That's why my father stood in the hall
   When the old Duke brought his infant out
           To show the people, and while they passed              50
   The wondrous bantling round about,
           Was first to start at the outside blast
   As the Kaiser's courier blew his horn
   Just a month after the babe was born.
   "And," quoth the Kaiser's courier," since
   The Duke has got an heir, our Prince
           Needs the Duke's self at his side:"
   The Duke looked down and seemed to wince,
           But he thought of wars o'er the world wide,
   Castles a-fire, men on their march,                            60
   The toppling tower, the crashing arch;
           And up he looked, and awhile he eyed
   The row of crests and shields and banners
   Of all achievements after all manners,
           And "ay," said the Duke with a surly pride.
           The more was his comfort when he died
   At next year's end, in a velvet suit,
   With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot
   In a silken shoe for a leather boot,
   Petticoated like a herald,                                     70
           In a chamber next to an ante-room,
           Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,
           What he called stink, and they, perfume:
   --They should have set him on red Berold
   Mad with pride, like fire to manage!
   They should have got his cheek fresh tannage
   Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!
   Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!
   (Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game!
   Oh for a noble falcon-lanner                                   80
   To flap each broad wing like a banner,
   And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)
   Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin
   --Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine
   Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,
   A cup of our own Moldavia fine,
   Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel
   And ropy with sweet--we shall not quarrel.

   IV

   So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess
   Was left with the infant in her clutches,                      90
   She being the daughter of God knows who:
           And now was the time to revisit her tribe.
   Abroad and afar they went, the two,
           And let our people rail and gibe
   At the empty hall and extinguished fire,
           As loud as we liked, but ever in vain,
   Till after long years we had our desire,
           And back came the Duke and his mother again.

   V

   And he came back the pertest little ape
   That ever affronted human shape;                              100
   Full of his travel, struck at himself.
           You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?
   --Not he! For in Paris they told the elf
           Our rough North land was the Land of Lays,
           The one good thing left in evil days;
   Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,
           And only in wild nooks like ours
   Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
           And see true castles, with proper towers,
   Young-hearted women, old-minded men,                          110
   And manners now as manners were then.
   So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it,
   This Duke would fain know he was, without being it;
   'Twas not for the joy's self, but the joy of his showing it,
   Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it,
   He revived all usages thoroughly worn-out,
   The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out:
   And chief in the chase his neck he perilled
   On a lathy horse, all legs and length,
   With blood for bone, all speed, no strength;                  120
   --They should have set him on red Berold
   With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
   And the thin stiff ear like an abbey-spire!

   VI

   Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard:
   And out of a convent, at the word,
   Came the lady, in time of spring.
   --Oh, old thoughts they cling, they cling!
   That day, I know, with a dozen oaths
   I clad myself in thick hunting-clothes
   Fit for the chase of urochs or buffle                         130
   In winter-time when you need to muffle.
   But the Duke had a mind we should cut a figure,
           And so we saw the lady arrive:
   My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!
           She was the smallest lady alive,
   Made in a piece of nature's madness,
   Too small, almost, for the life and gladness
           That over-filled her, as some hive
   Out of the bears' reach on the high trees
   Is crowded with its safe merry bees:                          140
   In truth, she was not hard to please!
   Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead,
   Straight at the castle, that's best indeed
   To look at from outside the walls:
   As for us, styled the "serfs and thralls,"
   She as much thanked me as if she had said it,
           (With her eyes, do you understand?)
   Because I patted her horse while I led it;
           And Max, who rode on her other hand,
   Said, no bird flew past but she inquired                      150
   What its true name was, nor ever seemed tired--
   If that was an eagle she saw hover,
   And the green and grey bird on the field was the plover.
   When suddenly appeared the Duke:
           And as down she sprung, the small foot pointed
   On to my hand,--as with a rebuke,
           And as if his backbone were not jointed,
   The Duke stepped rather aside than forward
           And welcomed her with his grandest smile;
           And, mind you, his mother all the while               160
   Chilled in the rear, like a wind to Nor'ward;
   And up, like a weary yawn, with its pullies
   Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis;
   And, like a glad sky the north-wind sullies,
   The lady's face stopped its play,
   As if her first hair had grown grey;
   For such things must begin some one day.

