l$JhA.^lJt.A^A hJUUUUUk.JLAJ \^'infywirv'-w^¥'y' ^r v w " PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE, PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE IN THEIR DAY: TO WIT : Bernard de Mandeville, Daniel Bartoli, Christopher Smart, George Bubb Dodington, Francis Furini, Gerard de Lairesse, AND Charles Avison. INTRODUCED BY A DIALOGUE BETWEEN APOLLO AND THE FATES ; CONCLUDED BY ANOTHER BETWEEN JOHN FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. BY ROBERT BROWNING, LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. 1887. {_All rights reserved.'] IN MEMORIAM J. MILSAND OBIIT IV. SEPT. MDLXXXVI. 'Absens absentem audit^ue viikfqtie, CONTENTS. APOLLO AND THE FATES— A PROLOGUE ... 1 L WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE . . . . 29 n. WITH DANIEL BARTOLI . . ... . 51 III. WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART 'J^ IV. WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON . . -97 V. WITH FRANCIS FURINI . . . . . . 121 VI. WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE . . . . 161 VII. WITH CHARLES AVISON I9I FUST AND HIS FRIENDS— AN EPILOGUE . . .221 APOLLO AND THE FATES A PROLOGUE APOLLO AND THE FATES. (Hymn, in ^lerciirium, v. 559. Eumenides, vv. 693-4, 697-8. Alcestis, vv. 12. 33.) APOLLO. {Frojn above.) Flame at my footfall, Parnassus ! Apollo, Breaking a-blaze on thy topmost peak, Burns thence, down to the depths — dread hollow — Haunt of the Dire Ones. Haste ! They wreak Wrath on Admetus whose respite I seek. THE FATES. {Below. JDarkmss.) Uragonwise couched in the womb of our Mother, Coiled at thy nourishing heart's core, Night ! Dominant Dreads, we, one by the other, 4 APOLLO AND THE FATES. | 1 Deal to each mortal his dole of light On earth — the upper, the glad, the bright. | I CLOTHO. \ Even so : thus from my loaded spindle \ \ Plucking a pinch of the fleece, lo, " Birth " S Brays from my bronze lip : life I kindle : i Look, 'tis a man ! go, measure on earth \ \ The minute thy portion, whatever its worth ! I % LACHESIS. ^ \ Woe-purfled, weal-prankt, — if it speed, if it linger, — 1 Life's substance and show are determined by me, \ Who, meting out, mixing with sure thumb and finger, j Lead lock the due length : is all smoothness and ] glee, \ All tangle and grief? Take the lot, my decree ! I A PROLOGUE. 5 1 ATROPOS. ' — Which I make an end of : the smooth as the tangled j My shears cut asunder : each snap shrieks " One more \ Mortal makes sport for us Moirai who dangled ;| I The puppet grotesquely till earth's solid floor '-] Proved film he fell through, lost in Nought as before." | CLOTHO. \ \ I spin thee a thread. Live, Admetus ! Produce him ! \ . i LACHESIS. !i Go, — brave, wise, good, happy 1 Now chequer the \ thread ! \ He is slaved for, yet loved by a god. I unloose him | A goddess-sent plague. He has conquered, is wed, \ i Men crown him, he stands at the height, — | - ATROPOS. ' J 1 He is . , 6 APOLLO AND THE FATES. APOLLO. {Entering : Light.) "Dead? '^ Nay, swart spinsters ! So I surprise you Making and marring the fortunes of Man ? Huddling — no marvel, your enemy eyes you — Head by head bat-like, blots under the ban Of daylight earth's blessing since time began 1 THE FATES. Back to thy blest earth, prying Apollo ! Shaft upon shaft transpierce with thy beams Earth to the centre, — spare but this hollow Hewn out of Night's heart, where mystery seems Mewed from day's malice : wake earth from her dreams ! APOLLO. Crones, 'tis your dusk selves I startle from slumber : Day's god deposes you — queens Night- crowned 1 — Plying your trade in a world ye encumber. A PROLOGUE. 7 Fashioning Man's web of life — spun, wound, Iveft the length ye allot till a clip strews the ground ! Behold I bid truce to your doleful amusement — Annulled by a sunbeam ! THE FATES. Boy, are not we peers ? APOLLO. You with the spindle grant birth : whose inducement But yours — with the niggardly digits— endears To mankind chance and change, good and evil ? Your shears . . ATROPOS. Ay, mine end the conflict : so much is no fable. We spin, draw to length, cut asunder : what then? So it was, and so is, iind so shall be : art able To alter life's law for ephemeral men ? i 8 APOLLO A AW THE FATES. APOLLO. Nor able nor willing. To threescore and ten Extend but the years of Admetus ! Disaster O'ertook me, and, banished by Zeus, I became A servant to one who forbore me though master : True lovers were we. Discontinue your game. Let him hve whom I loved, then hate on, all the same ! THE FA TES. And what if we granted — law-flouter, use-trampler — His life at the suit of an upstart ? Judge, thou— Of joy were it fuller, of span because ampler? For love's sake, not hate's, end Admetus — ay, now — Not a gray hair on head, nor a wrinkle on brow ! For, boy, 'tis illusion : from thee comes a glimmer Transforming to beauty life blank at the best. Withdraw — and how looks life at worst, when to shimmer A PROLOGUE. 9 Succeeds the sure shade, and Man's lot frowns — con- fessed Mere blackness chance-brightened ? Whereof shall attest The truth this same mortal, the darling thou stylest, Whom love would advantage, — eke out, day by day, A life which 'tis solely thyself reconcilest ' Thy friend to endure, — life with hope : take away Hope's gleam from Admetus, he spurns it. For, say — What's infancy ? Ignorance, idleness, mischief : Youth ripens to arrogance, foolishness, greed : Age — impotence, churlishness, rancour : call f/ii's chief Of boons for thy loved one ? Much rather bid speed Our function, let live whom thou hatest indeed ! Persuade thee, bright boy-thmg ! Our eld be in- structive ! lo APOLLO AND THE FATES. APOLLO. And certes youth owns the experience of age. Ye hold then, grave seniors, my beams are productive — They solely — of good that's mere semblance, engage Man's eye — gilding evil, Man's true heritage? TPTE FATES. So, even so ! From without, — at due distance If viewed, — set a-sparkle, reflecting thy rays, — - Life mimics the sun : but, withdraw such assistance, The counterfeit goes, the reality stays — An ice-ball disguised as a fire-orb. APOLLO. What craze Possesses the fool then whose fancy conceits him As happy ? A PROLOGUE. THE FATES. Man happy ? APOLLO. If otherwise — solve This doubt which besets me ! What friend ever greets. him Except with " Live long as the seasons revolve," Not " Death to thee straightway " ? Your doctrines absolve Such haihng from hatred : yet Man should know best. He talks it, and glibly, as life were a load Man fain would be rid of : when put to the test, He whines " Let it lie, leave me trudging the road That is rugged so far, but methinks . ." - THE FATES. Ay, 'tis owed 12 APOLLO AND TLIE FATES. To that glamour of thine, he bethinks him " Once past The stony, some patch, nay, a smoothness of sward Awaits my tired foot : hfe turns easy at last " — Thy largess so lures him, he looks for reward Of the labour and sorrow. APOLLO. It seems, then — debarred 1 h \ Of illusion — (1 needs must acknowledge the plea) j Man desponds and despairs. Yet, — still further to i I draw \ Due profit from counsel,— suppose there should be % Some power in himself^ some compensative law j Ey virtue of which, independently . . | THE FATES. Fausfh ! A PROLOGUE. 13 Strength hid in the weakhng ! What bowl-shape hast there, Thus laughingly proffered ? A gift to our shrine ? Thanks — worsted in argument ! Not so ? Declare Its purpose ! APOLLO. I proffer earth's product, not mine. Taste, try, and approve Man's invention of — AA^ixi: ! THE FATES. We feeding suck honeycombs. APOLLO. Sustenance meagre ! Such fare breeds the fumes that show all things amiss. Quaff wine, — how the spirits rise nimble and eager, Unscale the dim eyes ! To Man's cup grant one kiss Of your lip, then allow — no enchantment like this ! 14 APOLLO AND THE FATES. CLOTHO. Unhook wings, unhood brows ! Dost hearken ? LACHESIS. I listen : I see — smell the food these fond mortals prefer To our feast, the bee's bounty ! ATROPOS. The thing leaps ! But — glisten Its best, I withstand it — unless all concur In adventure so novel. APOLLC. Ye drink? THE FATES. We demur. A PROLOGUE, 15 APOLLO. Sweet Trine, be indulgent nor scout the contrivance Of Man — Bacchus-prompted ! The juice, I uphold, Illuminates gloom without sunny connivance, Turns fear into hope and makes cowardice bold. — Touching all that is leadlike in life turns it gold ! THE FATES. Faith foolish as false ! APOLLO. But essay it, soft sisters ! Then mock as ye may. Lift the chalice to lip ! Good : thou next — and thou ! Seems the web, to you twisters Of life's yarn, so worthless ? CLOTHO. Who guessed that one sip Would impart such a lightness of limb ? i6 APOLLO AND THE FATES. \ ■ \ LACHESIS. j I could skip \ In a trice from the pied to the plain in my woof ! : What parts each from either? A hair's breadth, no \ inch. Once learn the right method of stepping aloof, Though on black next foot falls, firm I fix it, nor \ . I flinch, I — Such my trust white succeeds ! \ ATROPOS. ' \ One could five — at a pinch ! ;i h APOLLO. I What, beldames ? Earth's yield, by Man's skill, can effect Such a cure of sick sense that ye spy the relation \ Of evil to good? But drink deeper, correct \ A PROLOGUE. 17 Blear sight more convincingly still ! Take your station Beside me, drain dregs ! Now for edification ! Whose gift have ye gulped? Thank not me but my brother, Blithe Bacchus, our youngest of godships. 'Twas he Found all boons to all men, by one god or other b Already conceded, so judged there must be New guerdon to grace the new advent, you see ! Else how would a claim to Man's homage arise ? The plan lay arranged of his mixed woe and weal. So disposed — such Zeus' will — with design to make wise The witless — that false things were mingled with real. Good with bad : such the lot whereto law set the seal. Now, human of instinct — since Semele's son, Yet minded divinely^ — since fathered by Zeus, I With nought Bacchus tampered, undid not things done. i8 APOLLO AND THE FATES. \ \ Owned wisdom anterior, would spare wont and use, % % Yet change — without shock to old rule — introduce. \ 1 Regard how your cavern from crag-tip to base 1 Frowns sheer, height and depth adamantine, one death ! j I rouse with a beam the whole rampart, displace \ No splinter — yet see how my flambeau, beneath And above, bids this gem wink, that crystal unsheathe ! \ Withdraw beam — disclosure once more Night forbids you \ Of spangle and sparkle — Day's chance- gift, surmised ^ Rock's permanent birthright : my potency rids you i No longer of darkness, yet light — recognized — Proves darkness a mask : day hves on though disguised, i . \ If Bacchus by wine's aid avail so to fluster \ Your sense, that life's fact grows from adverse and \ thwart ! To helpful and kindly by means of a cluster — | A PROLOGUE. 19 Mere hand-squeeze, earth's nature subHmed by Man's art- Shall Bacchus claim thanks wherein Zeus has no part? Zeus — wisdom anterior ? No, maids, be admonished ! If morn's touch at base worked such wonders, much more Had noontide in absolute glory astonished Your den, filled a-top to overflowing. I pour No such mad confusion. 'Tis Man's to explore Up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason : No torch, it suffices — held deftly and straight. Eyes, purblind at first, feel their way in due season, Accept good with bad, till unseemly debate Turns concord — despair, acquiescence in fate. c 2 i 20 APOLLO AND THE FATES. Who works this but Zeus ? Are not instinct and impulse, Not concept and incept his work through Man's soul On Man's sense ? Just as wine ere it reach brain must brim pulse, Zeus' flash stings the mind that speeds body to goal, Bids pause at no part but press on, reach the whole. For petty and poor is the part ye envisage When — (quaff away, cummers !) — ye view, last and first. As evil Man's earthly existence. Come ! Is age. Is infancy — manhood — so uninterspersed With good — some faint sprinkle ? CLOTHO. I'd speak if I durst. APOLLO. Draughts dregward loose tongue-tie. A PROLOGUE. 21 LACHESIS. I'd see, did no web Set eyes somehow winking. APOLLO. Drains-deep lies their purge — True collyrium ! ATROPOS. Words, surging at high-tide, soon ebb From starved ears. APOLLO. Drink but down to the source, they resurge. Join hands ! Yours and y.ours too ! A dance or a dirge ? CHORUS. Quashed be our quarrel ! Sourly and smilingly. Bare and gowned, bleached limbs and browned, Drive we a dance, three and one, reconcilingly. 22 APOLLO AND THE FATES, Thanks to the cup where dissension is drowned, Defeat proves triumphant and slavery crowned Infancy ? What if the rose-streak of morning Pale and depart in a passion of tears ? Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning ! Love once — e'en love's disappointment endears ! A minute's success pays the failure of years. Manhood — the actual ? Nay, praise the potential ! (Bound upon bound, foot it around !) What is ? No, what may be— sing ! that's Man's es- sential ! (Ramp, tramp, stamp and compound Fancy with fact — the lost secret is found !) x\ge ? Why, fear ends there : the contest concluded, Man did live his life, did escape from the fray : Not scratchless but unscathed, he somehow eluded A PROLOGUE. 23 Each blow fortune dealt him, and conquers to-day : To-morrow — new chance and fresh strength, — might we say? Laud then Man's life — no defeat but a triumph ! [Explosion fro /n the earth's centre.) Ha, loose hands ! CLOTHO. LACHESIS. I reel in a swound. ATROPOS. Horror yawns under me, while from on high — humph ! Lightnings astound, thunders resound, Vault-roof reverberates, groans the ground ! {Silence.) APOLLO. I acknowledge. \ 24 APOLLO AND THE FATES, THE FATES. Hence, trickster ! Straight sobered are we! The portent assures 'twas our tongue spoke the truth, Not thine. While the vapour encompassed us three Wc conceived and bore knowledge — a bantling un- couth, Old brains shudder back from : so — take it, rash yoiith 1 Lick the lump into shape till a cry comes ! APOLLO. I hear. ■^ THE FATES. \ Dumb music, dead eloquence ! Say it, or sing ! \ What was quickened in us and thee also ? ■ APOLLO. i I fear. 1 A PROLOGUE. 2S THE FATES. Half female, half male — go, ambiguous thing ! While we speak — perchance sputter — pick up what we fling ! Known yet ignored, nor divined nor unguessed, Such is Man's law of life. Do we strive to declare What is ill, what is good in our spinning? Worsts best. Change hues of a sudden : now here and now there Flits the sign which decides : all about yet no-where. Tis willed so, — that Man's life be lived, first to last. Up and down, through and through, — not in portions^ forsooth. To pick and to choose from. Our shuttles fly fast. Weave living, not life sole and whole : as age — youth, So death completes living, shows life in its truth. 26 APOLLO AND THE FATES. Man learningly lives : till death helps him — no lore ! It is doom and must be. Dost submit ? APOLLO. I assent — Concede but Admetus ! So much if no more Of my prayer grant as peace-pledge ! Be gracious, though, blent. Good and ill, love and hate streak your life-gift ! THE FATES. Content ! Such boon we accord in due measure. Life's term We lengthen should any be moved for love's sake To forego life's fulfilment, renounce in the germ Fruit mature — bhss or woe — either infinite. Take Or leave thy friend's lot : on his head be the stake ! A PROLOGUE. 27 APOLLO. On mine, griesly gammers ! Admetus, I know thee ! Thou prizest the right these unwittingly give Thy subjects to rush, pay obedience they owe thee ! Importunate one with another they strive For the glory to die that their king may survive. Friends rush : and who first in all Pherae appears But thy father to serve as thy substitute ? CLOTHO. Bah! APOLLO. Ye wince ? Then his mother, well- stricken in years Advances her claim — or his wife — LACHESIS. Tra-la-la ! 28 APOLLO AND THE FATES. APOLLO. But he spurns the exchange, rather dies ! ATROPOS. Ha, ha, ha I {Apollo ascends. Darkness^ \ WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, Come and review thy counsels : art thou still Staunch to their teaching ? — not as fools opine Its purport might be, but as subtler skill Could, through turbidity, the loaded Hne Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till It touched a quietude and reached a shrine And recognized harmoniously combine Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph — thine, Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville ! 32 PARLEYINGS WITH II. Only, 'tis no fresh knowledge that I crave, i Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave ; \ Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn ! To what account Man may Man's portion, learn j \ Man's proper play with truth in part, before \ 1 Entrusted with the whole. I ask no more 1 :j Than smiling witness that I do my best With doubtful doctrine : afterwards the rest ! ■ So, silent face me while I think and speak ! A full disclosure ? Such would outrage law. \ Law deals the same with soul and body : seek \ Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw \ A new-born weakling, starts up strong — not weak — \ Man every whit, absolved from earning awe, Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak Its will on fiesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw, \ BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. As mind bids muscle — mind which long has striven, Painfully urging body's impotence To effort whereby — once law's barrier riven ^ Life's rule abolished— body might dispense With infancy's probation, straight be given — Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven, Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven- To stand full-statured in magnificence. No : as with body so deals law with soul That's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good Through evil, — earth its race-ground, heaven its goal. Presumably : so far I understood Thy teaching long ago. But what means this — Objected by a mouth which yesterday Was magisterial in antithesis To half the truths we hold, or trust we may, D 34 PARLEYINGS WITH '\ \ Though trembhngly the while ? " No sign " — groaned \ he— \ ''''No stirring of God's finger to denote \ He wills that right should have supremacy { On earth, not wrong ! How helpful could we quote \ But one poor instance when He interposed : Promptly and surely and beyond mistake \ Between oppression and its victim, closed \ Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake \ From our long dream that justice bears no sword, ] Or else forgets w^hereto its sharpness serves I \ So might we safely mock at what unnerves : Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase "\ That haply evil's strife with good shall cease Never on earth. Nay, after earth, comes peace :| Born out of life-long battle ? Man's lip curves ] With scorn : there, also, what if justice swerves J % i From dealing doom, sets free by no swift stroke j BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 35 Right fettered here by wrong, but leaves life's yoke — Death should loose man from — fresh laid, past release ? " IV. Bernard de Mandeville, confute for me Tliis parlous friend who captured or set free Thunderbolts at his pleasure, yet would draw Back, panic-stricken by some puny straw Thy gold- rimmed amber-headed cane had whisked Out of his pathway if the object risked Encounter, 'scaped thy kick from buckled shoe ! As when folks heard thee in old days pooh-pooh Addison's tye-wig preachment, grant this friend — (Whose groan I hear, with guffaugh at the end Disposing of mock-melancholy) —grant His bilious mood one potion, ministrant Of homely wisdom, healthy wit ! For, hear ! " With power and will, let preference appear 36 rARLEYINGS WITFI By intervention ever and aye, help good When evil's mastery is understood In some plain outrage, and triumphant wrong Tramples weak right to nothingness : nay, long- Ere such sad consummation bring despair To right's adherents, ah, what help it were If wrong lay strangled in the birth — each head Of the hatched monster promptly crushed, instead Of spared to gather venom ! We require No great experience that the inch-long worm, Free of our heel, would grow to vomit fire, And one day plague the world in dragon form. So should wrong merely peep abroad to meet Wrong's due quietus, leave^our world's way safe For honest walking." v. Sage, once more repeat Instruction 1 'I'is a sore to soothe not chafe. BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE, 37 Ah, Fabulist, what lack, could I contrive To coax from thee another " Grumbling Hive " ! My friend himself wrote fables short and sweet : Ask him — " Suppose the Gardener of Man's ground Plants for a purpose, side by side with good, Evil — (and that He does so — look around ! AVhat does the field show ?) — were it understood That purposely the noxious plant was found Vexing the virtuous, poison close to food. If, at first stealing-forth of life in stalk And leaflet-promise, quick His spud should baulk Evil from budding foliage, bearing fruit ? Such timely treatment of the offending root Might strike the simple as wise husbandry, But swift sure extirpation scarce would suit Shrewder observers. Seed once sown thrives : why Frustrate its product, miss the quahty Which sower binds himself to count upon ? 38 PARLEYINGS WITH Had seed fulfilled the destined purpose, gone Unhindered up to harvest — what know I But proof were gained that every growth of good Sprang consequent on evil's neighbourhood ? " So said your shrewdness : true — so did not say That other sort of theorists who held Mere unintelligence prepared the way For either seed's upsprouting : you repelled Their notion that both kinds could sow themselves^ True ! but admit 'tis understanding delves And drops each germ, what else but folly thwarts ^Jlie doer's settled purpose ? Let the sage Concede a use to evil, though there starts Full many a burgeon thence, to disengage With thumb and finger lest it spoil the yield Too much of good's main tribute ! But our main Tough-tendoned mandrake-monster — purge the field Of him for once and all ? It follows plain BERNARD DE MAXDEVILLE. 