matter is almost as purely as it can be the produce of the mere understanding, it is still evident that the method of the thought is poetic. The notions take the form of images.

For example, the poet means to say that Prose is a good and mighty vehicle in its way, but that it is not Poetry; and how does the conception shape itself in his mind? Why, in an image. All at once it is not Prose that is thought about, but a huge six-foot speaking-trumpet braced round with bark, through which the Swiss hunters help their voices from Alp to Alp-- Poetry, on the other hand, being no such big and blaring instrument, but a harp taken to the breast of youth and swept by ecstatic fingers.

And so with the images of Boehme and his book, and John of Halberstadt with his magic rose--still a concrete body to enshrine an abstract meaning."

Apparent Failure.

"We shall soon lose a celebrated building."--Paris Newspaper.

1.

No, for I'll save it! Seven years since, I pa.s.sed through Paris, stopped a day To see the baptism of your Prince; Saw, made my bow, and went my way: Walking the heat and headache off, I took the Seine-side, you surmise, Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff, Cavour's appeal and Buol's replies, So sauntered till--what met my eyes?

-- St. 1. To see the baptism of your Prince: the Prince Imperial, son of Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie, born March 16, 1856.

the Congress: the Congress of Paris.

Gortschakoff: Prince Alexander Michaelowitsch Gortschakoff; while representing Russia at the Court of Vienna, he kept Austria neutral during the Crimean War.

Cavour: Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, Italian statesman, b. 1810; at the Congress of Paris, brought forward the question of the political consolidation of Italy, which led to the invasion of Italy by the Austrians, who were defeated; d. 6th June, 1861.

Buol: Karl Ferdinand von Buol-Schauenstein, Austrian diplomatist, and minister of foreign affairs from 1852 to 1859.

2.

Only the Doric little Morgue!

The dead-house where you show your drowned: Petrarch's Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue, Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.

One pays one's debt in such a case; I plucked up heart and entered,--stalked, Keeping a tolerable face Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked: Let them! No Briton's to be balked!