   VII

   In a day or two she was well again;
   As who should say, "You labour in vain!
   This is all a jest against God, who meant                     170
   I should ever be, as I am, content
   And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be."
   So, smiling as at first went she.

   VIII

   She was active, stirring, all fire--
   Could not rest, could not tire--
   To a stone she might have given life!
           (I myself loved once, in my day)
   --For a shepherd's, miner's, huntsman's wife,
           (I had a wife, I know what I say)
   Never in all the world such an one!                           180
   And here was plenty to be done,
   And she that could do it, great or small,
   She was to do nothing at all.
   There was already this man in his post,
           This in his station, and that in his office,
   And the Duke's plan admitted a wife, at most,
           To meet his eye, with the other trophies,
   Now outside the hall, now in it,
           To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen,
   At the proper place in the proper minute,                     190
           And die away the life between.
   And it was amusing enough, each infraction
           Of rule--(but for after-sadness that came)
   To hear the consummate self-satisfaction
           With which the young Duke and the old dame
   Would let her advise, and criticise,
   And, being a fool, instruct the wise,
           And, child-like, parcel out praise or blame:
   They bore it all in complacent guise,
   As though an artificer, after contriving                      200
   A wheel-work image as if it were living,
   Should find with delight it could motion to strike him!
   So found the Duke, and his mother like him:
   The lady hardly got a rebuff--
   That had not been contemptuous enough,
   With his cursed smirk, as he nodded applause,
   And kept off the old mother-cat's claws.

   IX

   So, the little lady grew silent and thin,
           Paling and ever paling,
   As the way is with a hid chagrin;                             210
           And the Duke perceived that she was ailing,
   And said in his heart, "'Tis done to spite me,
   But I shall find in my power to right me!"
   Don't swear, friend! The old one, many a year,
   Is in hell, and the Duke's self... you shall hear.

   X

   Well, early in autumn, at first winter-warning,
   When the stag had to break with his foot, of a morning,
   A drinking-hole out of the fresh tender ice
   That covered the pond till the sun, in a trice,
   Loosening it, let out a ripple of gold,                       220
           And another and another, and faster and faster
   Till, dimpling to blindness, the wide water rolled:
           Then it so chanced that the Duke our master
   Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
           And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
   He should do the Middle Age no treason
           In resolving on a hunting-party.
   Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
           What meant old poets by their strictures?
   And when old poets had said their say of it,                  230
           How taught old painters in their pictures?
   We must revert to the proper channels,
   Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
   And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditions:
   Here was food for our various ambitions,
   As on each case, exactly stated--
           To encourage your dog, now, the properest chirrup
           Or best prayer to Saint Hubert on mounting your stirrup--
   We of the household took thought and debated.
   Blessed was he whose back ached with the jerkin               240
   His sire was wont to do forest-work in;
   Blesseder he who nobly sunk "ohs"
   And "ahs" while he tugged on his grandsire's trunk-hose;
   What signified hats if they had no rims on,
           Each slouching before and behind like the scallop,
           And able to serve at sea for a shallop,
   Loaded with lacquer and looped with crimson?
   So that the deer now, to make a short rhyme on't,
           What with our Venerers, Prickers and Verderers,       250
           Might hope for real hunters at length and not murderers,
   And oh the Duke's tailor, he had a hot time on't!

   XI

   Now you must know that when the first dizziness
           Of flap-hats and buff-coats and jack-boots subsided,
           The Duke put this question, "The Duke's part provided,
   Had not the Duchess some share in the business?"
   For out of the mouth of two or three witnesses
   Did he establish all fit-or-unfitnesses:
   And, after much laying of heads together,
   Somebody's cap got a notable feather
   By the announcement with proper unction                       260
   That he had discovered the lady's function;
   Since ancient authors gave this tenet,
           "When horns wind a mort and the deer is at siege,
   Let the dame of the castle prick forth on her jennet,
           And with water to wash the hands of her liege
   In a clean ewer with a fair toweling,
   Let her preside at the disemboweling."
   Now, my friend, if you had so little religion
           As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,
           And thrust her broad wings like a banner              270
   Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;
   And if day by day and week by week
           You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,
   And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
           Would it cause you any great surprise
   If, when you decided to give her an airing,
   You found she needed a little preparing?
   --I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
   If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
   Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,                      280
   Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
   In what a pleasure she was to participate,--
           And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
           Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
   As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,
   And duly acknowledged the Duke's fore-thought,
   But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,
   Of the weight by day and the watch by night,
   And much wrong now that used to be right,
   So, thanking him, declined the hunting--                      290
   Was conduct ever more affronting?
   With all the ceremony settled--
           With the towel ready, and the sewer
           Polishing up his oldest ewer,
           And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,
           Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eye-balled--
   No wonder if the Duke was nettled!
   And when she persisted nevertheless,--
   Well, I suppose here's the time to confess
   That there ran half round our lady's chamber                  300
   A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;
   And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,

   Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?
   And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent
   Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;
   And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,
           How could I keep at any vast distance?
           And so, as I say, on the lady's persistence,
   The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,
   Stood for a while in a sultry smother,                        310
           And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,
   Turned her over to his yellow mother
           To learn what was held decorous and lawful;
   And the mother smelt blood with a cat-like instinct,
   As her cheek quick whitened thro' all its quince-tinct.
   Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!
   What meant she?--Who was she?--Her duty and station,
   The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
           Its decent regard and its fitting relation--
   In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free          320
   And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
   And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
   And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
   Well, somehow or other it ended at last
   And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
   And after her,--making (he hoped) a face
           Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
   Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
           Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
   From door to staircase--oh such a solemn                      330
   Unbending of the vertebral column!

   XII

   However, at sunrise our company mustered;
           And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,
   And there 'neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,
           With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;
   For the court-yard walls were filled with fog
   You might have cut as an axe chops a log--
   Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;
   And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,
   Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily             340
           And a sinking at the lower abdomen
           Begins the day with indifferent omen.
   And lo, as he looked around uneasily,
   The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder
   This way and that from the valley under;
           And, looking through the court-yard arch,
   Down in the valley, what should meet him
           But a troop of Gipsies on their march?
   No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

   XIII

   Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only                    350
           After reaching all lands beside;
   North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely
           And still, as they travel far and wide,
   Catch they and keep now a trace here, a trace there,
   That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.
   But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,
   And nowhere else, I take it, are found
   With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:
   Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on
   The very fruit they are meant to feed on.                     360
   For the earth-not a use to which they don't turn it,
           The ore that grows in the mountain's womb,
           Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,
   They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it--
   Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle
   With side-bars never a brute can baffle;
   Or a lock that's a puzzle of wards within wards;
   Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
   Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
   And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.                          370
   Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
   That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
   But the sand-they pinch and pound it like otters;
   Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
   Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
   Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
   As if in pure water you dropped and let die
   A bruised black-blooded mulberry;
   And that other sort, their crowning pride,
   With long white threads distinct inside,                      380
   Like the lake-flower's fibrous roots which dangle
   Loose such a length and never tangle,
   Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,
   And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:
   Such are the works they put their hand to,
   The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.
   And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally
   Toward his castle from out of the valley,
   Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,
   Come out with the morning to greet our riders.                390
   And up they wound till they reached the ditch,
   Whereat all stopped save one, a witch
   That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,
   By her gait directly and her stoop,
   I, whom Jacynth was used to importune
   To let that same witch tell us our fortune.
   The oldest Gipsy then above ground;
   And, sure as the autumn season came round,
   She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,
   And every time, as she swore, for the last time.              400

   And presently she was seen to sidle
   Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,
   So that the horse of a sudden reared up
   As under its nose the old witch peered up
   With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes
           Of no use now but to gather brine,
           And began a kind of level whine
   Such as they used to sing to their viols
   When their ditties they go grinding
   Up and down with nobody minding                               410
   And then, as of old, at the end of the humming
   Her usual presents were forthcoming
   --A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,
   (Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles)
   Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end--
   And so she awaited her annual stipend.
   But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
           A word in reply; and in vain she felt
           With twitching fingers at her belt
           For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,              420
   Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe--
   Till, either to quicken his apprehension,
   Or possibly with an after-intention,
   She was come, she said, to pay her duty
   To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
   No sooner had she named his lady,
   Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
   And its smirk returned with a novel meaning--
   For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;
   If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,          430
   She, foolish today, would be wiser tomorrow;
   And who so fit a teacher of trouble
   As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?
   So, glancing at her wolf-skin vesture,
           (If such it was, for they grow so hirsute
           That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)
   He was contrasting, 'twas plain from his gesture,
   The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate
   With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.
   I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned                    440
           From out of the throng, and while I drew near
   He told the crone-as I since have reckoned
           By the way he bent and spoke into her ear
   With circumspection and mystery--
   The main of the lady's history,
   Her frowardness and ingratitude:
   And for all the crone's submissive attitude
   I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,
   And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening
           As though she engaged with hearty goodwill            450
           Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,
   And promised the lady a thorough frightening.