39 Who set him there to grow beholds repealed His primal law : His ordinance proves vain : And what beseems a king who cannot reign, But to drop sceptre valid arm should wield ? '' Still there's a parable " — retorts my friend— " Shows agriculture with a difference ! What of the crop and weeds which solely blend Because, once planted, none may pluck them thence ? The Gardener contrived thus ? Vain pretence ! An enemy it was who unawares Ruined the wheat by interspersing tares. Where's our desiderated forethought ? Where's Knowledge, where power and will in evidence ? 'Tis Man's-play merely ! Craft foils rectitude, Malignity defeats beneficence. And grant, at very last of all, the feud 40 PARLEYINGS WITH 'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude Though good be garnered safely and good's foe Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal : " Even so— Why grant tares leave to thus o'er-top, o'ertower Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower, Triumph one sunny minute? Knowledge, power And will thus worked ? Man's fancy makes the fault ! ^Tan, with tlie narrow mind, must cram inside His finite God's infinitude, — earth's vault He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide. Since Man may claim a right to understand AVhat passes understanding. So, succinct And trimly set in order, to be scanned And scrutinised, lo — the divine lies linked Fast to the human, free to move as moves Its proper match : awhile they keep the grooves, Discreetly side by side together pace. Till sudden comes a stumble incident BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 41 Likely enough to Man's weak-footed race, And he discovers — wings in rudiment, Such as he boasts, which full-grown, free-distent AVould lift him skyward, fail of flight while pent AVithin humanity's restricted space. Abjure each fond attempt to represent The formless, the illimitable 1 Trace No outline, try no hint of human face 'Or form or hand ! " VII. Friend, here's a tracing meant To help a guess at truth you never knew. Bend but those eyes now, using mind's eye too, And note— sufficient for all purposes — The ground- plan map you long have yearned for — yes, Made out in markings — more what artist can ? — Goethe's Estate in Weimar, — just a plan ! 42 PARLEYlNGS WITH A. is the House, and B. the Garden-gate, And C. the Grass-plot — you've the whole estate Letter by letter, down to Y. the Pond, And Z. the Pig-stye. Do you look beyond The algebraic signs, and captious say " Is A. the House ? But where's the Roof to A., Where's Door, where's AMndow ? Needs must House have such 1 " Ay, that were folly. Why so very much More foolish than our mortal purblind way Of seeking in the symbol no mere point To guide our gaze through what were else inane, But things — their solid selves ? " Is, joint by joint, Orion man-like, — as these dots explain His constellation ? Flesh composed of suns — How can such be } " exclaim the simple ones. Look through the sign to the thing signified — ■ Shown nowise, point by point at best descried, BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 43. Each an orb's topmost sparkle : all beside Its shine is shadow : turn the orb one jot — Up flies the new flash to reveal 'twas not The whole sphere late flamboyant in your ken 1 *' What need of symbolizing ? Fitlier men Would take on tongue facts — few and faint and far, Still facts not fancies : quite enough they are, That Power, that Knowledge, and that Will, — add- then Immensity, Eternity : these jar Nowise with our permitted thought and speech. Why human attributes ? " A myth may teach : Only, who better would expound it thus Alust be Euripides not ^schylus. 44 PARLEYINGS WITH IX. Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark, Embattled crags and clouds, out-broke the Sun Above the conscious earth, and one by one Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold, Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold On fold of vapour-swathing, like a bridge Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist Her work done and betook herself in mist To marsh and hollow there to bide her time Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime Thrilling her to the heart of things : since there No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew, No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew p BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 45 Glad through the inrush — glad nor more nor less Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness, Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread. The universal world of creatures bred By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise — All creatures but one only : gaze for gaze, Joyless and thankless, who — all scowling can — Protests against the innumerous praises ? T^Ian, Sullen and silent. Stand thou forth then, state Thy wrong, thou sole aggrieved — disconsolate- While every beast, bird, reptile, insect, gay And glad acknowledges the bounteous day ! X. Man speaks now : '' AVhat avails Sun's earth-felt thrill To me ? Sun penetrates the ore, the plant — They feel and grow : perchance with subtler skill 46 PARLEYINGS WITH He interfuses fly, worm, brute, until Each favoured object pays life's ministrant By pressing, in obedience to his will, Up to completion of the task prescribed. So stands and stays a type. Myself imbibed Such influence also, stood and stand complete — The perfect Man, — head, body, hands and feet, True to tlie pattern : but does that suffice ? How of my superadded mind which needs — Not to be, simply, but to do, and pleads I'^or — more than knowledge that by some device Sun quickens matter : mind is nobly fain To realize the marvel, make — for sense As mind — the unseen visible, condense — Myself — Sun's all-pervading influence So as to serve the needs of mind, explain AMiat now perplexes. Let the oak increase His corrugated strength on strength, the palm BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 47 Lift joint by joint her fan-fruit, ball and balm, — Let the coiled serpent bask in bloated peace, — The eagle, like some skyey derelict, Drift in the blue, suspended, glorying, — The lion lord it by the desert-spring, — What know or care they of the power which pricked Nothingness to perfection ? T, instead, When all-developed still am found a thing All-incomplete : for what though flesh had force Transcending theirs — hands able to unring The tightened snake's coil, eyes that could outcourse The eagle's soaring, voice whereat the king Of carnage couched discrowned ? Mind seeks to see, Touch, understand, by mind inside of me, The outside mind — whose quickening I attain • To recognize — I only. All in vain Would mind address ifself to render plain The nature of the essence. Drag what lurks 48 PARLEYINGS WITH Behind the operation — that which works Latently everywhere by outward proof — Drag that mind forth to face mine ? No ! aloof I solely crave that one of all the beams Which do Sun's work in darkness, at my will Should operate— myself for once have skill To realize the energy which streams Flooding the universe. Above, around, Beneath— why mocks that mind my own thus found Simply of service, when the world grows dark, To half- surmise — were Sun's use understood, I might demonstrate him supplying food. Warmth, life, no less the while ? To grant one spark: Myself may deal with — make it thaw my blood And prompt my steps, were truer to the mark Of mind's requirement than a half-surmise That somehow secretly is operant A power all matter feels, mind only tries BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. 49 To comprehend ! Once more — no idle vaunt * Man comprehends the Sun's self ! ' Mysteries At source why probe into ? Enough : display, Make demonstrable, how, by night as day, Earth's centre and sky's outspan, all's informed Equally by Sun's efflux ! — source from whence If just one spark I drew, full evidence Were mine of fire ineffably enthroned — Sun's self made palpable to Man ! " XI. Thus moaned Man till Prometheus helped him, — as we learn, — Offered an artifice whereby he drew Sun's rays into a focus, — plain and true. The very Sun in httle : made fire burn And henceforth do Man service — glass-conglobed Though to a pin-point circle — all the same E 50 BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. Comprising the Sun's self, but Sun disrobed Of that else-unconceived essential flame Borne by no naked sight. Shall mind's eye strive Achingly to companion as it may The supersubtle effluence, and contrive To follow beam and beam upon their way Hand-breadth by hand-breadth, till sense faint — confessed Frustrate, eluded by unknown unguessed Infinitude of action ? Idle quest ! Rather ask aid from optics. Sense, descry The spectrum — mind, infer immensity ! Little ? In little, light, warmth, life are blessed — Which, in the large, who sees to bless ? Not I More than yourself : so, good my friend, keep still Trustful with — me ? with thee, sage Mandeville ! ir WITH DANIEL BARTOLI WITH DANIEL BARTOLI} I. Don, the divinest women that have walked Our world were scarce those saints of whom we talked. My saint, for instance — worship if you will ! Tis pity poets need historians' skill : What legendary 's worth a chronicle ? ' A learned and ingenious writer. " Fu Gesuita e Storico della Compagnia ; onde scrisse lunghissime storie, le quali sarebbero letie se non fossero ripiene traboccanti di tutte le siijDerstizioni. . . Egli vi ha ficcati dentro tanti miracoloni, che diviene una noia in- sopportabile a chiunque voglia leggere quelle storie : e anche a me, non mi basto 1' animo di proseguire molto avanti." — Angelo Cerutti. 54 PARLEYINGS WITH Come, now ! A great lord once upon a time Visited — oh a king, of kings the prime, To sign a treaty such as never was : For the king's minister had brought to pass That this same duke — so style him — must engage Two of his dukedoms as an heritage After his death to this exorbitant Graver of kingship. '' Let who lacks go scant, Who owns much, give the more to ! " Why rebuke ? So bids the devil, so obeys the duke. III. Now, as it happened, at his sister's house — Duchess herself — indeed the very spouse Of the king's uncle, — while the deed of gift Whereby our duke should cut his rights adrift DANIEL BARTOLI. 55 Was drawing, getting ripe to sign and seal — What does the frozen heart but uncongeal And, shaming his transcendent kin and kith, Whom do the duke's eyes make acquaintance with? A girl. " What, sister, may this wonder be ? " ^' Nobody ! Good as beautiful is she, With gifts that match her goodness, no faint flaw r the white : she were the pearl you think you saw, But that she is — what corresponds to white ? Some other stone, the true pearl's opposite. As cheap as pearls are costly. She's — now, guess Her parentage ! Once — twice — thrice? Foiled, confess ! Drugs, duke, her father deals in — faugh, the scents ! — Manna and senna — such medicaments For payment he compounds you. Stay — stay — stay ! I'll have no rude speech wrong her ! Whither away, The hot-head ? AK, the 'scape-grace ! She deserves Respect — compassion, rather ! Right it serves 56 PARLEYINGS WITH My folly, trusting secrets to a fool ! Already at it, is he ? She keeps cool — Helped by her fan's spread. Well, our state atones For thus much license, and words break no bones ! " (Hearts, though, sometimes.) Next morn 'twas " Reason, rate. Rave, sister, on till doomsday ! Sure as fate, I wed that woman — what a woman is Now that I know, who never knew till this 1 " So swore the duke. ^' I wed her : once again — Rave, rate, and reason— spend your breath in vain ! " V. At once was made a contract firm and fast. Published the banns were, only marriage, last. Required completion when the Church's rite Should bless and bid depart, make happy quite DANIEL BAR TO LI. 57 The coupled man and wife for evermore : Which rite was soon to follow. Just before — All things at all but end— the folk o' the bride Flocked to a summons. Pomp the duke defied : " Of ceremony — so much as empowers, Nought that exceeds, suits best a tie hke ours — " He smiled — " all else were mere futility. We vow, God hears us : God and you and I — Let the world keep at distance ! This is why We choose the simplest forms that serve to bind Lover and lover of the human kind, No care of what degree — of kings or clowns — Come blood and breeding. Courtly smiles and frowns Miss of their mark, would idly soothe or strike My style and yours — in one style merged alike — God's man and woman merely. Long ago 'Twas rounded in my ears ' Duke, wherefore slow To use a privilege ? Needs must one who reigns 58 PARLEYINGS WITH Pay reigning's due : since statecraft so ordains — Wed for the commonweal's sake ! law prescribes One wife : but to submission licence bribes Unruly nature : mistresses accept — Well, at discretion ! ' Prove I so inept A scholar, thus instructed ? Dearest, be Wife and all mistresses in one to me, Now, henceforth, and forever ! " So smiled he. Good : but the minister, the crafty one, Got ear of what was doing — all but done — Not sooner, though, than the king's very self. Warned by the sister on how sheer a shelf Royalty's ship was like to spht. ^' I bar The abomination ! Mix with muck my star ? Shall earth behold prodigiously enorbed An upstart marsh-born meteor sun-absorbed ? DANIEL BARTOLI. 59 Nuptial me no such nuptials ! " "Past dispute, Majesty speaks with wisdom absolute," Admired the minister : "yet, all the same, I would we may not —while we play his game. The ducal meteor's — also lose our own. The solar monarch's : we relieve your throne Of an ungracious presence, like enough : Baulked of his project he departs in huff. And so cuts short — dare I remind the king? — Our not so unsuccessful bargaining. The contract for eventual heritage Happens \.o pari passu reach the stage Attained by just this other contract,— each Unfixed by signature though fast in speech. Off goes the duke in dudgeon — off withal Go with him his two dukedoms past recall. You save a fool from tasting folly's fruit. Obtain small thanks thereby, and lose to boot 6o PARLEYINGS WITH Sagacity's reward. The jest is grim : The man will mulct you— for amercing him ? Nay, for . . . permit a poor similitude ! A witless wight in some fantastic mood Would drown himself: you plunge into the wave, Pluck forth the undeserving : he, you save, Pulls you clean under also for your pains. Sire, little need that I should tax my brains To help your inspiration ! " *' Let him sink ! Always contriving " — hints the royal wink — " To keep ourselves dry while we claim his clothes." VII. Next day, the appointed day for plighting troths At eve, — so little time to lose, you see. Before the Church should weld indissolubly Bond into bond, wed these who, side by side, Sit each by other, bold groom, blushing bride, — I DANIEL BARTOLI. 6i At the preliminary banquet, graced By all the lady's kinsfolk come in haste To share her triumph, — lo, a thunderclap ! " Who importunes now ? " " Such is my mishap — In the king's name ! No need that any stir Except this lady ! " bids the minister : *' With her I claim a word apart, no more : For who gainsays — a guard is at the door. Hold, duke ! Submit you, lady, as I bow To him whose mouthpiece speaks his pleasure now ! It well may happen I no whit arrest Your marriage : be it so, — we hope the best ! By your leave, gentles ! Lady, pray you, hence ! Duke, with my soul and body's deference ! " VIII. Doors shut, mouth opens and persuasion flows Copiously forth. " What flesh shall dare oppose 62 PARLEYIISfGS WITH -J 1 The king's command ? The matter in debate j — How plain it is ! Yourself shall arbitrate, \ Determine. Since the duke afifects to rate \ His prize in you beyond all goods of earth, \ Accounts as nought old gains of rank and birth, \ Ancestral obligation, recent fame, | (We know his feats) — nay, ventures to disclaim ] Our will and pleasure almost — by report — \ Waives in your favor dukeliness, in short, — 1 We — ('tis the king speaks) — who might forthwith stay I Such suicidal purpose, brush away \ A bad example shame would else record, — \ Lean to indulgence rather. At his word \ We take the duke : allow him to complete j The cession of his dukedoms, leave our feet \ Their footstool when his own head, safe in vault, ^ Sleeps sound. Nay, would the duke repair his fault 1 Handsomely, and our forfeited esteem | DANIEL BARTOLT, 6;^ Recover, — what if wisely he redeem The past, — in earnest of good faith, at once Give us such jurisdiction for the nonce As may suffice — prevent occasion shp — And constitute our actual ownership ? Concede this — straightway be the marriage blessed By w^arrant of this paper! Things at rest, This paper duly signed, down drops the bar, To-morrow you become — from what you are. The druggist's daughter — not the duke's mere spouse. But the king's own adopted : heart and house Open to you — the idol of a court * Which heaven might copy ' — sing our poet-sort. In this emergency, on you depends The issue : plead what bhss the king intends ! Should the duke frown, should arguments and prayers Nay, tears if need be, prove in vain, — who cares ? We leave the duke to his obduracy, 64 PARLEYINGS WITH J -I I I Companionless, — you, madam, follow me Without, where divers of the body-guard AVait signal to enforce the king's award \ Of strict seclusion : over you at least < Vibratingly the sceptre threats increased 1 Precipitation ! How avert its crash ? " IX. " Re-enter, sir ! A hand that's calm, not rash. Averts it!" quietly the lady said. *' Yourself shall witness." At the table's head Where, mid the hushed guests, still the duke sat glued In blank bewilderment, his spouse pursued Her speech to end — syllabled quietude. X. " Duke, I, your duchess of a day, could take The hand you proffered me for love's sole sake, DANIEL BAR TOLL 65 Conscious my love matched yours ; as you, myself AVould waive, when need were, all but love — from pelf To potency. What fortune brings about Haply in some far future, finds me out, Faces me on a sudden here and now. The better ! Read — if beating heart allow — Read this, and bid me rend to rags the shame ! I and your conscience — hear and grant our claim ! Never dare alienate God's gift you hold Simply in trust for Him ! Choose muck for gold? Could you so stumble in your choice, cajoled By what I count my least of worthiness — The youth, the beauty, — you renounce them— yes, With all that's most too : love as well you lose, Slain by what slays in you the honor ! Choose ! Dear — yet my husband — dare I love you yet ? " 66 PARLEYINGS WITH XI. How the duke's wrath o'erboiled, — words, words and yet More words, — I spare you such fool's fever- fret. They were not of one sort at all, one size. As souls go — he and she. 'Tis said, the eyes Of all the lookers-on let tears fall fast. The minister was mollified at last: " Take a day, — two days even, ere through pride You perish, — two days' counsel — then decide! " "If I shall save his honor and my soul? Husband, — this one last time, — you tear the scroll ? Farewell, duke ! Sir, I follow in your train ! " XIII. So she went forth: they never met again, The duke and she. The world paid compliment DANIEL BAR TO LI, 67 (Is it worth noting ?) when, next day, she sent Certain gifts back — " jewehy fit to deck Whom you call wife." I know not round w^hat neck They took to sparkling, in good time — weeks thence. XIV. Of all which was a pleasant consequence. So much and no more — that a fervid youth, Big-hearted boy, — but ten years old, in truth, — Laid this to heart and loved, as boyhood can. The unduchessed lady : boy and lad grew man : He loved as man perchance may : did meanwhile Good soldier-service, managed to beguile The years, no few, until he found a chance : Then, as at trumpet-summons to advance, Outbroke the love that stood at arms so long, Brooked no withstanding longer. They were wed. Whereon from camp and court alike he fled, 68 PARLEYINGS WITH Renounced the sun-king, dropped off into nighty Lost evermore, a ruined satellite : And, oh, the exquisite deliciousness That lapped him in obscurity ! You guess Such joy is fugitive : she died full soon. He did his best to die — as sun, so moon Left him, turned dusk to darkness absolute. Faihng of death — why, saintship seemed to suit : Yes, your sort, Don 1 He trembled on the verge Of monkhood : trick of cowl and taste of scourge He tried : then, kicked not at the pricks perverse,. But took again, for better or for w^orse. The old way in the world, and, much the same Man o' the outside, fairly played life's game. XV. *' Now, Saint Scholastica, what time she fared In Paynimrie, behold, a lion glared DANIEL BARTOLI. 69 Right in her path ! Her waist she promptly strips Of girdle, binds his teeth within his lips, And, leashed all lambhke, to the Soldan's court Leads him." Ay, many a legend of the sort Do you praiseworthiiy authenticate : Spare me the rest. This much of no debate Admits : my lady flourished in grand days When to be duchess was to dance the hays Up, down, across the heaven amid its host : While to be hailed the sun's own self almost — So close the kinship — was — was — Saint, for this, Be yours the feet I stoop to — kneel and kiss ! So human ? Then the mouth too, if you will ! Thanks to no legend but a chronicle. 