Robert Browning: How To Know Him

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[What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes,
There scuds His raven that has told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze--
A tree's head snaps--and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]

In the great poem _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, a quite different reason from
that of Caliban's is suggested for the drawbacks and sufferings of
life. They are a part of the divine machinery employed by infinite
wisdom to further human development, to make us ultimately fit to
see His face. There can be no true progress without obstacles: no
enjoyment without its opposite: no vacation without duties: no virtue
without sin.

The second line of the poem is startling in its direct contradiction
of the language and lamentation of conventional poetry. Regret for
lost youth and terror before old age are stock ideas in poetry, and
in human meditation; but here we are invited to look forward to old
age as the best time of life. Not to grow old gracefully, in
resignation, but to grow old eagerly, in triumph--this is the
Rabbi's suggestion. There is not the slightest doubt that he is right,
provided one lives a mental, rather than an animal existence. A
short time ago, Mr. Joseph H. Choate was addressing a large company
in New York: he said, "Unquestionably the best period of life is the
time between seventy and eighty years of age: and I advise you all
to hurry up and get there as soon as you can."

God loveth whom He chasteneth. Our doubts and fears, our sorrows and
pains, are spurs, stimulants to advance; rejoice that we have them,
for they are proofs that we are alive and moving!

In the seventh stanza comes an audacious but cheering thought. Many
thinkers regard the deepest sorrow of life as rising from the
disparity between our ideals and our achievement; Schiller, in his
poem, _Das Ideal und das Leben_, has expressed this cause of woe in
beautiful language. Browning says boldly,

What I aspired to be,
And was not, _comforts_ me:

This paradox, which comforts while it mocks, means, "My achievements
are ridiculously small in comparison with my hopes, my ambitions, my
dreams: thank God for all this! Thank God I was not content with low
aims, thank God I had my aspirations and have them still: they point
to future development."

In the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth stanzas,
Browning suddenly returns to this idea: in the appraisement of the
human soul, efforts, which if unsuccessful, count for nothing in
worldly estimation, pay an enormous ultimate dividend, and must
therefore be rated high. The reason why the world counts only things
done and not things attempted, is because the world's standards are
too coarse: they are adapted only for gross and obvious results. You
can not weigh diamonds on hay scales: the indicator would show
precisely nothing. And yet one diamond, too fine for these huge
scales, might be of more value than thousands of tons of hay.

From the twenty-sixth stanza to the end, Browning takes up the
figure of the Potter, the Wheel, and the Clay. I think that he was
drawn to use this metaphor, not from Scripture, but as a protest
against the use of it in Fitzgerald's _Omar Khayyam_. Fitzgerald
published his translation in 1859; and although it attracted no
public attention, it is certainly possible that Browning saw it. He
would have enjoyed its melodious beauty, but the philosophy of the
poem would have been to him detestable and abhorrent. Much is made
there of the Potter, meaning blind destiny: and the moral is,
"Drink! the Past gone, seize To-day!" Browning explicitly rejects
and scorns this teaching: it is propounded by fools for the benefit
of other fools.

Fool! all that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
_That_ was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

In Browning's metaphor, the Potter is God: the Wheel is the whirling
course of life's experiences: the Clay is man. God holds us on the
wheel to turn us into the proper shape. Owing to our flaws, the
strain is sometimes too great, and some of us are warped and twisted
by this stern discipline: other characters, made of better material,
constantly grow more beautiful and more serviceable under the
treatment. Browning had suffered the greatest sorrow of his life
when he wrote this poem, and yet he had faith enough to say in the
thirty-first stanza, that _not even while the whirl was worst_, did
he, bound dizzily to the terrible wheel of life, once lose his belief
that he was in God's hands and that the deep cuttings were for his
ultimate benefit.

In the making of a cup, the Potter engraved around the base lovely
images of youth and pleasure, and near the rim skulls and signs of
death: but what is a cup for? It is meant for the Master's lips. The
nearer therefore we approach to death, the nearer we are to God's
presence, who is making us fit to slake His thirst. Finished at last,
we are done forever with life's wheel: we come to the banquet, the
festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal, the glorious
appearance of the Master.

RABBI BEN EZRA

1864

I

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"

II

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

III

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

IV

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

V

Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

VI

Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

VII

For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

VIII

What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test--
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

IX

Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?"

X

Not once beat "Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

XI

For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!

XII

Let us not always say
"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

XIII

Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.

XIV

And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armour to indue.

XV

Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

XVI

For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the grey:
A whisper from the west
Shoots--"Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

XVII

So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past"

XVIII

For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

XIX

As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!