   And so, just giving her a glimpse
   Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps
   The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,
           He bade me take the Gipsy mother
           And set her telling some story or other
   Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,
   To wile away a weary hour
   For the lady left alone in her bower,                         460
   Whose mind and body craved exertion
   And yet shrank from all better diversion.

   XIV

   Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curveter,
           Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo
   Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,
           And back I turned and bade the crone follow.
   And what makes me confident what's to be told you
           Had all along been of this crone's devising,
   Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,
           There was a novelty quick as surprising:              470
   For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,
           And her step kept pace with mine nor faltered,
   As if age had foregone its usurpature,
           And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,
   And the face looked quite of another nature,
   And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,
   Her shaggy wolf-skin cloak's arrangement:
   For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
   Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
   Like the band-roll strung with tomans                         480
   Which proves the veil a Persian woman's:
   And under her brow, like a snail's horns newly
           Come out as after the rain he paces,
   Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
           Live and aware looked out of their places.
   So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
   Of the lady's chamber standing sentry;
   I told the command and produced my companion,
   And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,
   For since last night, by the same token,                      490
   Not a single word had the lady spoken:
   They went in both to the presence together,
   While I in the balcony watched the weather.

   XV

   And now, what took place at the very first of all,
   I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:
   Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall
   On that little head of hers and burn it
   If she knew how she came to drop so soundly
           Asleep of a sudden and there continue
   The whole time sleeping as profoundly                         500
           As one of the boars my father would pin you
   'Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,
   --Jacynth forgive me the comparison!
   But where I begin my own narration
   Is a little after I took my station
   To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
   And, having in those days a falcon eye,
   To follow the hunt thro' the open country,
           From where the bushes thinlier crested
   The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree.                510
           When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
   By--was it singing, or was it saying,
   Or a strange musical instrument playing
   In the chamber?--and to be certain
   I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,
   And there lay Jacynth asleep,
   Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,
   In a rosy sleep along the floor
   With her head against the door;
   While in the midst, on the seat of state,                     520
   Was a queen-the Gipsy woman late,
   With head and face downbent
   On the lady's head and face intent:
   For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
   The lady sat between her knees
   And o'er them the lady's clasped hands met,
   And on those hands her chin was set,
   And her upturned face met the face of the crone
   Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
   As if she could double and quadruple                          530
   At pleasure the play of either pupil
           --Very like, by her hands' slow fanning,
   As up and down like a gor-crow's flappers
   They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.
           I said, "Is it blessing, is it banning,
   Do they applaud you or burlesque you--
           Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?"
   But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
           At once I was stopped by the lady's expression:
   For it was life her eyes were drinking                        540
   From the crone's wide pair above unwinking,
   --Life's pure fire received without shrinking,
   Into the heart and breast whose heaving
   Told you no single drop they were leaving,
   --Life, that filling her, passed redundant
   Into her very hair, back swerving
   Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
           As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
   And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
   Moving to the mystic measure,                                 550
   Bounding as the bosom bounded.
   I stopped short, more and more confounded,
   As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
   As she listened and she listened:
   When all at once a hand detained me,
   The selfsame contagion gained me,
   And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
   Making out words and prose and rhyme,
   Till it seemed that the music furled
           Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped          560
           From under the words it first had propped,
   And left them midway in the world:
   Word took word as hand takes hand
   I could hear at last, and understand,
   And when I held the unbroken thread,
   The Gipsy said:
   "And so at last we find my tribe.
           And so I set thee in the midst,
   And to one and all of them describe
           What thou saidst and what thou didst,                 570
   Our long and terrible journey through,
   And all thou art ready to say and do
   In the trials that remain:
   I trace them the vein and the other vein
   That meet on thy brow and part again,
   Making our rapid mystic mark;
           And I bid my people prove and probe
           Each eye's profound and glorious globe
   Till they detect the kindred spark
   In those depths so dear and dark,                             580
   Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
   Circling over the midnight sea.
   And on that round young cheek of thine
           I make them recognize the tinge,
   As when of the costly scarlet wine
           They drip so much as will impinge
   And spread in a thinnest scale afloat
   One thick gold drop from the olive's coat
   Over a silver plate whose sheen
   Still thro' the mixture shall be seen.                        590
   For so I prove thee, to one and all,
           Fit, when my people ope their breast,
   To see the sign, and hear the call,
           And take the vow, and stand the test
           Which adds one more child to the rest--
   When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,
   And the world is left outside.