70 PARLEYINGS WITH XVI. One leans to like the duke, too : up we'll patch Some sort of saintship for him — not to match Hers — but man's best and woman's worst amount So nearly to the same thing, that we count In man a miracle of faithfulness If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress On the main fact that love, when love indeed, Is wholly solely love from first to last — Truth — all the rest a lie. Too likely, fast Enough that necklace went to grace the throat — Let's say, of such a dancer as makes doat The senses when the soul is satisfied — Trogalia^ say the Greeks — a sweetmeat tried Approvingly by sated tongue and teeth. Once body's proper meal consigned beneath Such unconsidered munching. DANIEL BARTOLI. 71 XVII. Fancy's flight Makes me a listener when, some sleepless night, The duke reviewed his memories, and aghast Found that the Present intercepts the Past With such effect as when a cloud enwraps The moon and, moon-suffused, plays moon perhaps To who walks under, till comes, late or soon, A stumble : up he looks, and lo, the moon Calm, clear, convincingly herself once more ! How could he 'scape the cloud that thrust between Him and effulgence ? Speak, fool — duke, I mean ! "Who bade you come, brisk-marching bold she-shape, A terror with those black-balled worlds of eyes. That black hair bristling solid-built from nape 72 PARLEYINGS WITH To crown it coils about ? O dread surmise ! Take, tread on, trample under past escape Your capture, spoil and trophy ! Do — devise Insults for one who, fallen once, ne'er shall rise ! ^' Mock on, triumphant o'er the prostrate shame ! Laugh ' Here lies he among the false to Love — Love's loyal liegeman once : the very same Who, scorning his weak fellows, towered above Inconstancy : yet why his faith defame ? Our eagle's victor was at least no dove. No dwarfish knight picked up our giant's glove — " ' When, putting prowess to the proof, faith urged Her champion to the challenge : had it chanced That merely virtue, wisdom, beauty — merged All in one woman — merely these advanced Their claim to conquest, — hardly had he purged DANIEL BAKTOLL 73 His mind of memories, dearnesses enhanced Rather than harmed by death, nor, disentranced, •^* ' Promptly had he abjured the old pretence To prove his kind's superior — first to last Display erect on his heart's eminence An altar to the never-dying Past. For such feat faith might boast fit play of fence And easily disarm the iconoclast Called virtue, wisdom, beauty : impudence " ' Fought in their stead, and how could faith but fall ? There came a bold she- shape brisk-marching, bent No inch of her imperious stature, tall As some war-engine from whose top was sent One shattering volley out of eye's black ball. 74 PARLEYINGS WITH And prone lay faith's defender 1 ' Mockery spent ? Malice discharged in full ? In that event, " My queenly impudence, I cover close, I wrap me round with love of your black hair, Black eyes, black every wricked inch of those Limbs' war-tower tallness : so much truth hves there Neath the dead heap of lies. And yet — who knows ? What if such things are ? No less, such things were. Then was the man your match whom now you dare ^' Treat as existent still. A second truth ! They held — this heap of lies you rightly scorn — A man who had approved himself in youth More than a match for — you ? for sea-foam-born Venus herself : you conquer him forsooth ? 'Tis me his ghost : he died since left and lorn, ' As needs must Samson when his hair is shorn. DANIEL BAR TOLL 75 " Some day, and soon, be sure himself will rise, Called into life by her who long ago Left his soul whiling time in flesh-disguise. Ghosts tired of waiting can play tricks, you know I Tread, trample me— such sport we ghosts devise, Waiting the morn-star's re-appearance — though You think we vanish scared by the cock's crow." Ill WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART WITH CHRISTOPHER SMART, I. It seems as if . . or did the actual chance Startle me and perplex ? Let truth be said ! How might this happen ? Dreaming, blindfold led By visionary hand, did soul's advance Precede my body's, gain inheritance Of fact by fancy — so that when I read At length with waking eyes your Song, instead Of mere bewilderment, with me first glance Was but full recognition that in trance Or merely thought's adventure some old day , Of dim and done-with boyishness, or — well, So PARLEYINGS WITH Why might it not have been, the miracle Broke on me as I took my sober way Through veritable regions of our earth And made discovery, many a wondrous one ? Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth : I was exploring some huge house, had gone Through room and room complacently, no dearth Anywhere of the signs of decent taste. Adequate culture : wealth had run to waste Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint : All showed the Golden Mean without a hint Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule. The master of the mansion was no fool i\ssuredly, no genius just as sure ! Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure Of now too much and now too little cost, CHRISTOPHER SMART. 8i And satisfied me sight was never lost Of moderate design's accomplishment In calm completeness. On and on I went, With no more hope than fear of what came next, Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift Indeed of scene ! So — thus it is thou deck'st, High heaven, our low earth's brick-and-mortar work ? III. It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last. Were small surprise : but from broad day I passed Into a presence that turned shine to shade. There fronted me the Rafael Mother- Maid, Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine By Nature's bounty helped, by Art's divine More varied — beauty with magnificence — G 82 PARLEYINGS WITH Than this : from floor to roof one evidence Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche Where glory was not prisoned to enrich Man's gaze with gold and gems, no space but glowed With colour, gleamed with carving— hues which owed Their outburst to a brush the painter fed With rainbow-substance — rare shapes never wed To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-born once, Became the sculptor's dowry, Art's response To earth's despair. And all seemed old yet new: Youth, — in the marble's curve, the canvas' hue. Apparent, — wanted not the crowning thrill Of age the consecrator. Hands long still Had worked here — could it be, what lent them skill Retained a power to supervise, protect. Enforce new lessons with the old, connect Our life with theirs ? No merely modern touch Told me that here the artist, doing much, CHRISTOPHER SMART. 83 Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, lives — So needs must learn. IV. Well, these provocatives Having fulfilled their office, forth I went Big with anticipation — well nigh fear — Of what next room and next for startled eyes Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise. Next room and next and next — what followed here ? Why, nothing ! not one object to arrest My passage — everywhere too manifest The previous decent null and void of best And worst, mere ordinary right and fit, Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor hit Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed. 84 PARLEYINGS WITH V. Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed Your case, my Christopher? The man was sound And sane at starting : all at once the ground ( lave way beneath his step, a certain smoke Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down broke A fireball wrapping flesh and spirit both In conflagration. Then — as heaven were loth To linger — let earth understand too well How heaven at need can operate — off" fell The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man Resumed sobriety, — as he began. So did he end nor alter pace, not he ! VI. Now, what I fain w^ould know is — could it be That he — whoe'er he was that furnished forth CHRISTOPHER SMART. 85 The Chapel, making thus, from South to North, Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo Join Watts, was found but once combining so The elder and the younger, taking stand On Art's supreme, — or that yourself who sang A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang. And stations you for once on either hand With Milton and with Keats, empowered to claim Affinity on just one point — (or blame Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you full) — How came it you resume the void and null, Subside to insignificance, — live, die — Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew nigh One moment — that, to Art's best hierarchy, This, to the superhuman poet-pair ? What if, in one point only, then and there The otherwise all-unapproachable Allowed impingement ? Does the sphere pretend 86 PARLEYINGS WITH To span the cube's breadth, cover end to end The plane with its embrace ? No, surely ! Still, Contact is contact, sphere's touch no whit less Than cube's superimposure. Such success Befell Smart only out of throngs between Milton and Keats that donned the singing-dress — Smart, solely of such songmen, pierced the screen 'Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, — Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal Live from the censer — shapely or uncouth, Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth Undeadened by a lie, — (you have my mind) — For, think ! this blaze outleapt with black behind And blank before, when Hayley and the rest . . . But let the dead successors worst and best Bury their dead : with life be my concern — Yours with the fire-flame : what I fain would learn Is just — (suppose me haply ignorant CHRISTOPHER SMART. 87 Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt) Just this — why only once the fire-flame w^as : No matter if the marvel came to pass The way folks judged — if power too long suppressed Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed, Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said) A turmoil of the particles disturbed Brain's workaday performance in your head, Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed, And so verse issued in a cataract Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact That here a poet was who always could — • Never before did — never after would— Achieve the feat : how were such fact explained ? 88 PARLEYINGS WITH VII. Was it that when, by rarest chance, there fell Disguise from Nature, so that Truth remained Naked, and whoso saw^ for once could tell Us others of her majesty and might In large, her lovelinesses infinite In little, — straight you used the powder wherewith Sense, penetrating as through rind to pith Each object, thoroughly revealed might view And comprehend the old things thus made new. So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could trust Thing which struck word out, and once more adjust Real vision to right language, till heaven's vault Pompous with sunset, storm -stirred sea's assault On the swilled rock-ridge, earth's embosomed brood Of tree and flower and wxed, with all the life That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife. CHRISTOPHER SMART. 89 Above, below,— each had its note and name For Man to know by, — Man who, now — the same As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees Be named him ere he note by what degrees Of strength and beauty to its end Design Ever thus operates — (your thought and mine, No matter for the many dissident) — So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent In words for once with you ? Then — back was furled The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the world Darkened into the old oft-catalogued Repository of things that sky, wave, land. Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-clogged Now, just as long ago, by tellings and Retellings to satiety, which strike 90 PARLEYINGS WITH MufHed upon the ear's drum. Very like None was so startled as yourself when friends Came, hailed your fast-returning wits : "Health mends Importantly, for — to be plain with you — This scribble on the wall was done — in lieu Of pen and paper — with — ha, ha ! — your key Denting it on the wainscot ! Do you see How wise our caution was ? Thus much we stopped Of babble that had else grown print : and lopped From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough — Smart's who translated Horace ! Write us now " . . Why, what Smart did write — never afterward One line to show that he, who paced the sward, Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell. IX. Was it because you judged (I know full well You never had the fancy) — ^judged — as some — CHRISTOPHER SMART. 91 That who makes poetry must reproduce Thus ever and thus only, as they come, Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse Throughout creation, so that eye and ear, Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize, At touch of just a trait, the strength appear, — Suggested by a line's lapse see arise All evident the beauty, — fresh surprise StartHng at fresh achievement ? " So, indeed. Wallows the whale's bulk in the waste of brine, Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine Wild Virgin's Bower when stars faint off to seed ! " (My prose — your poetry I dare not give, Purpling too much my mere grey argument.) — Was it because you judged — when fugitive Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent Such power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye. At truth's appearance, — that you humbly bent 92 PARLE YINGS WITH The head and, bidding vivid work goodbye, Doffed lyric dress and trod the world once more A drab-clothed decent proseman as before ? Strengths, beauties, by one word's flash thus laid bare — That was effectual service : made aware Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the text, Awaits your teaching. Nature ? What comes next ? AVhy all the strength and beauty ? — to be shown Thus in one word's flash, thenceforth let alone By Man who needs must deal with aught that's known Never so lately and so little ? Friend, First give us knowledge, then appoint its use ! Strength, beauty are the means : ignore their end ? As well you stopped at proving how profuse Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right Ready to help the builder, — careless quite If he should take, or leave the same to strew Earth idly, — as by word's flash bring m view CHRISTOPHER SMART. 93 Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the same Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed? Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed First ; follow^ed duly by enjoyment's fruit, Instruction — haply leaving joy behind : And you, the instructor, w^ould you slack pursuit Of the main prize, as poet help mankind Just to enjoy, there leave them ? Play the fool, Abjuring a superior privilege ? Please simply when your function is to rule- By thought incite to deed ? From edge to edge Of earth's round, strength and beauty everywhere Pullulate — and must you particularize All, each and every apparition ? Spare Yourself and us the trouble ! Ears and eyes Want so much strength and beauty, and no less Nor more, to learn life's lesson by. Oh, yes — The other method 's favoured in our day ! ■94 PARLEYINGS WITH The end ere the beginning : as you may, Master the heavens before you study earth, Make you famiHar with the meteor's birth Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose ! I say, o'erstep no least one of the rows That lead man from the bottom where he plants Foot first of all, to life's last ladder-top : Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts Of those who say — "We scale the skies, then drop To earth — to find, how all things there are loth To answer heavenly law : we understand The meteor's course, and lo, the rose's growth — How other than should be by law's command ! " Would not you tell such — " Friends, beware lest fume Offuscate sense : learn earth first ere presume To teach heaven legislation. Law must be Active in earth or nowhere : earth you see, — Or there or not at all, ^Vill, Power and Love CHRISTOPHER SMART. 95 Admit discovery, — as below, above Seek next law's confirmation ! But reverse The order, where's the wonder things grow worse Than, by the law your fancy formulates, They should be ? Cease from anger at the fates Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and learn, Not first learn and then live, is our concern. IV WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON WITH GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe, — no, Yours was the wrong way ! — always understand, Supposing that permissibly you planned How statesmanship — your trade — in outward show Might figure as inspired by simple zeal For serving country, king and commonweal, (Though service tire to death the body, teaze The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees In all respects — right reason being judge — 00 PARLEYINGS WITH With inward care that, while the statesman spends Body and soul thus freely for the sake Of pubhc good, his private welfare take No harm by such devotedness. Intends Scripture aught else — let captious folk enquire — Which teaches "Labourers deserve their hire. And who neglects his household bears the bell Away of sinning from an infidel"? Wiselier would fools that carp bestow a thought How birds build nests ; at outside, roughly wrought^ Twig knots with twig, loam plasters up each chinky Leaving the inmate rudely lodged — you think ? Peep but inside ! That specious rude-and-rough Covers a domicile where downy fluff Embeds the ease-deserving architect, Who toiled and moiled not merely to effect 'Twixt sprig and spray a stop-gap in the teeth Of wind and weather, guard what swung beneath GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. loi From upset only, but contrived hniiself A snug interior, warm and soft and sleek. •Of what material ? Oh, for that, you seek How nature prompts each volatile ! Thus — pelf Smoothens the human mudlark's lodging, power Demands some hardier wrappage to embrace Robuster heart-beats : rock, not tree nor tower. Contents the building eagle : rook shoves close To brother rook on branch, while crow morose Apart keeps balance perched on topmost bough. No sort of bird but suits his taste somehow : Nay, Darwin tells of such as love the bower — • His bower-birds opportunely yield us yet The lacking instance when at loss to get A feathered parallel to w^hat we find The secret motor of some mighty mind That worked such wonders — all for vanity ! AVorked them to haply figure in the eye PARLEYINGS WITH Of intimates as first of — doers' kind ? Actors/ that work in earnest sportively, Paid by a sourish smile. How says the Sage ? Birds born to strut prepare a platform-stage With sparkling stones and speckled shells, all sorts; Of slimy rubbish, odds and ends and orts, Whereon to pose and posture and engage The priceless female simper. I have gone Thus into detail, George Bubb Dodington, Lest, when I take you presently to task For the wrong way of working, you should ask " What fool conjectures that profession means Performance? that who goes behind the scenes Finds, — acting over, — still the soot-stuff screens Othello's visage, still the self-same cloak's GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 103 Bugle-bright-blackness half reveals half chokes Hamlet's emotion, as ten minutes since ? No, each resumes his garb, stands — Moor or prince — Decently draped : just so with statesmanship ! x\ll outside show, in short, is sham — why wince ? Concede me — while our parley lasts ! You trip Afterwards — lay but this to heart ! (there lurks Somewhere in all of us a lump which irks Somewhat the spriteliest-scheming brain that's bent On brave adventure, would but heart consent !) — Here trip you, that — your aim allowed as right — Your means thereto were wrong. Come, we, this night. Profess one purpose, hold one principle. Are at odds only as to — not the will But way of winning solace for ourselves — No matter if the ore for which zeal delves Be gold or coprolite, while zeal's pretence Is — we do good to men at — whose expense 104 PARLE YINGS WITH But ours ? who tire the body, teaze the soul, Simply that, running, we may reach fame's goal And wreatlie at last our brows with bay — the State's Disinterested slaves, nay — please the Fates — Saviours and nothing less : such lot has been ! Statesmanship triumphs pedestalled, serene, — O happy consummation ! — brought about By managing with skill the rabble-rout For which we labour (never mind the name — People or populace, for praise or blame) Making them understand — their heaven, their hell, Their every hope and fear is ours as well. Man's cause — what other can we have at heart ? Whence follows that the necessary part High o'er Man's head we play, — and freelier breathe Just that the multitude which gasps beneath May reach the level where unstifled stand Ourselves at vantage to put forth a hand, GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 105 Assist the prostrate public. 