Part 8 (1/2)

We must aspire then, but at the same time all aspiring is to be conterminous with steady work within our limits. Aspiration to the perfect is not to make us idle, indifferent to the present, but to drive us on. Its pa.s.sion teaches us, as it urges into action all our powers, what we can and what we cannot do. That is, it teaches us, through the action it engenders, what our limits are; and when we know them, the main duties of life rise clear. The first of these is, to work patiently within our limits; and the second is the apparent contradiction of the first, never to be satisfied with our limits, or with the results we attain within them. Then, having worked within them, but always looked beyond them, we, as life closes, learn the secret. The failures of earth prove the victory beyond: ”For--

what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?

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 the woe: But G.o.d has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; The rest may reason, and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.”

_Abt Vogler_.

Finally, the root and flower of this patient but uncontented work is Love for man because of his being in G.o.d, because of his high and immortal destiny. All that we do, whether failure or not, builds up the perfect humanity to come, and flows into the perfection of G.o.d in whom is the perfection of man. This love, grounded on this faith, brings joy into life; and, in this joy of love, we enter into the eternal temple of the Life to come. Love opens Heaven while Earth closes us round. At last limitations cease to trouble us. They are lost in the vision, they bring no more sorrow, doubt or baffling. Therefore, in this confused chaotic time on earth--

Earn the means first. G.o.d surely will contrive Use for our earning.

Others mistrust, and say: ”But time escapes; Live now or never!”

He said, ”What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!

Man has Forever.”

_A Grammarian's Funeral_.

This is a sketch of his explanation of life. The expression of it began in _Pauline_. Had that poem been as imitative, as poor as the first efforts of poets usually are, we might leave it aside. But though, as he said, ”good draughtsmans.h.i.+p and right handling were far beyond the artist at that time,” though ”with repugnance and purely of necessity”

he republished it, he did republish it; and he was right. It was crude and confused, but the stuff in it was original and poetic; wonderful stuff for a young man.

The first design of it was huge. _Pauline_ is but a fragment of a poem which was to represent, not one but various types of human life. It became only the presentation of the type of the poet, the first sketch of the youth of Sordello. The other types conceived were worked up into other poems.

The hero in _Pauline_ hides in his love for Pauline from a past he longed to forget. He had aspired to the absolute beauty and goodness, and the end was vanity and vexation. The shame of this failure beset him from the past, and the failure was caused because he had not been true to the aspirations which took him beyond himself. When he returned to self, the glory departed. And a fine simile of his soul as a young witch whose blue eyes,

As she stood naked by the river springs, Drew down a G.o.d,

who, as he sat in the suns.h.i.+ne on her knees singing of heaven, saw the mockery in her eyes and vanished, tells of how the early ravishment departed, slain by self-scorn that followed on self-wors.h.i.+p. But one love and reverence remained--that for Sh.e.l.ley, the Sun-treader, and kept him from being ”wholly lost.” To strengthen this one self-forgetful element, the love of Pauline enters in, and the new impulse brings back something of the ancient joy. ”Let me take it,” he cries, ”and sing on again

fast as fancies come; Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints,”--

a line which tells us how Browning wished his metrical movement to be judged. This is the exordium, and it is already full of his theory of life--the soul forced from within to aspire to the perfect whole, the necessary failure, the despair, the new impulse to love arising out of the despair; failure making fresh growth, fresh uncontentment. G.o.d has sent a new impulse from without; let me begin again.

Then, in the new light, he strips his mind bare. What am I? What have I done? Where am I going?

The first element in his soul, he thinks, is a living personality, linked to a principle of restlessness,

Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all.

And this would plunge him into the depths of self were it not for that Imagination in him whose power never fails to bear him beyond himself; and is finally in him a need, a trust, a yearning after G.o.d; whom, even when he is most lost, he feels is always acting on him, and at every point of life transcending him.

And Imagination began to create, and made him at one with all men and women of whom he had read (the same motive is repeated in _Sordello_), but especially at one with those out of the Greek world he loved--”a G.o.d wandering after Beauty”--a high-crested chief

Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.

Never was anything more clear than these lives he lived beyond himself; and the lines in which he records the vision have all the sharpness and beauty of his after-work--