Volume Ii Part 178 (2/2)

XII I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, Make you music that should all-express me; So it seems: I stand on my attainment.

This of verse alone, one life allows me; Verse and nothing else have I to give you.

Other heights in other lives, G.o.d willing: All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!

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, Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets.

He who blows through bronze, may breathe through silver, Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.

He who writes, may write for once as I do.

XIV Love, you saw me gather men and women, Live or dead or fas.h.i.+oned by my fancy, Enter each and all, and use their service, Speak from every mouth,--the speech, a poem.

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving: I am mine and yours--the rest be all men's, Kars.h.i.+sh, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty.

Let me speak this once in my true person, Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence: Pray you, lock on these my men and women, Take and keep my fifty poems finished; Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also!

Poor the speech; be how I speak, for all things.

XV 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 color, Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth.

Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, Perfect till the nightingales applauded.

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, 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), She would turn a new side to her mortal, Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman-- 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 s.h.i.+p it founders, 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d also!

XVII What were seen? None knows, none ever shall know.

Only this is sure--the sight were other, Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, Dying now impoverished here in London.

G.o.d 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!

Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you-- Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.

But the best is when I glide from out them, Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, Come out on the other side, the novel Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, Where I hush and bless myself with silence.

XIX Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, Wrote one song--and in my brain I sing it, Drew one angel--borne, see, on my bosom!

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

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