'Tis by right Merely of such pretence, we reach the height Where storms abound, to brave — nay, court their stress, Though all too well aware — of pomp the less. Of peace the more ! But who are we, to spurn For peace' sake, duty's pointing ? Up, then — earn Albeit no prize we may but martyrdom 1 Now, such fit height to launch salvation from, How get and gain ? Since help must needs be craved By would-be saviours of the else-unsaved. How coax them to co-operate, lend lift. Kneel down and let us mount ? III. You say " Make shift By sham — the harsh word : preach and teach, persuade Somehow the Public — not despising aid Of salutary artifice — we seek io6 PARLE YINGS WITH Solely their good : our strength would raise the weak,. Our cultivated knowledge supplement Their rudeness, rawness : why to us wxre lent Ability except to come in use ? Who loves his kind must by all means induce That kind to let that love play freely, press In Man's behalf to full performance ! " Yes- Yes, George, we know ! — whereat they hear, believe, And bend the knee, and on the neck receive Who fawned and cringed to purpose ? Not so, George I Try simple falsehood on shrewd folks who forge Lies of superior fashion day by day And hour by hour ? With craftsmen versed as they What chance of competition when the tools Only a novice wields ? Are knaves such fools ? GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 107- Disinterested patriot, spare your tongue The tones thrice-silvery, cheek save smiles it flung Pearl-like profuse to swine — a herd, whereof No unit needs be taught, his neighbour's trough Scarce holds for w^ho but grunts and w^hines the husks Due to a wrinkled snout that shows sharp tusks. No animal — much less our lordly Man — Obeys its like : with strength all rule began, The stoutest aw^s the pasture. Soon succeeds Discrimination, — nicer powxr Man needs To rule him than is bred of bone and thew : Intelligence must move strength's self. This too Lasts but its time : the multitude at length Looks inside for intelligence and strength And finds them here and there to pick and choose :. ^' All at your service, mine, see ! " Ay, but who's My George, at this late day, to make his boast *' In strength, intelligence, I rule the roast, io8 PARLEYINGS WITH Beat, all and some, the ungraced who crowd your ranks?" " Oh, but I love, would lead you, gain your thanks By unexampled yearning for Man's sake — Passion that solely waits your help to take Effect in action ! " George, which one of us But holds with his own heart communion thus : '* I am, if not of men the first and best, Still — to receive enjoyment — properest : Which since by force I cannot, nor by wit Most likely — craft must serve in place of it. Flatter, cajole ! If so I bring within My net the gains which wit and force should win. What hinders ? " 'Tis a trick we know of old : Try, George, some other of tricks manifold ! The multitude means mass and mixture — right ! Are mixtures simple, pray, or composite ? Dive into Man, your medley : see the waste ! Sloth-stifled genius, energy disgraced GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 109 By ignorance, high aims with sorry skill, Will without means and means in want of will — Sure we might fish, from out the mothers' sons That welter thus, a dozen Dodingtons ! AVhy call up Dodington, and none beside. To take his seat upon our backs and ride As statesman conquering and to conquer ? Well, The last expedient, which must needs excel Those old ones — this it is, — at any rate To-day's conception thus I formulate : As simple force has been replaced, just so Must simple wit be : men have got to know Such wit as what you boast is nowise held The wonder once it was, but, paralleled Too plentifully, counts not, — puts to shame Modest possessors like yourself who claim. By virtue of it merely, power and place — Which means the sweets of office. Since our race PARLEYINGS WITH Teems with the hke of you, some special gift, Your very own, must coax our hands to hft. And backs to bear you : is it just and right To privilege your nature ? V. " State things quite Other than so " — make answer ! "1 pretend No such community with men. Perpend My key to domination ! Who would use Man for his pleasure needs must introduce The element that awes Man. Once for all, His nature owns a Supernatural In fact as well as phrase — which found must be — Where, in this doubting age ? Old mystery Has served its turn — seen through and sent adrift To nothingness : new wizard-craft makes shift Nowadays shorn of help by robe and book, — GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. Otherwise, elsewhere, for success must look Than chalked-ring, incantation-gibberish. Somebody comes to conjure : that's he ? Pish ! He's like the roomful of rapt gazers, — there's No sort of difference in the garb he wears From ordinary dressing, — gesture, speech, Deportment, just like those of all and each That eye their master of the minute. Slay ! What of the something — call it how you may — Uncanny in the — quack ? That's easy said ! Notice how the Professor turns no head And yet takes cognizance of who accepts, Denies, is puzzled as to the adept's Supremacy, yields up or lies in wait To trap the trickster ! Doubtless, out of date Are deahngs with the devil : yet, the stir Of mouth, its smile half smug half sinister, Mock-modest boldness masked in diffidence, — 112 PARLEYINGS WITH What if the man have — who knows how or whence ? — Confederate potency unguessed by us — Prove no such cheat as he pretends? VI. Ay, thus Had but my George played statesmanship's new card That carries all ! " Since we " — avers the Bard — "All of us have one human heart" — as good As say — by all of us is understood Right and wrong, true and false — in rough, at least, We own a common conscience. God, man, beast — How should we qualify the statesman-shape I fancy standing with our world agape ? Disguise, flee, fight against with tooth and nail The outrageous designation I " Quack " men quail Before ? You see, a little year ago They heard him thunder at the thing which, lo. GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, 113 To-day he vaunts for unscathed, while what erst Heaven-high he lauded, lies hell-low, accursed ! And yet where's change ? Who, awe-struck, cares to point Critical finger at a dubious joint In armour, true ces triplex^ breast and back Binding about, defiant of attack. An imperturbability that's — well, Or innocence or impudence — how tell One from the other ? Could ourselves broach lies, Yet brave mankind with those unaltered eyes. Those lips that keep the quietude of truth ? Dare we attempt the like ? What quick uncouth Disturbance of thy smug economy, O coward visage ! Straight would all descry Back on the man's brow the boy's blush once more ! No : he goes deeper — could our sense explore — Finds conscience beneath conscience such as ours. Genius is not so rare, — prodigious powers — I 114 PARLEYINGS WITH \ ' \ Well, others boast such, — but a power like this \ Mendacious intrepidity — cpdd vis ? \ A Besides, imposture plays another game, j 1 Admits of no diversion from its aim 5 \ i Of captivating hearts, sets zeal a-flare | In every shape at every turn, — nowhere " Allows subsidence into ash. By stress i Of what does guile succeed but earnestness. Earnest word, look and gesture ? Touched with aught ' But earnestness, the levity were fraught ] With ruin to guile's film -work. Grave is guile ; j Here no act wants its qualifying smile, ] Its covert pleasantry to neutralize 1 The outward ardour. Can our chief despise : Even while most he seems to adulate ? As who should say " What though it be my fate 4 To deal with fools ? Among the crowd must lurk ; Some few with faculty to judge my work = GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 115 Spite of its way which suits, they understand, The crass majority : — the Sacred Band, No duping them forsooth ! " So tells a touch Of subinteUigential nod and wink — Turning foes friends. Coarse flattery moves the gorge : Mine were the mode to awe the many, George ! They guess you half despise them while most bent On demonstrating that your sole intent Strives for their service. Sneer at them ? Yourself ^Tis you disparage, — tricksy as an elf, Scorning what most you strain to bring to pass, Laughingly careless, — triply cased in brass, — While pushing strenuous to the end in view. What follows ? Why, you formulate within The vulgar headpiece this conception " Win x\ master-mind to serve us needs we must, One who, from motives we but take on trust, Acts strangelier — haply wiselier than we know — Ii6 PARLEYINGS WITH Stronglier, for certain. Did he say ' I throw Aside my good for yours, in all I do Care nothing for myself and all for you ' — We should both understand and disbeHeve : Said he ^ Your good I laugh at in my sleeve, My own it is I solely labour at, Pretending yours the while ' — that, even that. We, understanding well, give credence to. And so will none of it. But here 'tis through Our recognition of his service, wage Well earned by work, he mounts to such a stage Above competitors as all save Bubb Would agonize to keep. Yet — here's the rub — So slightly does he hold by our esteem Which solely fixed him fast there, that we seem Mocked every minute to our face, by gibe And jest — scorn insuppressive : what ascribe The rashness to ? Our pay and praise to boot — GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON. 117 Do these avail him to tread underfoot Something inside us all and each, that stands Somehow instead of somewhat which commands * Lie not ' ? Folks fear to jeopardize their soul, Stumble at times, walk straight upon the whole, — That 's nature's simple instinct : what may be The portent here, the influence such as we Are strangers to ? " — VII. Exact the thing I call Man's despot, just the Supernatural Which, George, was wholly out of — far beyond Your theory and practice. You had conned But to reject the precept "To succeed In gratifying selfishness and greed, Asseverate such qualities exist Nowise within yourself ! then make acquist ii8 PARLEYINGS WITH By all means, with no sort of fear ! " Alack, That well-worn lie is obsolete ! Fall back On still a working pretext — " Hearth and Home^ The Altar, love of England, hate of Rome " — That's serviceable lying — that perchance Had screened you decently : but 'ware advance By one step more in perspicacity Of these our dupes ! At length they get to see As through the earlier, this the latter plea — And find the greed and selfishness at source ! Ventum est ad triarios : last resource Should be to what but — exquisite disguise Disguise- abjuring, truth that looks like lies. Frankness so sure to meet with unbelief? Say — you hold in contempt — not them in chief — But first and foremost your own self ! No use In men but to make sport for you, induce The puppets now to dance, now stand stock-still,. GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, 119 Now knock their heads together, at your will For will's sake only — while each plays his part Submissive : why ? through terror at the heart : *' Can it be — this bold man, whose hand we saw Openly pull the wires, obeys some law Quite above jNIan's — nay, God's ? " On face fall they. This was the secret missed, again I say, Out of your power to grasp conception of. Much less employ to purpose. Hence the scoff That greets your very name : folks see but one Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington. V WITH FRANCIS FURINI WITH FRANCIS FURINI. I. Nay, that^ Furini, never I at least Mean to believe ! What man you were I know, While you walked Tuscan earth, a painter-priest, Something about two hundred years ago. Priest — you did duty punctual as the sun That rose and set above Saint Sano's church, Blessing Mugello : of your flock not one But showed a whiter fleece because of smirch, Your kind hands wiped it clear from : were they poor? Bounty broke bread apace, — did marriage lag For just the want of monies that ensure Fit hearth-and-home provision ? — straight your bag 124 PARLEYINGS WITH Unplumped itself, — reached hearts by way of pahiis Goodwill's shake had but tickled. All about Mugello valley, felt some parish qualms At worship offered in bare walls without The comfort of a picture ? — prompt such need Our painter would supply, and throngs to see Witnessed that goodness — no unholy greed Of gain — had coaxed from Don Furini — he Whom princes might in vain implore to toil For worldly profit — such a masterpiece. Brief — priest, you poured profuse God's wine and oil Praiseworthily, I know : shall praising cease AVhen, priestly vesture put aside, mere man, You stand for judgment ? Rather — what acclaim — "Good son, good brother, friend in whom we scan No fault nor flaw" — salutes Furini's name, The loving as the liberal ! Enough : Only to ope a lily, though for sake FRANCIS FURINl, 125 Of setting free its scent, disturbs the rough Loose gold about its anther. I shall take No blame in one more blazon, last of all — Good painter were you : if in very deed I styled you great — what modern art dares call My word in question ? Let who will take heed Of what he seeks and misses in your brain To balance that precision of the brush Your hand could ply so deftly : all in vain Strives poet's power for outlet when the push Is lost upon a barred and bolted gate Of painter's impotency. Angelo — Thine were alike the head and hand, by fate Doubly endowed ! Who boasts head only — woe To hand's presumption should brush emulate Fancy's free passage by the pen, and show Thought wrecked and ruined where the inexpert Foolhardy fmgers half grasped, half let go 126 PARLEYINGS WITH Film-wings the poet's pen arrests unhurt ! No — painter such as that miraculous Michael, who deems you ? But the ample gift Of gracing walls else blank of this our house Of life with imagery, one bright drift Poured forth by pencil,— man and woman mere, Glorified till half owned for gods, — the dear Fleshly perfection of the human shape, — This was apportioned you whereby to praise Heaven and bless earth. Who clumsily essays. By slighting painter's craft, to prove the ape Of poet's pen-creation, just betrays Two-fold ineptitude. By such sure ways Do I return, Furini, to my first And central confidence — that he I proved FRANCIS FURINI. 127 Good priest, good man, good painter, and rehearsed Praise upon praise to show — not simply loved For virtue, but for wisdom honoured too Needs must Furini be, — it follows — who Shall undertake to breed in me belief That, on his death-bed, weakness played the thief With wisdom, folly ousted reason quite ? List to the chronicler ! With main and might — So fame runs — did the poor soul beg his friends To buy and burn his hand-work, make amends For having reproduced therein — (Ah, me ! Sighs fame — that's friend Filippo) — nudity ! Yes, I assure you : he would paint — not men Merely — a pardonable fault — but when He had to deal with — Oh, not mother Eve Alone, permissibly in Paradise Naked and unashamed, — but dared achieve Dreadful distinction, at soul-safety's price 128 PARLEY I NGS WITH By also painting women — (why the need ?) Just as God made them : there, you have the truth \. Yes, rosed from top to toe in flush of youth, One foot upon the moss-fringe, would some Nymph Try, with its venturous fellow, if the lymph Were chillier than the slab-stepped fountain-edge ; The while a-heap her garments on its ledge Of boulder lay within hand's easy reach, — No one least kid-skin cast around her ! Speech Shrinks from enumerating case and case Of — were it but Diana at the chase, With tunic tucked discretely hunting-high ! No, some Queen Venus set our necks awry, Turned faces from the painter's all-too-frank Triumph of flesh ! For — whom had he to thank — This self-appointed nature-student ? Whence Picked he up practice ? By what evidence Did he unhandsomely become adept FRANCIS FURINI. 129 In simulating bodies ? How except By actual sight of such ? Himself confessed The enormity : quoth Philip " When I pressed The painter to acknowledge his abuse Of artistry else potent — what excuse Made the infatuated man ? I give His very words : ^ Did you but know, as I, — O scruple-splitting sickly-sensitive Mild-moral-monger, what the agony Of Art is ere Art satisfy herself In imitating Nature — (Man, poor elf. Striving to match the finger-mark of Him The immeasurably matchless) — gay or grim. Pray, would your smile be ? Leave mere fools to tax Art's high-strung brain's intentness as so lax That, in its mid-throe, idle fancy sees The moment for admittance ! ' Pleadings these — • Specious, I grant." So adds, and seems to wince PARLE YINGS WITH _ \ Somewhat, our censor — but shall truth convince i l Blockheads like Baldinucci ? . ^ \ III. i I resume ; \ My incredulity : your other kind \ Of soul, Furini, never was so blind, i Even by death-mist, as to grope in gloom ] For cheer beside a bonfire piled to turn ; i Ashes and dust all that your noble life 1 Did homage to life's Lord by, — bid them burn \ — These Baldinucci blockheads — pictures rife j With record, in each rendered loveliness, \ That one appreciative creature's debt \ Of thanks to the Creator, more or less, '] Was paid according as heart's-will had met "\ Hand's-power in Art's endeavour to express ; Heaven's most consummate of achievements, bless \ * I I FRANCIS FUR INI. 13 Earth by a semblance of the seal God set On woman his supremest work. I trust Rather, Furini, dying breath had vent In some fine fervour of thanksgiving just For this — that soul and body's power you spent — Agonized to adumbrate, trace in dust That marvel which we dream the firmament Copies in star-device when fancies stray Outlining, orb by orb, Andromeda — God's best of beauteous and magnificent Revealed to earth — the naked female form. Nay, I mistake not : wrath that's but lukewarm Would boil indeed were such a critic styled Himself an artist : artist ! Ossa piled Topping Olympus — the absurd which crowns The extravagant — whereat one laughs, not frowns. Paints he ? One bids the poor pretender take His sorry self, a trouble and disgrace, 32 PARLEYINGS WITH ^ ■i From out the sacred presence, void the place i \ Artists claim only. What — not merely wake J Our pity that suppressed concupiscence — • A satyr masked as matron — makes pretence '] To the coarse blue-fly's instinct — can perceive i -I No better reason why she should exist — | J — God's lily-limbed and blush-rose-bosomed Eve — | Than as a hot-bed for the sensualist To fly-blow with his fancies, make pure stufl" Breed him back filth — this were not crime enough ? But further — fly to style itself — nay, more^ To steal among the sacred ones, crouch down Though but to where their garments sweep the floor- — Still catching some faint sparkle from the crown Crowning transcendent Michael, Leonard, Rafael, — to sit beside the feet of such, Unspurned because unnoticed, then reward Their toleration — mercy overmuch — FRANCIS FURINI. : By stealing from the throne-step to the fools Curious outside the gateway, all-agape To learn by what procedure, in the schools Of Art, a merest man in outward shape May learn to be Correggio ! Old and young, These learners got their lesson : Art was just A safety-screen — (Art, which Correggio's tongue Calls "Virtue") — for a skulking vice : mere lust Inspired the artist when his Night and Morn Slept and awoke in marble on that edge Of heaven above our awestruck earth : lust-born His Eve low bending took the privilege Of life from what our eyes saw — God's own palm That put the flame forth— to the love and thanks Of all creation save this recreant ! 134 PARLEY TAGS WITH IV. i Calm .1 Our phrase, Furini ! Not the artist-ranks J Claim riddance of an interloper : no — ) This Baldinucci did but grunt and sniff \ 'i Outside Art's pale — ay, grubbed, where pine-trees grow, ^ \ For pignuts only. | I i \ You the Sacred ! If | Indeed on you has been bestowed the dower ] Of Art in fulness, graced with head and hand, I Head — to look up not downwards, hand — of power i To make head's gain the portion of a world ^ Where else the uninstructed ones too sure J Would take all outside beauty — film that's furled \ i About a star— for the star's selfi endure \ 1 I ■i % FA\4NC/S FURINL 135 No guidance to the central glory, — nay, (Sadder) might apprehend the film was fog. Or (worst) wish all but vapour well away, And sky's pure product thickened from earth's bog — Since so, nor seldom, have your worthiest failed To trust their own soul's insight — why ? except For warning that the head of the adept May too much prize the hand, work unassailed By scruple of the better sense that finds An orb within each halo, bids gross flesh Free the fine spirit-pattern, nor enmesh More than is meet a marvel, custom blinds Only the vulgar eye to. Little fear That you, the foremost of Art's fellowship Will oft — will ever so offend ! But — hip And thigh — smite the Philistine 1 You — slunk here — Connived at, by too easy tolerance. Not to scrape palette simply or squeeze brush, 136 PARLEYINGS WITH But dub your very self an Artist ? Tush — You, of the daubings, is it, dare advance This doctrine that the Artist-mind must needs Own to affinity with yours — confess Provocative acquaintance, more or less. With each impurely-peevish worm that breeds Inside your brain's receptacle ? VI. Enough. Who owns " I dare not look on diadems AVithout an itch to pick out, purloin gems Others contentedly leave sparkling " — gruff Answers the guard of the regalia : " Why — • Consciously kleptomaniac — thrust yourself Where your illicit craving after pelf Is tempted most — in the King's treasury? Go elsewhere ! Sort with thieves, if thus you feel- FRANCIS FURINL 137 When folks clean-handed simply recognize Treasure whereof the mere sight satisfies — But straight your fingers are on itch to steal ! Hence with you ! " Pray, Furini ! VII. " Bounteous God, Deviser and dispenser of all gifts To soul through sense, — in Art the soul uplifts Man's best of thanks ! What but Thy measuring-rod Meted forth heaven and earth ? more intimate, Thy very hands were busied with the task Of making, in this human shape, a mask — A match for that divine. Shall love abate Man's wonder? Nowise ! True — true — all too true^ No gift but, in the very plenitude Of its perfection, goes maimed, misconstrued 138 PARLE YINGS WITH By wickedness or weakness : still, some few Have grace to see Thy purpose, strength to mar Thy work by no admixture of their own, — Limn truth not falsehood, bid us love alone The type untampered with, the naked star ! " VIII. And, prayer done, painter — what if you should preach ? Not as of old when playing pulpiteer To simple-witted country folk, but here In actual London try your powers of speech On us the cultured, therefore sceptical — - What would you ? For, suppose he has his word In faith's behalf, no matter how absurd, This painter-theologian ? One and all We lend an ear — nay. Science takes thereto — Encourages the meanest who has racked Nature until he gains from her some fact, FRANCIS FURim. 