   For there is probation to decree,
   And many and long must the trials be
   Thou shalt victoriously endure,                               600
   If that brow is true and those eyes are sure;
   Like a jewel-finder's fierce assay
           Of the prize he dug from its mountain tomb--
   Let once the vindicating ray
           Leap out amid the anxious gloom,
   And steel and fire have done their part
   And the prize falls on its finder's heart;
   So, trial after trial past,
   Wilt thou fall at the very last
   Breathless, half in trance                                    610
   With the thrill of the great deliverance,
           Into our arms for evermore;
   And thou shalt know, those arms once curled
           About thee, what we knew before,
   How love is the only good in the world.
   Henceforth be loved as heart can love,
   Or brain devise, or hand approve!
   Stand up, look below,
   It is our life at thy feet we throw
   To step with into light and joy;                              620
   Not a power of life but we employ
   To satisfy thy nature's want;
   Art thou the tree that props the plant,
   Or the climbing plant that seeks the tree--
   Canst thou help us, must we help thee?
   If any two creatures grew into one,
   They would do more than the world has done:
   Though each apart were never so weak,
   Ye vainly through the world should seek
   For the knowledge and the might                               630
   Which in such union grew their right:
   So, to approach at least that end,
   And blend,--as much as may be, blend
   Thee with us or us with thee--
   As climbing plant or propping tree,
   Shall some one deck thee, over and down,
           Up and about, with blossoms and leaves?
   Fix his heart's fruit for thy garland-crown,
           Cling with his soul as the gourd-vine cleaves,
   Die on thy boughs and disappear                               640
   While not a leaf of thine is sere?
   Or is the other fate in store,
   And art thou fitted to adore,
   To give thy wondrous self away,
   And take a stronger nature's sway?
   I foresee and could foretell
   Thy future portion, sure and well:
   But those passionate eyes speak true, speak true,
   Let them say what thou shalt do!
   Only be sure thy daily life,                                  650
   In its peace or in its strife,
   Never shall be unobserved;
           We pursue thy whole career,
           And hope for it, or doubt, or fear--
   Lo, hast thou kept thy path or swerved,
   We are beside thee in all thy ways,
   With our blame, with our praise,
   Our shame to feel, our pride to show,
   Glad, angry--but indifferent, no!
   Whether it be thy lot to go,                                  660
   For the good of us all, where the haters meet
   In the crowded city's horrible street;
   Or thou step alone through the morass
   Where never sound yet was
   Save the dry quick clap of the stork's bill,
   For the air is still, and the water still,
   When the blue breast of the dipping coot
   Dives under, and all is mute.
   So, at the last shall come old age,
   Decrepit as befits that stage;                                670
   How else wouldst thou retire apart
   With the hoarded memories of thy heart,
   And gather all to the very least
   Of the fragments of life's earlier feast,
   Let fall through eagerness to find
   The crowning dainties yet behind?
   Ponder on the entire past
   Laid together thus at last,
   When the twilight helps to fuse
   The first fresh with the faded hues,                          680
   And the outline of the whole,
   As round eve's shades their framework roll,
   Grandly fronts for once thy soul.
   And then as, 'mid the dark, a gleam
           Of yet another morning breaks,
   And like the hand which ends a dream,
   Death, with the might of his sunbeam,
           Touches the flesh and the soul awakes,
   Then--"
                   Ay, then indeed something would happen!
           But what? For here her voice changed like a bird's;   690
           There grew more of the music and less of the words;
   Had Jacynth only been by me to clap pen
   To paper and put you down every syllable
           With those clever clerkly fingers,
           All I've forgotten as well as what lingers
   In this old brain of mine that's but ill able
   To give you even this poor version
           Of the speech I spoil, as it were, with stammering
           --More fault of those who had the hammering
           Of prosody into me and syntax                         700
           And did it, not with hobnails but tintacks!

