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ROBERT BROWNING

Expect another job this time next year,
For pity and religion grow i' the crowd
Your painting serves its purpose!" Hang the
fools!

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Your hand, sir, and good-by: no lights, no lights!

The street's hushed, and I know my own way 390 back,

Don't fear me! There's the grey beginning. Zooks!

ONE WORD MORE

TO E. B. B.

LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1855
I

There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together;
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II

Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view
volume.
- but one, the
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs

you.

1"He painted the picture."

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Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper "Beatrice."6 While he mused and traced it and retraced it, (Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left-hand i̇' the hair o' the wicked,7
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Flor-
ence)

Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,

In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

1 the Sistine Madonna, now in Dresden 2 the Madonna di Foligno, now in the Vatican at Rome 3 the Madonna del Granduca, representing her as appearing to a votary in a vision In the Louvre at Paris, the Madonna called La Belle Jardinière is seated in a garden. 5a Florentine painter (1575-1642) 6 Beatrice Portinari, Dante's ideal love 7cf. Inferno, xxxii, 97

AE

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None but would forego his proper dowry,
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist's,
Once, and only once, and for one only,
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow.

IX

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ROBERT BROWNING

When they drank and sneered "A stroke is easy!"

When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,

Throwing him for thanks

"But drought

was pleasant." Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; Thus the doing savours of disrelish; Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, Carelessness or consciousness For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90 the gesture. Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prel

ude

"How shouldst thou of all men, smite, and save us?"

Guesses what is like to prove the sequel "Egypt's flesh-pots-nay, the drought was better."

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XIII

--

Yet a semblance of resource avails us Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time. He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 123 Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge 1 with flowerets. Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver, He who writes, may write for once as I do.

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Not but that you know me! Lo, the moon's

self!

Here in London, yonder late in Florence,
Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured.
Curving on a sky imbrued with colour,
Drifted over Fiesole by twilight,
Came she, our new

crescent of a hair's

breadth.
Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato,3
Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder,
Perfect till the nightingales applauded.
Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished,.

150

1 The margins of missals and other service books were often filled with beautiful pictures of flowers, birds, etc. 2Characters in Browning's Men and Women 3a mountain near Florence

Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish.

XVI

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy?
Nay: for if that moon could love a mortal,
Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy),
All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos 1), 160
She would turn a new side to her mortal,
Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steers-

man

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace,
Blind to Galileo on his turret,

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even ! Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal

When she turns round, comes again in heaven, Opens out anew for worse or better!

Proves she like some portent of an iceberg Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals? Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain ?

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu

Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. Like the bodied heaven in his clearness Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work,

When they ate and drank and saw God also!

XVII

What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know. 180 Only this is sure the sight were other, Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence,

Dying now impoverished here in London. God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,

One to show a woman when he loves her!

XVIII

This I say of me, but think of you, Love! This to you yourself my moon of poets!

1 the myth of Endymion, beloved of the moon goddess 2 Exodus xxiv: 10

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ROBERT BROWNING

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.

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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 transpar-
ent 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.

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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 pas

sion, to scale the sky:

Novel splendours 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.

Nay more;

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for there wanted not who walked

in the glare and glow,

Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,1

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:

1 Creator

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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:

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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!

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