139 To State what truth is from his point of view, Mere pin-point though it be : since many such Conduce to make a whole, she bids our friend Come forward unabashed and haply lend His httle hfe-experience to our much Of modern knowledge. Since she so insists, Up stands P'urini. IX. " Evolutionists 1 At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights^ Our stations for discovery opposites, — How should ensue agreement ? I explain : Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain Your vision, until atoms, protoplasm, And what and whence and how may be the spasm Which sets all going, stop you : down perforce Needs must your observation take its course, 140 \PARLEYINGS WITH Since there's no moving upwards : link by link You drop to where the atoms somehow think, Feel, know themselves to be : the world's begun, Such as we recognize it. Have you done Descending? Here's ourself, — Man, known to-day. Duly evolved at last, — so far, you say. The sum and seal of being's progress. Good 1 Thus much at least is clearly understood — ■Of power does Man possess no particle : Of knowledge — just so much as shows that still It ends in ignorance on every side : But righteousness^ — ah, Man is deified Thereby, for compensation ! Make survey Of Man's surroundings, try creation — nay, Try emulation of the minimized Minuteness fancy may conceive ! Surprised Reason becomes by two defeats for one — Not only power at each phenomenon FHANC/S FURINL 141 Baffled, but knowledge also in default — Asking what is minuteness — yonder vault Speckled with suns, or this the milhonth — thing, How shall I call ? — that on some insect's wing Helps to make out in dyes the mimic star ? Weak, ignorant, accordingly we are : What then ? The worse for Nature ! Where began Righteousness, moral sense except in Man? True, he makes nothing, understands no whit : Had the initiator-spasm seen fit Thus doubly to endow him, none the w^orse And much the better were the universe. What does Man see or feel or apprehend Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend, Omissions to supply, — one wide disease Of things that are, which Man at once w^ould ease Had will but power and knowledge ? failing both — Things must take will for deed — Man, nowise loth, 142 PARLEYINGS WITH Accepts pre-eminency : mere blind force — Mere knowledge undirected in its course By any care for what is made or marred In cither's operation — these award The crown to ? Rather let it deck thy brows, Man, whom alone a righteousness endows Would cure the wide world's ailing! Who disputes Thy claim thereto ? Had Spasm more attributes Than power and knowledge in its gift, before Man came to pass ? The higher that we soar, The less of moral sense like Man's we find : No sign of such before, — what comes behind. Who guesses ? But until there crown our sight The quite new — not the old mere infinite Of changings, — some fresh kind of sun and moon, — Then, not before, shall I expect a boon Of intuition just as strange, which turns Evil to good, and wrong to right, unlearns FRANCIS FURIXL 143 All Man's experience learned since Man was he. Accept in Man, advanced to this degree, The Prime Mind, therefore ! neither wise nor strong — Whose fault ? but were he both, then right, not wrong As now, throughout the world were paramount According to his will, — which I account The qualifying faculty. He stands Confessed supreme — the monarch whose commands Could he enforce, how bettered were the world ! He's at the height this moment- -to be hurled Next moment to the bottom by rebound Of his own peal of laughter. All around Ignorance wraps him, — whence and how and why Things are, — yet cloud breaks and lets blink the sky Just overhead, not elsewhere ! What assures His optics that the very blue which lures Comes not of black outside it, doubly dense ? Ignorance overwraps his moral sense. 144 PARLEYINGS WITH Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps, So much and no more than lets through perhaps The murmured knowledge — ' Ignorance exists.' X. '' I at the bottom, Evolutionists, Advise beginning, rather. I profess To know just one fact — my self-consciousness, — 'Twixt ignorance and ignorance enisled, — Knowledge : before me was my Cause — that's styled God : after, in due course succeeds the rest, — All that my knowledge comprehends — at best — At worst, conceives about in mild despair. Light needs must touch on either darkness : where ? Knowledge so far impinges on the Cause Before me, that I know— by certain laws Wholly unknown, whate'er I apprehend Within, without me, had its rise: thus blend i. FRANCIS FURINI. 145 I, and all things perceived, in one Effect. How far can knowledge any ray project On what comes after me — the universe ? Well, my attempt to make the cloud disperse Begins — not from above but underneath : I climb, you soar, — who soars soon loses breath And sinks, who climbs keeps one foot firm on fact Ere hazarding the next step: soul's first act (Call consciousness the soul — some name we need) Getting itself aware, through stuff decreed Thereto (so call the body) — who has stept So far, there let him stand, become adept In body ere he shift his station thence One single hair's breadth. Do I make pretence To teach, myself unskilled in learning ? Lo, My life's work ! Let my pictures prove I know Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours Or is or should be, how the soul empowers L 146 PARLEYINGS WITH The body to reveal its every mood Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude Of passion. If my hand attained to give Thus permanence to truth else fugitive, Did not I also fix each fleeting grace Of form and feature — save the beauteous face — Arrest decay in transitory might Of bone and muscle — cause the world to bless For ever each transcendent nakedness Of man and woman ? Were such feats achieved By sloth, or strenuous labour unrelieved, — Yet lavished vainly ? Ask that underground (So may I speak) of all on surface found Of flesh-perfection ! Depths on depths to probe Of all inventive artifice, disrobe Marvel at hiding under marvel, pluck Veil after veil from Nature — were the luck Ours to surprise the secret men so name, FRANCIS FURINL 147 That still eludes the searcher — all the same, Repays his search with still fresh proof — 'Externe, Not inmost, is the Cause, fool ! Look and learn ! ' Thus teach my hundred pictures : firm and fast There did I plant my first foot. And the next ? Nowhere J 'Twas put forth and withdrawn, perplexed At touch of what seemed stable and proved stuff Such as the coloured clouds are : plain enough There lay the outside universe : try Man — My most immediate ! and the dip began From safe and solid into that profound Of ignorance I tell you surges round My rock-spit of self-knowledge. Well and ill, Evil and good irreconcilable Above, beneath, about my every side, — How did this wild-confusion far and wide Tally with my experience when my stamp — So far from stirring — struck out, each a lamp, 148 PARLEYINGS WITH Spark after spark of truth from where I stood — Pedestalled triumph ? Evil there was good, Want was the promise of supply, defect Ensured completion, — where and when and how ? Leave that to the first Cause ! Enough that now, Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine, Shows me what is, permits me to divine What shall be. Wherefore ? Nay, how otherwise ? Look at my pictures ! What so glorifies The body that the permeating soul Finds there no particle elude control Direct, or fail of duty, — most obscure When most subservient ? Did that Cause ensur e The soul such raptures as its fancy stings Body to furnish when, uplift by wings Of passion, here and now, it leaves the earth. Loses itself above, where bliss has birth — (Heaven, be the phrase) — did that same Cause contrive FRANCIS FURINL 149 Such solace for the body, soul must dive At drop of fancy's pinion, condescend To bury both alike on earth, our friend And fellow, where minutely exquisite Low lie the pleasures, now and here — no herb But hides its marvel, peace no doubts perturb In each small mystery of insect life — — Shall the soul's Cause thus gift the soul, yet strife Continue still of fears with hopes, — for why? What if the Cause, whereof we now descry So far the wonder-working, lack at last Will, power, benevolence — a protoplast. No consummator, sealing up the sum Of all things, — past and present and to come Perfection ? No, I have no doubt at all ! There's my amount of knowledge — great or small, Sufficient for my needs : for see ! advance Its light now on that depth ot ignorance 150 PARLEYINGS WITH I shrank before from — yonder where the world Lies wreck-strewn, — evil towering, prone good — hurled From pride of place, on every side. For me (Patience, beseech you !) knowledge can but be Of good by knowledge of good's opposite — Evil, — since, to distinguish wrong from right, Both must be known in each extreme, beside — (Or what means knowledge — to aspire or bide Content with half-attaining ? Hardly so !) Made to know on, know ever, I must know All to be known at any halting-stage Of my soul's progress, such as earth, where wage War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy. Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy With all that quiets and contents, — in brief, Good strives with evil. Now then for relief. Friends, of your patience kindly curbed so long. FRANCIS FURINI. 151 * What ? ' snarl you * Is the fool's conceit thus strong — Must the whole outside world in soul and sense Suffer, that he grow sage at its expense ? ' By no means ! 'Tis by merest touch of toe I try — not trench on — ignorance, just know — And so keep steady footing : how you fare, Caught in the whirlpool — that's the Cause's care, Strong, wise, good, — this I know at any rate In my own self, — but how may operate AVith you — strength, wisdom, goodness — no least blink Of knowledge breaks the darkness round me. Think ! Could I see plain, be somehow certified All was illusion, — evil far and wide Was good disguised, — why, out with one huge wipe Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype : As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good Needs evil : how were pity understood Unless by pain ? Make evident that pain 152 PARLEYINGS WITH Permissibly masks pleasure — you abstain Froni outstretch of the finger-tip that saves A drowning fly. Who proffers help of hand To weak Andromeda exposed on strand At mercy of the monster ? Were all true, Help were not wanting : ' But 'tis false,' cry you, ^ Mere fancy-work of paint and brush ! ' No less, Were mine the skill, the magic, to impress Beholders with a confidence they saw Life, — veritable flesh and blood in awe Of just as true a sea-beast, — would they stare Simply as now, or cry out, curse and swear. Or call the gods to help, or catch up stick And stone, according as their hearts were quick Or sluggish ? Well, some old artificer Could do as much, — at least, so books aver, — Able to make-believe, while I, poor wight, Make-fancy, nothing more. Though wrong were right, FRANCIS FURINI. ,i53 Could we but know— still wrong must needs seem wrong To do right's service, prove men w^eak or strong, Choosers of evil or of good. ' No such ' Illusion possible ! ' Ah, friends, you touch Just here my solid standing-place amid The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid Back to the ledge they break against in foam. Futility : my soul, and my soul's home This body, — how each operates on each, Ar'd how things outside, fact or feigning, teach What good is and what evil, — ^just the same. Be feigning or be fact the teacher, — blame Diffidence nowise if, from this I judge My point of vantage, not an inch I budge. All — for myself — seems ordered wise and well Inside it, — what reigns outside, who can tell ? Contrariwise, who needs be told ' The space Which yields thee knowledge,^do its bounds embrace 154 PARLE YINGS WITH Well-willing and wise-working, each at height ? Enough : beyond thee hes the infinite — Back to thy circumscription ! ' Back indeed ! Ending where I began — thus : retrocede, Who will, — what comes first, take first, I advise I Acquaint you with the body ere your eyes Look upward : this Andromeda of mine — Gaze on the beauty, Art hangs out for sign There's finer entertainment underneath. Learn how they ministrate to life and death — Those incommensurably marvellous Contrivances which furnish forth the house Where soul has sway ! Though Master keep aloof^ Signs of His presence multiply from roof To basement of the building. Look around, Learn thoroughly, — no fear that you confound Master with messuage ! He's away, no doubt, FRANCIS FURINI. 155 But what if, all at once, you come upon A startling proof — not that the Master gone I Was present lately — but that something — whence Light comes — has pushed Him into residence ? Was such the symbol's meaning, — old, uncouth — That circle of the serpent, tail in mouth ? Only by looking low, ere looking high. Comes penetration of the mystery." XI. Thanks ! After sermonizing, psalmody 1 Now praise with pencil. Painter ! Fools attaint I F Your fame, forsooth, because its power inclines To livelier colours, more attractive lines Than suit some orthodox sad sickly saint — Grey male emaciation, haply streaked Carmine by scourgings — or they want, far worse — • Some self-scathed woman, framed to bless not curse 156 PARLEYINGS WITH j Nature that loved the form whereon hate wreaked | The wrongs you see. No, rather paint some full 1 Benignancy, the first and foremost boon | Of youth, health, strength, — show beauty's May, ere June j j Undo the bud's blush, leave a rose to cull \ — No poppy, neither ! yet less perfect-pure, -\ Divinely-precious with life's dew besprent. \ Show saintliness that's simply innocent '\ Of guessing sinnership exists to cure -^ All in good time ! In time let age advance \ And teach that knowledge helps — not ignorance — \ The heahng of the nations. Let my spark J 1 Quicken your tinder ! Burn with — Joan of Arc ! \ Not at the end, nor midway when there grew S The brave delusions, when rare fancies flew -\ Before the eyes, and in the ears of her 1 Strange voices woke imperiously astir : .; No, — paint the peasant girl all peasant-like, i FRANCIS FURINL 157 Spirit and flesh — the hour about to strike When this should be transfigured, that inflamed, By heart's admonishing " Thy country shamed, Thy king shut out of all his realm except One sorry corner ! " and to life forth leapt The indubitable lightning *' Can there be Country and king's salvation — all through me ? " Memorize that burst's moment, Francis ! Tush — None of the nonsense-writing ! Fitlier brush Shall clear off fancy's film-work and let show Not what the foolish feign but the wise know — Ask Sainte-Beuve else ! — or better, Quicherat, The downright-digger into truth that's — Bah, Bettered by fiction ? Well, of fact thus much Concerns you, that " of prudishness no touch From first to last defaced the maid ; anon. Camp-use compelling " — what says D'Alengon Her fast friend ? — " though I saw while she undressed IS8 PARLEYINGS WITH How fair she was — especially her breast — Never had I a wild thought ! " — as indeed I nowise doubt. Much less would she take heed — When eve came, and the lake, the hills around Were all one solitude and silence, — found Barriered impenetrably safe about, — Take heed of interloping eyes shut out, But quietly permit the air imbibe Her naked beauty till . . but hear the scribe ! Now as she fain would bathe, one even-tide, God^s 7naid, this Joan, fro7n the pooFs edge she spied The fair blue bird clowns call the Fisher-king : And " ^Las^^ sighed she, " my Liege is such a thing As thou, lord but of one poor lonely place Out of his whole wide France : were mine the grace To set my Dauphin free as thou, blue bird I " Properly Martin-fisher — that's the word, Not yours nor mine : folks said the rustic oath FRANCIS FURINL 159 In common use with her was — "By my troth?" No,—" By my Martin " ! Paint this ! Only, turn Her face away — that face about to burn Into an angel's when the time is ripe ! That task's beyond you. Finished, Francis ? Wipe Pencil, scrape palette, and retire content ! ^' Omnia non omnibus " — no harm is meant ! VI WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE M WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE. I. x\h, but — because you were struck blind, could bless Your sense no longer with the actual view Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew In happier days so duteously and true, — Must I account my Gerard de Lairesse All sorrow-smitten ? He was hindered too — Was this no hardship ?■ — from producing, plain To us who still have eyes, the pageantry Which passed and passed before his busy brain And, captured on his canvas, showed our sky M 2 i64 PARLEYINGS WITH Traversed by flying shapes, earth stocked with brood Of monsters, — centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd, — Not without much Olympian glory, shapes Of god and goddess in their gay escapes From the severe serene ; or haply paced The antique ways, god-counselled, nymph -embraced. Some early human kingly personage. Such wonders of the teeming poet's-age Were still to be : nay, these indeed began — Are not the pictures extant ? — till the ban Of blindness struck both palate from his thumb And pencil from his finger. Blind — not dumb. Else, Gerard, were my inmost bowels stirred ,With pity beyond pity : no, the word Was left upon your unmolested lips : GERARD DE LAIRESSE, 165 Your mouth unsealed, despite of eyes' eclipse, Talked all brain's yearning into birth. I lack Somehow the heart to wish your practice back Which boasted hand's achievement in a score Of veritable pictures, less or more, Still to be seen : myself have seen them, — moved To pay due homage to the man I loved Because of that prodigious book he wrote On Artistry's Ideal, by taking note. Making acquaintance with his artist-work. So my youth's piety obtained success Of ail-too dubious sort : for, though it irk To tell the issue, few or none would guess From extant lines and colours, De Lairesse, Your faculty, although each deftly-grouped And aptly-ordered figure-piece was judged Worthy a prince's purchase in its day. Bearded experience bears not to be duped i66 PARLEYINGS WITH Like boyish fancy : 'twas a boy that budged No foot's breadth from your visioned steps away The while that memorable " Walk " he trudged In your companionship, — the Book must say Where, when and whither, — " Walk," come what come may, No measurer of steps on this our globe Shall ever match for marvels. Faustus' robe, And Fortunatus' cap were gifts of price : But — oh, your piece of sober sound advice That artists should descry abundant worth In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth If fortune bade the painter's craft be pHed In vulgar town and country ! Why despond Because hemmed round by Dutch canals ? Beyond The ugly actual, lo, on every side Imagination's limitless domain Displayed a wealth of wondrous sounds and sights GERARD DE LAIRESSE. 167 Ripe to be realized by poet's brain Acting on painter's brush ! "Ye doubt ? Poor wights, What if I set example, go before. While you come after, and we both explore Holland turned Dreamland, taking care to note Objects whereto my pupils may devote Attention with advantage ? " III. So commenced That " Walk " amid true wonders — none to you. But huge to us ignobly common-sensed, Purblind, while plain could proper optics view In that old sepulchre by lightning split. Whereof the lid bore carven, — any dolt Imagines why, — Jove's very thunderbolt : You who could straight perceive, by glance at it, This tomb must needs be Phaeton's ! In a trice, i68 PARLEYINGS WITH Confirming that conjecture, close on hand, Behold, half out, half in the ploughed-up sand, A chariot-wheel explained its bolt-device : What other than the Chariot of the Sun Ever let drop the like ? Consult the tome — ^ I bid inglorious tarriers-at-home — For greater still surprise the while that " Walk " Went on and on, to end as it begun, Chokefull of chances, changes, every one No whit less wondrous. What was there to baulk Us, who had eyes, from seeing ? You with none Missed not a marvel : wherefore? Let us talk. IV. Say am I right ? Your sealed sense moved your mind, Free from obstruction, to compassionate * The Art of Paintings dfc.^ by Gerard de Lairesse; translated by J. F. Fritsch. 