   But to return from this excursion--
   Just, do you mark, when the song was sweetest,
   The peace most deep and the charm completest,
   There came, shall I say, a snap--
           And the charm vanished!
           And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
   And, starting as from a nap,
   I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
   With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I                710
   Down from the casement, round to the portal,
           Another minute and I had entered--
   When the door opened, and more than mortal
           Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
   All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
   The Duchess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.
   She was so different, happy and beautiful,
           I felt at once that all was best,
           And that I had nothing to do, for the rest
   But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.                   720
   Not that, in fact, there was any commanding;
           I saw the glory of her eye,
   And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
           And I was hers to live or to die.
   As for finding what she wanted,
   You know God Almighty granted
   Such little signs should serve wild creatures
           To tell one another all their desires,
           So that each knows what his friend requires,
   And does its bidding without teachers.                        730
   I preceded her; the crone
   Followed silent and alone;
   I spoke to her, but she merely jabbered
           In the old style; both her eyes had slunk
           Back to their pits; her stature shrunk;
           In short, the soul in its body sunk
   Like a blade sent home to its scabbard.
   We descended, I preceding;
   Crossed the court with nobody heeding;
   All the world was at the chase,                               740
   The courtyard like a desert-place,
   The stable emptied of its small fry;
   I saddled myself the very palfrey
   I remember patting while it carried her,
   The day she arrived and the Duke married her.
   And, do you know, though it's easy deceiving
   Oneself in such matters, I can't help believing
   The lady had not forgotten it either,
   And knew the poor devil so much beneath her
   Would have been only too glad for her service                 750
   To dance on hot ploughshares like a Turk dervise,
   But, unable to pay proper duty where owing
   Was reduced to that pitiful method of showing it:
   For though the moment I began setting
   His saddle on my own nag of Berold's begetting,
   (Not that I meant to be obtrusive)
           She stopped me, while his rug was shifting,
           By a single rapid finger's lifting,
   And, with a gesture kind but conclusive,
   And a little shake of the head, refused me--                  760
   I say, although she never used me,
   Yet when she was mounted, the Gipsy behind her,
   And I ventured to remind her
   I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
           Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
   --Something to the effect that I was in readiness
           Whenever God should please she needed me--
   Then, do you know, her face looked down on me
   With a look that placed a crown on me,
   And she felt in her bosom--mark, her bosom--                  770
   And, as a flower-tree drops its blossom,
   Dropped me... ah, had it been a purse
   Of silver, my friend, or gold that's worse,
   Why, you see, as soon as I found myself
           So understood,--that a true heart so may gain
           Such a reward,--I should have gone home again,
   Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
   It was a little plait of hair
           Such as friends in a convent make
           To wear, each for the other's sake--                  780
   This, see, which at my breast I wear,
   Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment),
   And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.
   And then-and then--to cut short--this is idle,
           These are feelings it is not good to foster--
   I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle,
           And the palfrey bounded--and so we lost her.

   XVI

   When the liquor's out why clink the cannikin?
   I did think to describe you the panic in
   The redoubtable breast of our master the mannikin,            790
   And what was the pitch of his mother's yellowness,
           How she turned as a shark to snap the spare-rib
           Clean off, sailors say, from a pearl-diving Carib,
   When she heard, what she called the flight of the feloness
   --But it seems such child's play,
   What they said and did with the lady away!
   And to dance on, when we've lost the music,
   Always made me--and no doubt makes you--sick.
   Nay, to my mind, the world's face looked so stern
   As that sweet form disappeared through the postern,           800
   She that kept it in constant good humour,
   It ought to have stopped; there seemed nothing to do more.
   But the world thought otherwise and went on,
   And my head's one that its spite was spent on:
   Thirty years are fled since that morning,
   And with them all my head's adorning.
   Nor did the old Duchess die outright,
   As you expect, of suppressed spite,
   The natural end of every adder
   Not suffered to empty its poison-bladder:                     810
   But she and her son agreed, I take it,
   That no one should touch on the story to wake it,
   For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery,
   So, they made no search and small inquiry--
   And when fresh Gipsies have paid us a visit, I've
   Notice the couple were never inquisitive,
   But told them they're folks the Duke don't want here,
   And bade them make haste and cross the frontier.
   Brief, the Duchess was gone and the Duke was glad of it,
           And the old one was in the young one's stead,         820
           And took, in her place, the household's head,
   And a blessed time the household had of it!
   And were I not, as a man may say, cautious
   How I trench, more than needs, on the nauseous,
   I could favour you with sundry touches
   Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess
   Heightened the mellowness of her cheek's yellowness
   (To get on faster) until at last her
   Cheek grew to be one master-plaster
   Of mucus and fucus from mere use of ceruse:                   830
   In short, she grew from scalp to udder
   Just the object to make you shudder.