XX

Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

XXI

Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

XXII

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

XXIII

Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

XXIV

But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

XXV

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could ever be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

XXVI

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

XXVII

Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
_That_ was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

XXVIII

He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

XXIX

What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Scull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

XXX

Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?

XXXI

But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,--to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

XXXII

So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Browning wrote four remarkable poems dealing with music: _A Toccata
of Galuppi's_, _Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha_, _Abt Vogler_, and
_Charles Avison_. In _Abt Vogler_ the miracle of extemporisation
has just been accomplished. The musician sits at the keys, tears
running down his face: tears of weakness, because of the storm of
divine inspiration that has passed through him: tears of sorrow,
because he never can recapture the fine, careless rapture of his
unpremeditated music: tears of joy, because he knows that on this
particular day he has been the channel chosen by the Infinite God.

If he had only been an architect, his dream would have remained in a
permanent form. The armies of workmen would have done his will, and
the world would have admired it for ages. If he had only been a poet
or a painter, his inspiration would have taken the form of fixed
type or enduring shape and color: but in the instance of music, the
armies of thoughts that have worked together in absolute harmony to
elevate the noble building of sound, which has risen like an
exhalation, have vanished together with the structure they animated.
It has gone like the wonderful beauty of some fantastic cloud.

His sorrow at this particular irreparable loss gives way to rapture
as he reflects on the source whence came the inspiration. He could
not possibly have _constructed_ such wonderful music: it was the God
welling up within him: for this past hour divine inspiration has
spoken through him. He has had one glimpse at the Celestial Radiance.
How can he now think that the same God who expanded his heart lacks
the power to fill it? The Source from whence this river came must be
inexhaustible, and it was vouchsafed to him to feel for a short time
its infinite richness. The broken arcs on earth are the earnest of
the perfect round in heaven.

Abt Vogler says that the philosophers may each make his guess at the
meaning of this earthly scheme of weal and woe: but the musicians,
the musicians who have felt in their own bosoms the presence of the
Divine Power and heard its marvellous voice,--why, the philosophers
may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know!

ABT VOGLER

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORISING UPON THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
OF HIS INVENTION)

1864

I

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon
willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

II

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

III

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,
When a great illumination surprises a festal night--
Outlined round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in
sight.

IV

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's
birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

V

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed through the body and
gone,
But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their
new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is,--shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect
too.

VI

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made verse--still, effect proceeds from
cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,
Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:--

VII

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught:
It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought:
And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

VIII

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall
be.

IX

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name.
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands!
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same?
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

X

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.

XI

And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue
thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.

XII

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,--yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.

In the autumn following his wife's death Browning wrote the poem
_Prospice_, which title means _Look Forward_! This is the most
original poem on death in English Literature. It shows that Browning
strictly and consistently followed the moral appended to _The Glove_
--_Venienti occurrite morbo_, run to meet approaching disaster!

Although the prayer-book expresses the wish that the Good Lord will
deliver us from battle, murder, and sudden death, that hope was
founded on the old superstition that it was more important how a man
died than how he lived. If a man who had lived a righteous, sober
and godly life died while playing cards or in innocent laughter,
with no opportunity for the ministrations of a priest, his chances
for the next world were thought to be slim. On the other hand, a
damnable scoundrel on the scaffold, with the clergyman's assurances
assented to, was supposed to be jerked into heaven. This view of
life and death was firmly held even by so sincere and profound a
thinker as Hamlet: which explains his anguish at the fate of his
father killed in his sleep, and his own refusal to slay the villain
Claudius at prayer.

It is probable that thousands of worshippers who now devoutly pray
to be delivered from sudden death, would really prefer that exit to
any other. The reason is clear enough: it is to avoid the pain of
slow dissolution, the sufferings of the death-bed, and the horrible
fear of the dark. Now Browning boldly asks that he may be spared
nothing of all these grim terrors. True to his conception of a poet,
as a man who should understand all human experiences, he hopes that
he may pass conscious and aware through the wonderful experience of
dying. Most sick folk become unconscious hours before death and slip
over the line in total coma: Browning wants to stay awake.

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.

I want to taste it all, the physical suffering, the fear of the abyss:
I want to hear the raving of the fiend-voices, to be in the very
thick of the fight. He adds the splendid line,

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave.
Brave hearts turn defeat into victory.

Browning died twenty-eight years after he wrote this poem, and his
prayer was granted. He was conscious almost up to the last second,
and fully aware of the nearness of death. Even the manner of death,
as described in the first line of the poem, came to be his own
experience: for he died of bronchitis.

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