1778. GERARD DE LAIR ESSE. 169 Art's power left powerless, and supply the blind With fancies w^orth all facts denied by fate. Mind could invent things, add to — take away, At pleasure, leave out trifles mean and base Which vex the sight that cannot say them nay But, where mind plays the master, have no place. And bent on banishing was mind, be sure. All except beauty from its mustered tribe Of objects apparitional which lure Painter to show and poet to describe — That imagery of the antique song Truer than truth's self. Fancy's rainbow-birth Conceived mid clouds in Greece, could glance along Your passage o'er Dutch veritable earth. As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng About our pacings men and women worth Nowise a glance — so poets apprehend — Since nought avails portraying them in verse : 170 PARLE YINGS WITH While painters turn upon the heel, intend To spare their work the critic's ready curse Due to the daily and undignified. V. I who myself contentedly abide Awake, nor want the wings of dream, — who tramp Earth's common surface, rough, smooth, dry or damp, — I understand alternatives, no less Conceive your soul's leap, Gerard de Lairesse How were it could I mingle false with true, Boast, with the sights I see, your vision too ? Advantage would it prove or detriment If I saw double ? Could I gaze intent On Dryope plucking the blossoms red, As you, whereat her lote tree writhed and bled. Yet lose no gain, no hard fast wide-awake Having and holdim^ nature for the sake GERARD DE LAIRESSE, 171 Of nature only — nymph and lote-tree thus Gained by the loss of fruit not fabulous, Apple of English homesteads, where I see Nor seek more than crisp buds a struggling bee Uncrumples, caught by sweet he clambers through ? Truly, a moot point : make it plain to me, Who, bee-like, sate sense with the simply true, Nor seek to heighten that sufficiency By help of feignings proper to the page — Earth's surface-blank whereon the elder age Put colour, poetizing — poured rich life On what were else a dead ground — nothingness — Until the solitary world grew rife . - With Joves and Junos, nymphs and satyrs. Yes, The reason was, fancy composed the strife 'Twixt sense and soul : for sense, my De Lairesse, Cannot content itself with outward things, Mere beauty : soul must needs know whence there springs — 172 PARLEYINGS WITH J '1 How, when and why — what sense but loves, nor hsts ; To know at all. \ \ Not one of man's acquists \ Ought he resignedly to lose, methinks : \ So, point me out which was it of the links 1 Snapt first, from out the chain which used to bind \ Our earth to heaven, and yet for you, since blind, \ \ Subsisted still efficient and intact ? \ Oh, we can fancy too ! but somehow fact \ Has got to — say, not so much push aside \ Fancy, as to declare its place supphed I By fact unseen but no less fact the same. Which mind bids sense accept. Is mind to blame, \ I Or sense, — does that usurp, this abdicate ? | k First of all, as you " walked" — were it too late \ For us to walk, if so we willed ? Confess j We have the sober feet still, De Lairesse ! J GERARD DE LAIRESSE. 173 Why not the freakish brain too, that must needs Supplement nature — not see flowers and weeds Simply as such, but link with each and all The ultimate perfection — what we call Rightly enough the human shape divine ? The rose ? No rose unless it disentwine From Venus' wreath the while she bends to kiss Her deathly love ? VII. Plain retrogression, this 1 No, no : we poets go not back at all : What you did we could do — from great to small Sinking assuredly : if this world last One moment longer when Man finds its Past Exceed its Present — blame the Protoplast! If we no longer see as you of old, 'Tis we see deeper. Progress for the bold ! 174 PARLEYINGS WITH You saw the body, 'tis the soul we see. Try now ! Bear witness while you walk with me, I see as you : if we loose arms, stop pace, 'Tis that you stand still, I conclude the race Without your company. Come, walk once more The "Walk" : if I to-day as you of yore See just like you the blind^then sight shall cry — The whole long day quite gone through — victory ! Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubhng Doom o'er the mountain, while a sharp white fire Now shone, now sheared its rusty herbage, troubling Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire Crashed down, defiant to the last : till — lo, The motive of the malice ! — all a-glow. Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift GERARD DE LAIRESSE. " I75 I' the rock-face, and I saw a form erect Front and defy the outrage, while — as checked, Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift — Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing outspread In deprecation o'er the crouching head Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile. O thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile. Was it when this — Jove's feathered fury — slipped Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he ripped — This eagle-hound — neither reproach nor prayer — Baffled, in one more fierce attempt to tear Fate's secret from thy safeguard, — was it then That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air To reach thee, pay thy patronage of men ? He thundered, — to withdraw, as beast to lair, Before the triumph on thy pallid brow/ Gather the night again about thee now. Hate on, loveever ! Morn is breaking there — 176 PARLEYINGS WITH The granite ridge pricks through the mist, turns gold As wrong turns right. O laughters manifold Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair ! IX. •J But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight % Above the baffled tempest : tree and tree I Stir themselves from the stupor of the night ^ And every strangled branch resumes its right \ To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free \ In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, \ While earth, distent with moisture like a spunge, i Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, 1 Each grass-blade's glory-glitter. Had I known \ The torrent now turned river ? — masterful \ \ Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage — stone \ And stub which barred the froths and foams : no bull j Ever broke bounds in formidable sport i GERARD DE LAIRESSE. 177 More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm Sets him to dare that last mad leap : report Who may — his fortunes in the deathly chasm That swallows him in silence ! Rather turn Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled Into the broad day-splendour, whom discern These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below, Earth's huntress-queen ? I note the garb succinct Saving from smirch that purity of snow From breast to knee — snow's self with just the tinct Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ah, the bow Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory-linked Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so — As if a star's live restless fragment winked Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair ! What hope along the hillside, what far bhss 178 PARLEYINGS WITH Lets the crisp hair- plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders ? Must a morn so blithe, Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis ? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb that ever teemed With novel births of wonder ? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-grey glance which gleamed At the poor hoofs protesting as it stamped Idly the granite ? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence : well may'st thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage till the maidens paled And perished on the temple-step, assailed GERARD DE LAIRESSE, 179 By — what except to envy must man's wit Impute that sure implacable release Of life from warmth and joy ? But death means peace. Noon is the conqueror, — not a spray, nor leaf, Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up Its morning dew : the valley seemed one cup Of cloud-smoke, but the vapour's reign was brief, Sun-smitten, see, it hangs — the filmy haze — Grey-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, To soothe the day's sharp glare : while far and wide Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze With fierce immitigable blue, no bird Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks Which still presume there, plain each pale point speaks In wan transparency of waste incurred By over-daring : far from me be such ! i8o PARLEYINGS WITH Deep in the hollow, rather, where combine Tree, shrub and briar to roof with shade and cool The remnant of some lily-strangled pool. Edged round with mossy fringing soft and fine. Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead Watch elder, bramble, rose, and service-tree And one beneficent rich barberry Jewelled all over with fruit-pendents red. What have I seen ! O Satyr, well I know How sad thy case, and what a world of woe Was hid by the brown visage furry-framed Only for mirth : who otherwise could think — Marking thy mouth gape still on laughter's brinks Thine eyes a-swim with merriment unnamed But haply guessed at by their furtive wink ? And all the while a heart was panting sick Behind that shaggy bulwark of thy breast — Passion it was that made those breath-bursts thick GERARD DE LAIR ESSE. i8i I took for mirth subsiding into rest. So, it was Lyda — she of all the train Of forest- thridding nymphs, — ^^'twas only she Turned from thy rustic homage in disdain, Saw but that poor uncouth outside of thee, And, from her circling sisters, mocked a pain Echo had pitied — whom Pan loved in vain — For she was wishful to partake thy glee, Mimic thy mirth — who loved her not again, Savage for Lyda's sake. She crouches there — Thy cruel beauty, slumberously laid Supine on heaped-up beast-skins, unaware Thy steps have traced her to the briery glade. Thy greedy hands disclose the cradling lair. Thy hot eyes reach and revel on the maid ! i82 PARLEYINGS WITH XI. Now, what should this be for ? The sun's decline Seems as he lingered lest he lose some act Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact Like thunder from the safe sky's sapphirine About to alter earth's conditions, packed With fate for nature's self that waits, aware What mischief unsuspected in the air Menaces momently a cataract. Therefore it is that yonder space extends Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree. Shrub, weed well nigh ; they keep their bounds, leave free The platform for what actors ? Foes or friends, Here come they trooping silent : heaven suspends Purpose the while they range themselves. I see ! Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree GERARD DE LAIRESSE, 183 This present and no after-contest ends One or the other's grasp at rule in reach Over the race of man — host fronting host, As statue statue fronts — wrath-molten each, Solidified by hate, — earth halved almost. To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes Show prominent, each from the universe Of minions round about him, that disperse Like cloud-obstruction when a bolt escapes. Who flames first ? Macedonian is it thou ? Ay, and who fronts thee. King Darius, drapes His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow. XII. What, then the long day dies at last ? Abrupt The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt Our mountain-ridge, is mastered : black the belt Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt, i84 PARLEYINGS WITH Barriers again the valley, lets the flow Of lavish glory waste itself away — Whither ? For new climes, fresh eyes breaks the day ! Night was not to be baffled. If the glow Were all that's gone from us ! Did clouds, afloat So filmily but now, discard no rose, Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows A sullen uniformity. I note Rather displeasure, — in the overspread Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead Oppressive to malevolence, — than late Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate Its passion and partake in relics red Of day's bequeathment : now, a frown instead Estranges, and affrights who needs must fare On and on till his journey ends : but where? Caucasus ? Lost now in the night. Away GERARD DE LAIRESSE. 185 And far enough lies that Arcadia. The human heroes tread the world's dark way No longer. Yet I dimly see almost — Yes, for my last adventure ! 'Tis a ghost. So drops away the beauty ! There he stands Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands. . XIII. Enough ! Stop further fooling, De Lairesse ! My fault, not yours ! Some fitter way express Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, The all-including Future ! What were life Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife Through the ambiguous Present to the goal Of some all-reconciling Future ? Soul, Nothing has been which shall not bettered be Hereafter, — leave the root, by law's decree l86 PARLEYINGS WITH % 1 Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree ! I % Busy thee with unearthing root ? Nay, chmb — \ Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower — reach, rest sublime I Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day ! 1 O'erlook, despise, forget, throw flower away, \ Intent on progress ? No whit more than stop \ I Ascent therewith to dally, screen the top \ Sufficiency of yield by interposed \ Twistwork bold foot gets free from. AVherefore glozed ] The poets — " Dream afresh old godlike shapes, \ Recapture ancient fable that escapes, 3 Push back reality, repeople earth ; With vanished falseness, recomize no worth I I In fact new-born unless 'tis rendered back \ Pallid by fancy, as the western rack ^ Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam \ Of its gone glory ! " 1 GERARD DE LAIRESSE. . 187 XIV. Let things be — not seem, I counsel rather, — do, and nowise dream 1 Earth's young significance is all to learn : The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth 1 What was the best Greece babbled of as truth ? " A shade, a wretched nothing, — sad, thin, drear, Cold, dark, it holds on to the lost loves here. If hand have haply sprinkled o'er the dead Three charitable dust-heaps, made mouth red One moment by the sip of sacrifice : Just so much comfort thaws the stubborn ice Slow-thickening upward till it choke at length The last faint flutter craving — not for strength. Not beauty, not the riches and the rule O'er men that made hfe life indeed." Sad school iSS PARLEYINGS WITH Was Hades ! Gladly,— might the dead but slink To life back, — to the dregs once more would drink Each interloper, drain the humblest cup Fate mixes for humanity. Cheer up, — Be death with me, as with Achilles erst, Of Man's calamities the last and worst : Take it so ! By proved potency that still Makes perfect, be assured, come what come will, What once lives never dies — what here attains To a beginning, has no end, still gains And never loses aught : when, where, and how — Lies in Law's lap. What's death then ? Even now With so much knowledge is it hard to bear Brief interposing ignorance ? Is care For a creation found at fault just there — GERARD DE LAIRESSE. 189 There where the heart breaks bond and outruns time, To reach not follow what shall be ? XVI. Here's rhyme Such as one makes now, — say, when Spring repeats That miracle the Greek Bard sadly greets : " Spring for the tree and herb — no Spring for us 1 " Let Spring come : why, a man salutes her thus : Dance, yellows and whites and reds,- — Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads Astir with the wind in the tuhp-beds ! There's sunshine ; scarcely a wind at all Disturbs starved grass and daisies small On a certain mound by a churchyard wall. Daisies and grass -be my heart's bedfellows On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows : Dance you, reds and whites and yellows ! VII WITH CHARLES AVISON WITH CHARLES AVISON. How strange ! — but, first of all, the little fact Which led my fancy forth. This bitter morn Showed me no object in the stretch forlorn Of garden-ground beneath my window, backed By yon worn wall wherefrom the creeper, tacked To clothe its brickwork, hangs now, rent and racked By five months' cruel winter, — showed no torn And tattered ravage worse for eyes to see Than just one ugly- space of clearance, left Bare even of the bones which used to be Warm wrappage, safe embracement : this one cleft — o 194 PARLEYINGS WITH — O what a life and beauty filled it up '\ Startlingly, when methought the rude clay cup Ran over with poured bright wine ! 'Twas a bird Breast-deep there, tugging at his pri^e, deterred No whit by the fast-falling snow-flake : gain Such prize my blackcap must by might and main — The cloth-shred, still a-flutter from its nail That fixed a spray once. Now, what told the tale To thee, — no townsman but born orchard-thief, — That here — surpassing moss-tuft, beard from sheaf Of sun-scorched barley, horsehairs long and stout. All proper country-pillage — here, no doubt, Was just the scrap to steal should line thy nest Superbly ? Off he flew, his bill possessed The booty sure to set his wife's each wing Greenly a- quiver. How they climb and cling, Hang parrot-wise to bough, these blackcaps ! Strange Seemed to a city-dweller that the finch CHARLES A VIS ON. 195 Should stray so far to forage : at a pinch, Was not the fine wool's self within his range — Filchings on every fence ? But no : the need Was of this rag of manufacture, spoiled By art, and yet by nature near unsoiled, New-suited to what scheming finch would breed Tn comfort, this uncomfortable March. II. Yet — by the first pink blossom on the larch ! — This was scarce stranger than that memory, — In want of what should cheer the stay-at-home, My soul, — must straight clap pinion, well nigh roam A century back, nor once close plume, descry The appropriate rag to plunder, till she pounced — Pray, on what relic -of a brain long still? What old-world work proved forage for the bill Of memory the far-flyer ? " ^March " announced. 196 PARLE VINGS WITH I verily believe, the dead and gone Name of a music-maker : one of such In England as did little or did much, But, doing, had their day once. Avison ! Singly and solely for an air of thine. Bold-stepping " March," foot stept to ere my hand Could stretch an octave, I o'erlooked the band Of majesties familiar, to decline On thee — not too conspicuous on the list Of worthies who by help of pipe or wire Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire — Thou, whileom of Newcastle organist ! A So much could one — well, thinnish air effect ! Am I ungrateful? for, your March, styled " Grand," 1 Did veritably seem to grow, expand, j And greaten up to title as, unchecked, j CHARLES AViSON. 197 j \ Dream -marchers marched, kept marching, slow and sure, \ In time, to tune, unchangeably the same, \ From nowhere into nowhere, — out they came, | Onward they passed, and in they went. No lure \ ,3 Of novel modulation pricked the flat | Forthright persisting melody, — no hint I That discord, sound asleep beneath the flint, j — Struck — might spring spark-like, claim due tit- for- tat, 1 Quenched in a concord. No ! Yet. such the might \ Of quietude's immutability, \ That somehow coldness gathered warmth, well nigh I Quickened — which could not be ! — grew burning -bright \ With fife-shriek, cymbal-clash and trumpet-blare, | j To drum-accentuation : pacing turned \ Striding, and striding grew gigantic, spurned \ i At last the narrow space 'twixt earth and air, \ So shook me back into my sober sel£ * \ 198 PARLEYINGS WITH IV. And where woke I ? The March had set me down There whence I plucked the measure, as his brown Frayed flannel-bit my blackcap. Great John Relfe, Master of mine, learned, redoubtable, It little needed thy consummate skill To fitly figure such a bass ! The key Was — should not memory play me false — well, C. Ay, with the Greater Third, in Triple Time, Three crotchets to a bar : no change, I grant. Except from Tonic down to Dominant. And yet — and yet — if I could put in rhyme The manner of that marching ! — which had stopped — I wonder, where ? — but that my weak self dropped From out the ranks, to rub eyes disentranced And feel that, after all the way advanced, Back must I foot it, I and my compeers. CHARLES AVI SON, I99 Only to reach, across a hundred years, The band'sman Avison whose httle book And large tune thus had led me the long way (As late a rag my blackcap) from to-day And to-day's music-manufacture, — Brahms, Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,— to where— trumpets, shawms, Show yourselves joyful ! — Handel reigns— supreme ? By no means ! Buononcini's work is theme For fit laudation of the impartial few : (We stand in England, mind you !) Fashion too Favours Geminiani — of those choice Concertos : nor there wants a certain voice Raised in thy favour likewise, famed Pepusch Dear to our great-grandfathers 1 In a bush Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats While Greenway trilled " Alexis." Such were feats. Of music in thy day — dispute who list — Avison, of Newcastle organist 1 PARLEYINGS WITH V. And here's your music all alive once more — As once it was alive, at least : just so The figured worthies of a waxwork-show Attest — such people, years and years ago, Looked thus when outside death had life below, — Could say "We are now" not "We were of yore," — " Feel how our pulses leap ! " and not " Explore — Explain why quietude has settled o'er Surface once all-awork ! " Ay, such a " Suite" Roused heart to rapture, such a " Fugue " would catch Soul heavenwards up, when time was : why attach Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match For fresh achievement ? Feat once — ever feat ! How can completion grow still more complete ? Hear Avison ! He tenders evidence That music in his day as much absorbed CHARLES AVISOJSf. Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now. Perfect from centre to circumference — Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed : And yet — and yet — whence comes it that " O Thou "- Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus — Will not again take wing and fly away (Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us) In some unmodulated minor ? Nay, Even by Handel's help ! VI. I state it thus .: There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music. " Soul '^ — (accept A word which vaguely names what no adept In word-use fits and fixes so that still Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain Innominate as first, yet, free again. 