   XVII

   You're my friend--
   What a thing friendship is, world without end!
   How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up
           As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet,
           And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly, sunlit,
   Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup,
   Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids--
   Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids;             840
   Each supples a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs,
   Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts
   Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees
   Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease.
   I have seen my little lady once more,
           Jacynth, the Gipsy, Berold, and the rest of it,
   For to me spoke the Duke, as I told you before;
           I always wanted to make a clean breast of it:
   And now it is made-why, my heart's blood, that went trickle,
           Trickle, but anon, in such muddy driblets,            850
   Is pumped up brisk now, through the main ventricle,
           And genially floats me about the giblets.

   I'll tell you what I intend to do:
   I must see this fellow his sad life through--
   He is our Duke, after all,
   And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall.
   My father was born here, and I inherit
           His fame, a chain he bound his son with;
   Could I pay in a lump I should prefer it,
           But there's no mine to blow up and get done with:     860
   So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.
   For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,
   Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,
   Some day or other, his head in a morion
   And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,
   Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.
   And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,
   And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,
   Then I shall scrape together my earnings;
           For, you see, in the churchyard Jacynth reposes,      870
           And our children all went the way of the roses:
   It's a long lane that knows no turnings.
   One needs but little tackle to travel in;
           So, just one stout cloak shall I indue:
   And for a staff, what beats the javelin
           With which his boars my father pinned you?
   And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
           Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
   I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
           Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.                880
   What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
           Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:
           When we mind labour, then only, we're too old--
   What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
   And at last, as its haven some buffeted ship sees,
        (Come all the way from the north-parts with sperm oil)
           I hope to get safely out of the turmoil
   And arrive one day at the land of the Gipsies,
   And find my lady, or hear the last news of her
   From some old thief and son of Lucifer,                       890
   His forehead chapleted green with wreathy hop,
   Sunburned all over like an AEthiop.
   And when my Cotnar begins to operate
   And the tongue of the rogue to run at a proper rate,
   And our wine-skin, tight once, shows each flaccid dent,
   I shall drop in with--as if by accident--
   "You never knew, then, how it all ended,
   What fortune good or bad attended
   The little lady your Queen befriended?"
   --And when that's told me, what's remaining?                  900
   This world's too hard for my explaining.
   The same wise judge of matters equine
           Who still preferred some slim four-year-old
           To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold
   And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine,
   He also must be such a lady's scorner!
           Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau:
           Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw.
   --So, I shall find out some snug corner
   Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight,                    910
   Turn myself round and bid the world good night;
   And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowing
           Wakes me (unless priests cheat us laymen)
   To a world where will be no further throwing
           Pearls before swine that can't value them.  Amen!

   NOTES:
   "The Flight of the Duchess."  A story of the triumph of a
   free and loving life over a cold and conventional one.
   The duke's huntsman frees his mind to his friend as to his
   part in the escape of the gladsome, ardent young duchess
   from the blighting yoke of a husband whose life consisted
   in imitating defunct mediaeval customs.  An old gipsy is
   the agency that awakens her to the joy and freedom of
   love.  Her mystic chant and charm claim the duchess as
   the true heir of gipsy blood, thrill her with life, half-hypnotize
   the huntsman, too, and seem to transform the gipsy
   crone herself into an Eastern queen.  He helps them off,
   and looks for no better future, when the duke's death releases
   him, than to travel to the land of the gipsies and hear the last
   news of his lady.