202 PARLEYINGS WITH ^] Is no less recognised the absolute i I Fact underlying that same other fact I Concerning which no cavil can dispute | Our nomenclature when we call it " Mind " — I Something not Matter)—" Soul," who seeks shall find \ Distinct beneath that something. You exact ! An illustrative image ? This may suit. ^ I I VII. i i We see a work : the worker works behind, | I Invisible himselfl Suppose his act | Be to o'erarch a gulf : he digs, transports, ' Shapes and, through enginery — all sizes, sorts, | Lays stone by stone until a floor compact i Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind — by stress ; Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less, j i Builds up our solid knowledge : all the same, 1 i Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame, -l CHARLES AVISON. An element which works beyond our guess, Soul, the unsounded sea — whose lift of surge, Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge, In flower and foam, Feehng from out the deeps Mind arrogates no mastery upon — Distinct indisputably. Has there gone To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough Mind's flooring, — operosity enough ? Still the successive labour of each inch, Who lists may learn : from the last turn of winch That let the polished slab-stone find its place, To the first prod of pick-axe at the base Of the unquarried mountain, — what was all Mind's varied process except natural. Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe. After our fashion ? " So worked Mind : its tribe Of senses ministrant above, below, Far, near, or now or haply long ago 204 PARLE YINGS WITH | •i Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea, — drawn \ I whence, \ Fed how, forced whither, — by what evidence I Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread, ] Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work overhead, — j Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul ? j Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll ; This side and that, except to emulate | Stability above ? To match and mate j Feehng with knowledge, — make as manifest I Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest, \ 1 Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink 'i I Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink, \ h \ A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread t Whitening the wave, — to strike all this life dead, \ Run mercury into a mould like lead, { j And hencefDrth have the plain result to show — \ How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know — | CHARLES A VIS ON. 205 This were the prize and is the puzzle ! — which Music essays to solve : and here's the hitch That baulks her of full triumph else to boast. VITI. All Arts endeavour this, and she the most Attains thereto, yet fails of touching : why ? Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry ? What's known once is known ever : Arts arrange,. Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep Construct their bravest, — still such pains produce Change, not creation : simply what lay loose At first lies firmly after, what design Was faintly traced in hesitating line Once on a time, grows firmly resolute Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot Liquidity into a mould, — some way 2o6 PARLEYINGS WITH Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep Unalterably still the forms that leap To life for once by help of Art ! — which yearns To save its capture : Poetry discerns, Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall. Bursting, subsidence, intermixture — all A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain Would stay the apparition, — nor in vain : The Poet's word- mesh. Painter's sure and swift Colour-and-line-throw — proud the prize they lift ! Thus felt Man and thus looked Man, — passions caught I' the midway swim of sea, — not much, if aught, Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears, Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years. And still the Poet's page holds Helena At gaze from topmost Troy — " But where are they, My brothers, in the armament I name Hero by hero ? Can it be that shame CHARLES AVISON, 207 For their lost sister holds them from the war ? " — Knowing not they already slept afar Each of them in his own dear native land. Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo Eoth of them, Music ! Dredging deeper yet, Drag into day, — by sound, thy master-net, — The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing Unbroken of a branch, palpitating With limbs' play and life's semblance ! There it lies, Marvel and mystery, of mysteries And marvels, most to love and laud thee for I ■Save it from chance and change we most abhor ! Give momentary feeling permanence, So that thy capture hold, a century hence. Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day. The Painter's Eve the Poet's Helena 2o8 PARLEYINGS WITH Still rapturously bend, afar still throw The wistful gaze ! Thanks, Homer, Angelo ! Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound, Give feeling immortality by sound. Then, were she queenliest of Arts ! Alas — As well expect the rainbow not to pass ! " Praise ^ Radaminta ' — love attains therein To perfect utterance ! Pity — what shall win Thy secret like * Rinaldo ' ? " — so men said : Once all was perfume — now, the flower is dead — They spied tints, sparks have left the spar ! Love, hate^ Joy, fear, survive,— alike importunate As ever to go walk the world again, Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain Till Music loose them, fit each filmily With form enough to know and name it by For any recognizer sure of ken And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen CHARLES AVISO N. 209 Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal Is Music long obdurate : off they steal — How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms ! back come they Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day — Passion made palpable once more. Ye look Your last on Handel ? Gaze your first on Gluck ! Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart Occupies heaven ? These also, fanned to fire, Flamboyant wholly, — so perfections tire, — Whiten to wanness, till . . . let others note The ever-new invasion ! IX. I devote Rather my modicum of parts to use What power may yet avail to re-infuse (In fancy, please you !) sleep that looks like death p [O PARLEYINGS WITH With momentary liveliness, lend breath To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe, An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf Of thy laboratory, dares unstop Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine Each in its right receptacle, assign To each its proper office, letter large Label and label, then with solemn charge, Reviewing learnedly the list complete Of chemical reactives, from thy feet Push down the same to me, attent below, Powxr in abundance : armed wherewith I go To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff ! Was it alight once ? Still lives spark enough For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash Red right-through. What, " stone-dead " were fools so rash CHARLES AVIS ON, 211 \ • As style my Avison, because he lacked Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked By modulations fit to make each hair Stiffen upon his wig ? See there — and there ! I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast Discords and resolutions, turn aghast Melody's easy-going, jostle law With licence, modulate (no Bach in awe) Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank) And lo, upstart the flamelets, — what was blank Turns scarlet, purple, crimson ! Straightway scanned By eyes that like new lustre — Love once more Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before Rages in the Rubato : e'en thy March My Avison, which, sooth to say — (ne'er arch Eyebrows in anger- !) — timed, in Georgian years The step precise of British Grenadiers To such a nicety, — if score I crowd. 2 PARLEYINGS WITH If rhythm I break, if beats I vary, — tap At bar's off- starting turns true thunder-clap. Ever the pace augmented till — what's here ? Titanic striding toward Olympus ! X. Fear No such irreverent innovation ! Still Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will — Nay, were thy melody in monotone. The due three-parts dispensed with 1 XL This alone Comes of my tiresome talking : Music's throne Seats somebody whom somebody unseats. And whom in turn — by who knows what new feats Of strength, — shall somebody as sure push down. Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown. CHARLES AVISON, 213 And orb imperial — whereto ? Never dream That what once hved shall ever die ! They seem Dead — do they ? lapsed things lost in Umbo ? Bring Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot No inch that is not Purcell ! Wherefore ? (Suit Measure to subject, first — no marching on Yet in thy bold C major, Avison, As suited step a minute since : no : wait — Into the minor key first modulate — Gently with A, now — in the Lesser Third !) Of all the lamentable debts incurred By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst : That he should find his last gain prove his first Was futile — merely nescience absolute. Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit 214 PARLEYINGS WITH Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide, Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide, And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe, — Not this, — but ignorance, a blur to wipe From human records, late it graced so much. " Truth — this attainment ? Ah, but such and such Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable When we attained them ! E'en as they, so will This their successor have the due morn, noon. Evening and night — ^just as an old-world tune Wears out and drops away, until who hears Smilingly questions—' This it was brought tears Once to all eyes, —this roused heart's rapture once ?' So will it be with truth that, for the nonce. Styles itself truth perennial : 'ware its wile ! Knowledge turns nescience, — foremost on the file, Simply proves first of our delusions." CHARLES A VI SON. 215 XIII. Now — Blare it forth, bold C Major ! Lift thy brow, Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed — Man knowing — he who nothing knew ! As Hope, Fear, Joy, and Grief, — though ampler stretch and scope They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase, — Were equally existent in far days Of Music's dim beginning— even so. Truth was at full within thee long ago, Alive as now it takes what latest shape May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape Time's insufficient garniture : they fade. They fall — those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine And free through March frost : May dews crystalline 2i6 PARLEYINGS WITH Nourish truth merely, — does June boast the fruit As — not new vesture merely but, to boot, Novel creation ? Soon shall fade and fall Myth after myth — the husk-like lies I call New truth's corolla-safeguard : Autumn comes, So much the better ! XIV. Therefore — bang the drums, Blow the trumps, Avison ! March-motive ? that's Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats, Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar Mate the approaching trample, even now Big in the distance — or my ears deceive — Of federated England, fitly weave March-music for the Future ! CHARLES AVIS ON, 217 XV. Or suppose Back, and not forward, transformation goes ? Once more some sable-stoled procession — say, From Little-ease to Tyburn wends its way. Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be Of half-a-dozen recusants — this day Three hundred years ago ! How duly drones EHzabethan plain-song — dim antique Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak A classic vengeance on thy March ! It moans— Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite Crotchet-and-quaver pertness — brushing bars Aside and filling vacant sky with stars Hidden till now that day returns to night. 2i8 PARLEYINGS WITH XVI. Nor night nor day : one purpose move us both, Be thy mood mine ! As thou wast minded, Man's The cause our music champions : I were loth To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans Ignobly : back to times of England's best ! Parliament stands for privilege — life and limb Guards Mollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym, The famous Five. There's rumour of arrest. Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark ! They protest Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn, — Rough, rude, robustious — homely heart a throb, Harsh voice a-hallo, as beseems the mob ! How good is noise ! what's silence but despair Of making sound match gladness never there ? Give me some great glad " subject," glorious Bach, Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack ! CHARLES AVISO N. 219 Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough, — Avison helps — so heart lend noise enough ! Fife, trump, drum, sound ! and singers then \ Marching say " Pym, the man of men ! " | Up, heads, your proudest — out, throats, your loudest — I * Somerset's Pym ! " \ Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den, \ Foes, friends, shout " Pym, our citizen ! " Wail, the foes he quelled, — hail, the friends he held, { " Tavistock's Pym ! " ^ \ Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen \ 1 Teach babes unborn the where and when \ — Tyrants, he braved them, — patriots, he saved them — \ " Westminster's Pym ! " \ 220 PARLE YINGS WITH CHARLES AVISO N, Lustily. i^^^i :az«ipSp=?£^PiP:l:P:p.-:p:fe aL^faar^ h^-- h- tz:b' --Pipi. l^i III •Tt--, ^g^^E^^ ^te E =tr| tzF±-Si: 1^9^ -^: m f^-, :tzt= =t=:: ^^?!^3E i ^^J^feS^^g^^i i IS3=H FUST AND HIS FRIENDS AN EPILOGUE FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. (Inside the House of Fust, Mayence, 1457.) FIRST FRIEND. Up, up, up — next step of the staircase Lands us, lo, at the chamber of dread ! SECOND FRIEND. Locked and barred ? THIRD FRIEND. Door open — the rare case ! FOURTH FRIEND. Ay, there he leans — lost wretch ! 224 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, | I FIFTH FRIEND. I I His head | Sunk on his desk 'twixt his arms outspread ! ^ i i SIXTH FRIEND. : Hallo, — wake, man, ere God thunderstrike Mayence ; — Mulct for thy sake who art Satan's, John Fust ! j j Satan installed here, God's rule in abeyance, J Mayence some morning may crumble to dust. \ Answer our questions thou shalt and thou must ! i \ SEVENTH FRIEND. j Softly and fairly ! Wherefore a-gloom ? | Greet us, thy gossipry, cousin and sib 1 \ Raise the forlorn brow. Fust ! Make room — \ Let daylight through arms which, enfolding thee, crib \ From those clenched lids the comfort of sunshine ! j AN EPILOGUE, 225 FIRST FRIEND. So glib Thy tongue slides to "comfort " already ? Not mine ! Behoves us deal roundly : the wretch is distraught — Too well I guess wherefore ! Behoves a Divine — Such as I, by grace, boast me — to threaten one caught In the enemy's toils, — setting "comfort" at nought. SECOND FRIEND. Nay, Brother, so hasty ? I heard — nor long since — ■ Of a certain Black Art'sman who, — helplessly bound By rash pact with Satan, — through paying — why mince The matter? — fit price to the Church, — safe and sound Full a year after death in his grave-clothes was found. Whereas 'tis notorious the Fiend claims his due During life-time, — comes clawing, with talons a-flame, Q 226 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. | I The soul from the flesh-rags left smoking and blue : j So it happed with John Faust; lest John Fust fare the! same, — i Look up, I adjure thee by God's holy name ! J \ For neighbours and friends — no foul hell-brood flock we ! i Saith Solomon " Words of the wise are as goads : " \ Ours prick but to startle from torpor, set free \ Soul and sense from death's drowse ! 1 1 i 1 FIRST FRIEND. \ And soul, wakened, unloads ; Much sin by confession : no mere palinodes ! j — " I was youthful and wanton, am old yet no sage : When angry I cursed, struck and slew : did I want ? ] Right and left did I rob : though no war I dared wage | AN EPILOGUE, 227 \ 1 \ With the Church (God forbid !)— harm her least minis- \ trant — \ Still I outraged all else. Now that strength is grown scant, ! I am probity's self " — no such bleatings as these ! But avowal of guilt so enormous, it baulks Tongue's telling. Yet penitence prompt may appease God's wrath at thy bond with the Devil who stalks — Strides hither to strangle thee ! FUST. Childhood so talks. Not rare wit nor ripe age — ye boast them, my neighbours ! — Should lay such a charge on your townsman, this Fust Who, known for a Hfe spent in pleasures and labours If freakish yet venial, could scarce be induced To traffic with fiends. Q2 3 228 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, FIRST FRIEND. So, my words have unloosed A plie from those pale lips corrugate but now ? FUST. Lost count me, yet not as ye lean to surmise. FIRST FRIEND. To surmise ? to establish ! Unbury that brow ! Look up, that thy judge may read clear in thine eyes \ SECOND FRIEND. By your leave. Brother Barnabite 1 Mine to advise ! -Who arraign thee, John Fust ! What was bruited ere- 1 1 while I AN EPILOGUE, 229 Now bellows through Mayence. All cry — thou hast trucked Salvation away for lust's solace ! Thy smile Takes its hue from hell's smoulder ! FUST. Too certain ! I sucked — Got drunk at the nipple of sense. SECOND FRIEND. Thou hast ducked — Art drowned there, say rather ! Faugh — fleshly disport 1 How else but by help of Sir Belial didst win That Venus-like lady, no drudge of thy sort Could lure to become his accomplice in sin ? Folks nicknamed her Helen of Troy ! 230 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. FIRST FRIEND. Best begin At the very beginning. Thy father, — all knew, A mere goldsmith . . FUST. Who knew him, perchance may know this — He dying left much gold and jewels no few : Whom these help to court with, but seldom shall miss The love of a leman : true witchcraft, I wis ! FIRST FRIEND. Dost flout me ? 'Tis said, in debauchery's guild Admitted prime guttler and guzzler — O swine 1 — To honor thy headship, those tosspots so swilled That out of their table there sprouted a vine Whence each claimed a cluster, awaiting thy sign AN EPILOGUE, 231 To out knife, off mouthful : when — who could suppose Such malice in magic ? — each sot woke and found Cold steel but an inch from the neighbour's red nose He took for a grape-ounch ! FUST. Does that so astound Sagacity such as ye boast, — who surround Your mate with eyes staring, hairs standing erect At his magical feats ? Are good burghers unversed In the humours of toping ? Full oft, I suspect, Ye, counting your fingers, call thumbkin their first. And reckon a groat every guilder disbursed. What marvel if wags, while the skinker fast brimmed Their glass with rare tipple's enticement, should gloat 232 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. —Befooled and beflustered— through optics drink- dimmed — On this draught and that, till each found in his throat Our Rhenish smack rightly as Raphal ? For, note — They fancied— their fuddling deceived them so grossly — That liquor sprang out of the table itself Through gimlet-holes drilled there, — nor noticed how closely The skinker kept plying my guests, from the shelf O'er their heads, with the potable madness. No elf Had need to persuade them a vine rose umbrageous, Fruit-bearing, thirst-quenching ! Enough ! I confess To many such fool-pranks, but none so outrageous That Satan was called in to help me : excess I own to, I grieve at — no more and no less AJV EPILOGUE, 233 SECOND FRIEND. Strange honors were heaped on thee — medal for breast, Chain for neck, sword for thigh : not a lord of the land But acknowledged thee peer ! What ambition possessed A goldsmith by trade, with craft's grime on his hand, To seek such associates ? FUST. Spare taunts ! Understand — I submit me ! Of vanities under the sun, Pride seized me at last as concupiscence first, Crapulosity ever : true Fiends, everyone. Haled this way and that my poor soul : thus amerced — Forgive and forget me ! \ 234 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, FIRST FRIEND. Had flesh sinned the worst,, Yet help were in counsel : the Church could absolve t But say not men truly thou barredst escape By signing and sealing . . SECOND FRIEND. On me must devolve The task of extracting . . FIRST FRIEND. Shall Barnabites ape Us Dominican experts ? SEVENTH FRIEND. Nay, Masters, ^agape \ AN EPILOGUE, 235 When Hell yawns for a soul, 'tis myself claim the task Of extracting, by just one plain question, God's truth t Where's Peter Genesheim thy partner ? I ask Why, cloistered up still in thy room, the pale youth Slaves tongue-tied — thy trade brooks no tattling forsooth ?. No less he, thy famulus^ suffers entrapping. Succumbs to good fellowship : barrel a-broach Runs freely nor needs any subsequent tapping : Quoth Peter " That room, none but I dare approach. Holds secrets will help me to ride in my coach." He prattles, we profit : in brief, he assures Thou hast taught him to speak so that all men ma^ hear — Each alike, wide world over, Jews, Pagans, Turks, Moors, The same as we Christians — speech heard far and near At one and the same magic moment ! 236 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, FUST. \ That's clear ! i I Said he — how ? ] \ SEVENTH FRIEND. \ Is it hke he was Hcenced to learn ? \ Who doubts but thou dost this by aid of the Fiend ? ; Is it so ? So it is, for thou smilest ! Go, burn ] To ashes, since such proves thy portion, unscreened 'j By bell, book and candle ! Yet lately I weened \ Ealm yet was in Gilead, — some healing in store \ For the friend of my bosom. Men said thou wast | sunk \ i In a sudden despondency : not, as before, \ Fust gallant and gay with his pottle and punk, \ Eut sober, sad, sick as one yesterday drunk ! j AN EPILOGUE. 237 FUST. Spare Fust, then, thus contrite ! — who, youthful and healthy, Equipped for life's struggle with culture of mind, Sound flesh and sane soul in coherence, born wealthy^. Nay, wise — how he wasted endowment designed For the glory of God and the good of mankind ! That much were misused such occasions of grace Ye well may upbraid him, who bows to the rod. But this should bid anger to pity give place — He has turned from the wrong, in the right path to plod, Makes amends to mankind and craves pardon of God. Yea, friends, even now from my lips the ^' Heureka — Soul saved ! " was nigh bursting — unduly elate ! 238 FUSr AND HIS FRIENDS. Have I brought Man advantage, or hatched — so to speak — a Strange serpent, no cygnet ? 'Tis this I debate Within me. Forbear, and leave Fust to his fate ! FIRST FRIEND. So abject, late lofty ? Methinks I spy respite. Make clean breast, discover what mysteries hide In thy room there ! SECOND FRIEND. Ay, out with them ! Do Satan despite ! Remember what caused his undoing was pride ! FIRST FRIEND. Dumb devil 1 Remains one resource to be tried ! SECOND FRIEND. Exorcize ! AN EPILOGUE. 239 SEVENTH FRIEND. Nay, first — is there any remembers In substance that potent " Nepulvis " — a psahn Whereof some live spark haply lurks mid the embers Which choke in my brain. Talk of " Gilead and balm"? I mind me, sung half through, this gave such a qualm To Asmodeus inside of a Hussite, that, queasy, He broke forth in brimstone with curses. I'm strong In — at least the commencement : the rest should go easy. Friends helping. ^^ Ne pulvis et ignis '^ . . SIXTH FRIEND. FIFTH FRIEND. I've conned till I captured the whole. All wrong 1 240 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, SEVENTH FRIEND. Get along \ | ''^ Ne piilvis et cinis sit per he te ge?'as, i Nam fiilmina " . . \ SIXTH FRIEND. 1 \ \ Fiddlestick ! Peace, dolts and dorrs I ■ i Thus runs it " Ne Numinis fulmina feras " — \ \ Then " Hoininis perfidi justa su7tt sors \ Fulmen et grando et horrida vwrs^ \ \ SEVENTH FRIEND. 1 \ You blunder. " Irati neT , , . \ \ \ SIXTH FRIEND. \ Mind your own business \ \ AN EPILOGUE. 241 FIFTH FRIEND. I do not SO badly, who gained the monk's leave To study an hour his choice parchment. A dizziness May well have surprised me. No Christian dares thieve, Or I scarce had returned him his treasure. These cleave : *' N'os pulvis et cinis, tre?nentes, genientes^ Veninms " — some such word — " ad te^ Domine ! Da licvien^ juvamen^ lit sa?icta sequentes Cor . . coi'da . ." Plague take it ! \ ■ SEVENTH FRIEND. I — " e^'eda sint spe : " Right text, ringing rhyme, and ripe Latin for me ! . SIXTH FRIEND. A Canon's self wrote it me fair : I was tempted To part with the sheepskin. R \ 242 FUST AND HIS FB TENDS SEVENTH FRIEND. Didst grasp and let go \ Such a godsend, thou Judas ? My purse had been j emptied j Ere part with the prize ! I \ FUST. 1 Do I dream ? Say ye so ? \ \ Clouds break, then ! Move, world ! I have gained my \ ''Pousto'\f \ I am saved : Archimedes, salute me ! '\ OMNES. • : Assistance ! | 1 Help, Angels ! He summons . . Aroint thee ! — \ by name, i. His familiar ! I AN EPILOGUE. 243 FUST. Approach ! OMNES. Devil, keep thy due distance ! FUST. Be tranquillized, townsmen ! The knowledge ye claim i'ehold, I prepare to impart. Praise or blame, — Your blessing or banning, whatever betide me. At last I accept. The slow travail of years. The long -teeming brain's birth — applaud me, deride me, — At last claims revealment. Wait ! SEVENTH FRIEND. Wait till appears Uncaged Archimedes cooped-up there ? i 244 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. \ SECOND FRIEND. AVho fears ? Here's have at thee 1 SEVENTH FRIEND. Correctly now ! ^' Piilvis et dnis " . , FUST. The verse ye so value, it happens I hold In my memory safe from inithwi \o finis. Word for word, I produce you the whole, plain en- rolled, Black letters, white paper — no scribe's red and gold ! OMNES. Aroint thee I FUST. I go and return. i^He enters the hiner room.) \ AN EPILOGUE, 245 FIRST FRIEND. Ay, 'tis "-ibis'' No doubt : but as boldly " redibis " — who'll say ? I rather conjecture " in Oreo peribis I " SEVENTH FRIEND. Come, neighbours ! SIXTH FRIEND. I'm with you ! Show courage and stay Hell's outbreak ? Sirs, cowardice here wins the day ! FIFTH FRIEND. What luck had that student of Bamberg who ventured To peep in the cell where a wizard of note Was busy in getting some black deed debentured 246 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS By Satan ? In dog's guise there sprang at his throat A flame- breathing fury. Fust favours, I note, An ugly huge lurcher 1 SEVENTH FRIEND. If I placed reliance As thou, on the beads thou art telling so fasty I'd risk just a peep through the keyhole. SIXTH FRIEND. Appliance Of ear might be safer. Five minutes are past. OMNES. Saints, save us 1 The door is thrown open at last !. FUST {re-enters^ the door dosmg behind hi??i} AN EPILOGUE, 247 \ '\ As I promised, behold I perform ! Apprehend you \ \ The object I oiler is poison or pest? \ Receive without harm from the hand I extend you | A gift that shall set every scruple at rest ! \ Shrink back from mere paper-strips ? Try them and 1 test ! \ \ Still hesitate ? Myk, was it thou w^ho lamentedst | Thy five wits clean failed thee to render aright I 1 A poem read once and no more ? — who repentedst i Vile pelf had induced thee to banish from sight j 3 The characters none but our clerics indite? \ Take and keep ! i \ - FIRST FRIEND. | j Blessed Mary and all Saints about her ! 1 248 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS, SECOND FRIEND. What imps deal so deftly, — five minutes suffice \ k To play thus the penman ? j THIRD FRIEND. J By Thomas the Doubter, I Five minutes, no more ! ^ .1 \ FOURTH FRIEND. \ Out on arts that entice \ \ Such scribes to do homage ! \ \ FIFTH FRIEND. \ Stay ! Once — and now twice — \ \ Yea, a third time, my sharp eye completes the inspection \ Of line after line, the whole series, and finds i Each letter join each — not a fault for detection ! AN EPILOGUE. 249 Such upstrokes, such downstrokes, such strokes of all kinds In the criss-cross, all perfect ! SIXTH FRIEND. There's nobody minds His quill-craft with more of a conscience, o'erscratches A sheepskin more nimbly and surely with ink, Than Paul the Sub- Prior : here's paper that matches His parchment with letter on letter, no link Overleapt — underlost ! SEVENTH FRIEND. No erasure, I think — No blot, I am certain ! FUST. Accept the new treasure ! 250 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. SIXTH FRIEND. I remembered full half ! SEVENTH FRIEND. But who other than I (Bear witness, bystanders !) when he broke the measure Repaired fault with ''^fulinen " ? FUST. Put bickerings by ! | \ Here's for thee — thee — and thee, too : at need a supply > 1 idistrilmting Proofs) \ For Mayence, though seventy times seven should muster I \ How now ? All so feeble of faith that no face \ Which fronts me but whitens — or yellows, were juster ? ] j Speak out lest I summon my Spirits ! \ \ AN EPILOGUE. OMNES. { i i Grace — grace I Call none of thy — helpmates ! We'll answer apace ! My paper — and mine — and mine also — they vary In nowise — agree in each tittle and jot ! Fust, how — why was this ? FUST. Shall such " Ctir " miss a " cjuai-e " ? Within, there ! Throw doors wide ! Behold who complot To abolish the scribe's work — blur, blunder and blot ! {The doors open^ and the Press is discovered in operatioji.y Brave full-bodied birth of this brain that conceived thee ' In splendour and music, — sustained the slow drag \ 252 FUSr AND HIS FRIENDS, Of the days stretched to years dim with doubt, — yet believed thee, Had faith in thy first leap of life ! Pulse might flag — \ — Mine fluttered how faintly ! — Arch-moment might lag \ Its longest — I bided, made light of endurance, j Held hard by the hope of an advent which — dreamed, Is done now : night yields to the dawn's reassurance : I have thee — I hold thee — my fancy that seemed, \ My fact that proves palpable ! Ay, Sirs, I schemed •Completion that's fact : see this Engine — be witness Yourselves of its working ! Nay, handle my Types ! Each block bears a Letter : in order and fitness I range them. Turn, Peter, the winch ! See, it gripes What's under ! Let loose — draw ! In regular stripes AN EPILOGUE. 253; IJes plain, at one pressure, your poem — touched, tinted,. Turned out to perfection ! The sheet, late a blank. Filled — ready for reading, — not written but Printed I Omniscient omnipotent God, Thee I thank, Thee ever, Thee only ! — Thy creature that shrank From no task Thou, Creator, imposedst ! Creation Revealed me no object, from insect to Man, But bore Thy hand's impress : earth glowed with salva- tion : '' Hast sinned ? Be thou saved. Fust ! Continue m}^ plan, Who spake and earth was : with my word things began. *' As sound so went forth, to the sight be extended A\'ord's mission henceforward ! The task I assign, Embrace — thy allegiance to evil is ended ! Have cheer, soul impregnate with purpose ! Combine Soul and body, give birth to my concept — called thine I I 254 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. "'^ Y2iX and wide, North and South, East and West, have | \ dominion I O'er thought, winged wonder, O Word ! Traverse world \ \ In sun-flash and sphere-song ! Each beat of thy pinion \ Bursts night, beckons day : once Truth's banner un- \ furled, = i Where's Falsehood ? Sun-smitten, to nothino^ness ^ \ hurled ! " | More humbly — so, friends, did my fault find redemption. ] I sinned, soul-entoiled by the tether of sense : \ ;My captor reigned master : I plead no exemption \ From Satan's award to his servant : defence • From the fiery and final assault would be — whence ? \ \ ;i>y making — as man might — to truth restitution ! \ Truth is God : trample lies and lies' father, God's foe I \ Fix fact fast : truths change by an hour's revolution : j AN EPILOGUE. 255 What deed's very doer, unaided, can show How 'twas done a year — month — week— day — minute ago? At best, he relates it — another reports it — ^ A third — nay, a thousandth records it : and still Narration, tradition, no step but distorts it. As down from truth's height it goes sHding until At the low level lie-mark it stops — whence no skill Of the scribe, intervening too tardily, rescues — Once fallen — lost fact from lie's fate there. What scribe — Eyes horny with poring, hands crippled with desk- use, Brains fretted by fancies — the volatile tribe That teaze weary watchers — can boast that no bribe Shuts eye and frees hand and remits brain from toiling ? Truth gained — can we stay, at whatever the stage, 256 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. Truth a-slide,— save her snow from its ultimate soihng In mire, — by some process, stamp promptly on page Fact spoiled by pen's plodding, make truth heritage Not merely of clerics but poured out, full measure, On clowns— every mortal endowed with a mind? Read, gentle and simple ! Let labour win leisure At last to bid truth do all duty assigned. Not pause at the noble but pass to the hind ! How bring to effect such swift sure simultaneous Unlimited multiplication ? How spread By an arm-sweep a hand-throw — no helping extraneous — Truth broadcast o'er Europe? "The goldsmith" I said "Graves limning on gold : why not letters on lead?" So, Tuscan artificer, grudge not thy pardon To me who played false, made a furtive descent. Found the sly secret work-shop, — thy genius kept guard on AN EPILOGUE. 257 Too slackly for once, — and surprised thee low-bent O'er thy labour — some chalice thy tool would indent With a certain free scroll-work framed round by a border Of foliage and fruitage : no scratching so fine, No shading so shy but, in ordered disorder. Each flourish came clear, — unbewildered by shine, On the gold, irretrievably right, lay each line. How judge if thy hand worked thy will? By reviewing, Revising again and again, piece by piece. Tool's performance, —this way, as I watched. Twas through glueing A paper-like film-stuff — thin, smooth, void of crease. On each cut of the graver : press hard ! at release, No mark on the plate but the paper showed double : His work might proceed : as he judged — space or speck Up he filled, forth he flung — was relieved thus from trouble s 258 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. | Lest wrong — once — were right never more : what could 1 check I % Advancement, completion ? Thus lay at my beck — j I I At my call — triumph likewise ! "For" cried I "what^ hinders J That graving turns Printing ? Stamp one word — not \ one \ But fifty such, phoenix-like, spring from death's cinders, — \ Since death is word's doom, clerics hide from the sun 1 As some churl closets up this rare chalice." Go, run ; Thy race now. Fust's child ! High, O Printing, and holy j Thy mission ! These types, see, I chop and I change \ Till the words, every letter, a pageful, not slowly \ Yet surely lies fixed : last of all, I arrange \ A paper beneath, stamp it, loosen it ! I AN EPILOGUE. 259 J FIRST FRIEND. Strange ! SECOND FRIEND. How simple exceedingly ! FUST. Bustle, my Schoefer ! Set type, — quick, Genesheim ! Turn screw now ! Just that ! THIRD FRIEND. FOURTH FRIEND. And no such vast miracle ! FUST. " Plough with my heifer, Ye find out my riddle," quoth Samson, and pat He speaks to the purpose. Grapes squeezed in the vat ? 26o FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. , \ \ Yield to sight and to taste what is simple — a liquid \ Mere urchins may sip : but give time, let ferment — \ You've wine, manhood's master ! Well, " rectius si quid \ I Novistis imperii fe ! " Wait the event, \ Then weigh the result ! But, whate'er Thy intent, i j O Thou, the one force in the whole variation \ Of visible nature, — at work — do I doubt ?— j From Thy first to our last, in perpetual creation — \ A film hides us from Thee — 'twixt inside and out, ^ A film, on this earth where Thou bringest about ; New marvels, new forms of the glorious, the gracious, \ We bow to, we bless for : no star bursts heaven's dome \ But Thy finger impels it, no weed peeps audacious \ Earth's clay-floor from out, but Thy finger makes room | For one world's- want the more in Thy Cosmos : presume \ AN EPILOGUE. 261 Shall Man, Microcosmos, to claim the conception Of grandeur, of beauty, in thought, word or deed ? I toiled, but Thy light on my dubiousest step shone : If I reach the glad goal, is it I who succeed Who stumbled at starting tripped up by a reed, Or Thou ? Knowledge only and absolute, glory As utter be Thine who concedest a spark Of Thy spheric perfection to earth's transitory Existences ! Nothing that lives, but Thy mark Gives law to — life's light : what is doomed to the dark ? Where's ignorance ? Answer, creation ! What height. What depth has escaped Thy commandment — to Know ? What birth in the ore-bed but answers aright Thy sting at its heart which impels — bids " E'en so, Not otherwise move or be motionless, — grow. 262 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. ^ i " Decline, disappear ! " Is the plant in default ; How to bud, when to branch forth ? The bird and the ; i beast '\ — Do they doubt if their safety be found in assault { \ Or escape ? Worm or fly, of what atoms the least \ \ But follow^s light's guidance, — will famish, not feast ? ' In such various degree, fly and worm, ore and plant, \ All know, none is ignorant : round each, a wall \ Encloses the portion, or ample or scant, < i Of Knowledge : beyond which one hair's breadth, for J all J I Lies blank — not so much as a blackness — a pall \ \ Some sense unimagined must penetrate : plain I Is only old licence to stand, walk or sit, ' Move so far and so wide in the narrow domain Allotted each nature for life's use : past it ; How immensity spreads does he guess ? Not a whit.. \ AN EPILOGUE. 263 Does he care ? Just as little. Without ? No, within Concerns him : he Knows. Man Ignores — thanks to Thee Who madest him know, but — in knowing — begin To know still new vastness of knowledge must be Outside him — to enter, to traverse, in fee Have and hold ! " Oh, Man's ignorance ! " hear the fool whine ! How were it, for better or worse, didst thou grunt Contented with sapience — the lot of the swine Who knows he was born for just truffles to hunt ? — Monks' Paradise — " Se7iiper sint res uti stint I " No, Man's the prerogative — knowledge once gained — To ignore, — find new knowledge to press for, to swerve In pursuit of, no, not for a moment : attained — Why, onward through ignorance ! Dare and deserve ! As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve. ■1 264 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. \ I So approximates Man — ^Thee, who, reachable not, l Hast formed him to yearningly follow Thy whole \ Sole and single omniscience ! | Such, friends, is my lot : ! I am back with the world : one more step to the goal j i Thanks for reaching I render — Fust's help to Man's soul \k Mere mechanical help ? So the hand gives a toss \ To the falcon, — aloft once, spread pinions and fly, \ Beat air far and wide, up and down and across ! ] My Press strains a-tremble : whose masterful eye \ Will be first, in new regions, new truth to descry ? \ \ "\ Give chase, soul ! Be sure each new capture consigned \ To my Types will go forth to the world, like God's \ bread \ — Miraculous food not for body but mind, i AN EPILOGUE. 265 1 Truth's manna ! How say you ? Put case that, m- | stead I Of old leasing and lies, we superiorly fed ] I These Heretics, Hussites . . I 1 FIRST FRIEND. I First answer my query ! \ If saved, art thou happy ? j 1 FUST. \ I I was and I am. \ \ FIRST FRIEND. | Thy visage confirms it : how comes, then, that — weary ] And woe-begone late — was it show, was it sham ? — \ We found thee sunk thiswise ? '■{ 266 PUS7' AND HIS FRIENDS. \ I SECOND FRIEND. | % — In need of the dram l From the flask which a provident neighbour might carry I | \ \ FUST. j Ahj friends, the fresh triumph soon flickers, fast fades I \ I hailed AVord's dispersion : could heartleaps but tarry ! ] Through me does Print furnish Truth wings ? The | I same aids \ Cause Falsehood to range just as widely. What raids | I \ On a region undreamed of does Printing enable 1 Truth's foe to effect ! Printed leasing and lies \ May speed to the world's farthest corner — gross fable ] No less than pure fact — to impede, neutralize, ] I Abolish God's srift and Man's gain ! I I AN EPILOGUE. 267 \ FIRST FRIEND. Dost surmise What struck me at first blush? Our Beghards, Wal- denses, Jeronimites, Hussites — does one show his head, Spout heresy now ? Not a priest in his senses Deigns answer mere speech, but piles faggots in- stead, Refines as by fire, and, him silenced, all's said. Whereas if in future I pen an opuscule Defying retort, as of old when rash tongues Were easy to tame, — straight some knave of the Huss- School Prints answer forsooth ! Stop invisible lungs ? The barrel of blasphemy broached once, who bungs ? 268 FUST AND HIS FRIENDS. l I I SECOND FRIEND. 1. \ Does my sermon, next Easter, meet fitting acceptance ? '., Each captious disputative boy has his quirk \ ''^An cuupce credendiim sitV Well the Church kept ^'ans^^ \ i In order till Fust set his engine at work ! \ ] What trash will come flying from Jew, Moor and Turk 1 When, goosequill, thy reign o'er the world is abolished ! j Goose — ominous name ! With a goose woe began : J Quoth Huss — which means " goose " in his idiom un- \ polished — '\ " Ye burn now a Goose : there succeeds me a Swan *j Ye shall find quench your fire ! " \ ■ 'a FUST. \ I foresee such a man. ■ Spottiswoode &^ Co. Printers, New-street Square, London. V/ORKS BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 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Containing nearly all the small Woodcut Ulnstrations of the former ; Editions and many New Illustrations by Eminent Artists. ] THIS EDITION CONTAINS ALTOGETHER 1,773 ILLUSTRATIONS ^ By the Author : Luke Fildes, A.R.A. ; Mrs. Butler (Miss Elizabeth Thompson) ; j George Du Maurier ; Richard Doyle ; Frederick Walker, A.R.A. ; George i Cruikshank; John Leech ; Frank Dicksee; Lixley Sambourne ; F.Barnard; \ E. J. Wheef.er ; F. A. Eraser; Charles Keene; R. B. Wallace; J. P. j Atkinson ; W. J. Webb ; T. R. Macquoid ; M. Fitzgerald ; W. Ralston ; John Collier ; H. Furniss ; G. G. Kilburne, &c., &c., &c. i THE POCKET EDITION. In process of issue in monthly volumes. • Price l5. 6(/. per volume in half -cloth, cut or uncut edges ; or I5. in paper ] covers. i *4.* A List of the Volumes already published will be sent on application. \ BALLADS. By William Makepeace Thackeray. "With a Por- | trait of the Author, and 56 Illustrations by the Author ; Mrs. Butler (Miss ; Elizabeth Thompson) ; George Du Maurier ; John Collier ; H. Furniss ; | G. G. Kilburne; M. Fitzgerald; and J. P. Atkinson. Printed on toned i paper by Clay, Sons, & Taylor; and elegantly bound in cloth, gilt edges, by j Burn. Small 4to. 16s. ] W. M. THACKERAY'S SKETCHES. THE ORPHAlSr OF PIMLIOO, and other Sketches, Frag- \ ments, and Drawings. By William Makepeace Thackeray. Copied by i a process that gives a faithful reproduction of the originals. With a Preface j and Editorial Notes by Miss Thackeray. A New Edition, in a new style of binding, bevelled boards, gilt edges, royal 4to. price One Guinea. London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.