           The poem grew from the fancies aroused in the poet's
   heart by the snatch of a woman's song he overheard when
   a boy--"Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"

A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL,

   SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE

   Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
                   Singing together.
   Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
                   Each in its tether
   Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
                   Cared-for till cock-crow:
   Look out if yonder be not day again
                   Rimming the rock-row!
   That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
                   Rarer, intenser,                               10
   Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
                   Chafes in the censer.
   Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
                   Seek we sepulture
   On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
                   Crowded with culture!
   All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
                   Clouds overcome it;
   No!  Yonder sparkle is the citadel's
                   Circling its summit.                           20
   Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
                   Wait ye the warning?
   Our low life was the level's and the night's;
                   He's for the morning.
   Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,
                   'Ware the beholders!
   This is our master, famous calm and dead,
                   Borne on our shoulders.

   Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
                   Safe from the weather!                         30
   He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
                   Singing together,
   He was a man born with thy face and throat,
                   Lyric Apollo!

   Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
                   Winter would follow?
   Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
                   Cramped and diminished,
   Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
                   My dance is finished?"                         40
   No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
                   Make for the city!)
   He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
                   Over men's pity;
   Left play for work, and grappled with the world
                   Bent on escaping:
   "What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
                   Show me their shaping
   Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,
                   Give!"--So, he gowned him,                     50
   Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
                   Learned, we found him.
   Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
                   Accents uncertain:
   "Time to taste life," another would have said,
                   "Up with the curtain!"
   This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
                   Patience a moment!
   Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
                   Still there's the comment.                     60
   Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
                   Painful or easy!
   Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
                   Ay, nor feel queasy."
   Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
                   When he had learned it,
   When he had gathered all books had to give!
                   Sooner, he spurned it.
   Image the whole, then execute the parts--
                   Fancy the fabric                               70
   Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
                   Ere mortar dab brick!

   (Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place
                   Gaping before us.)
   Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
                   (Hearten our chorus!)
   That before living he'd learn how to live--
                   No end to learning:
   Earn the means first-God surely will contrive
                   Use for our earning.                           80
   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."
   Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:
                   Calculus racked him:

   Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:
                   Tussis attacked him.
   "Now, master, take a little rest!"--not he!
                   (Caution redoubled,                            90
   Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)
                   Not a whit troubled
   Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
                   Fierce as a dragon
   He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
                   Sucked at the flagon.
   Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
                   Heedless of far gain,
   Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
                   Bad is our bargain!                           100
   Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
                   (He loves the burthen)
   God's task to make the heavenly period
                   Perfect the earthen?
   Did not he magnify the mind, show clear
                   Just what it all meant?
   He would not discount life, as fools do here,
                   Paid by instalment.
   He ventured neck or nothing-heaven's success
                   Found, or earth's failure:                    110
   "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes:
                   Hence with life's pale lure!"
   That low man seeks a little thing to do,
                   Sees it and does it:
   This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
                   Dies ere he knows it.
   That low man goes on adding one to one,
                   His hundred's soon hit:
   This high man, aiming at a million,
                   Misses an unit.                               120
   That, has the world here-should he need the next,
                   Let the world mind him!
   This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
                   Seeking shall find him.
   So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
                   Ground he at grammar;
   Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
                   While he could stammer
   He settled Hoti's business--let it be!--
                   Properly based Oun--                          130
   Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
                   Dead from the waist down.
   Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
                   Hail to your purlieus,
   All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
                   Swallows and curlews!
   Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
                   Live, for they can, there:

   This man decided not to Live but Know--
                   Bury this man there?                          140
   Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
                   Lightnings are loosened,
   Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
                   Peace let the dew send!
   Lofty designs must close in like effects:
                   Loftily Iying,
   Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,
                   Living and dying.

   NOTES:
   "A Grammarian's Funeral"  is an elegy of a typical pioneer
   scholar of the Renaissance period, sung by the leader of
   the chorus of disciples, and interspersed with parenthetical
   directions to them, while they all bear the body of
   their master to its appropriate burial-place on the highest
   mountain-peak.  A humorous sense of disproportion in
   the labors of devoted scholarship to its results heightens
   their exaltation of the dead humanist's indomitable trust
   in the supremacy of the immaterial.

   86.  Calculus:  the stone.

   88.  Tussis:  a cough.

   95.  Hydroptic:  dropsical.

   129.  Hoti:  Greek particle, conjunction, that.

   130.  Oun: Greek particle, then, now then.

   131.  Enclitic De:  Greek, concerning which Browning
   wrote to the Editor of The News, London, Nov. 21,
   1874:  "In a clever article you speak of 'the doctrine of
   the enclitic De--which, with all deference to Mr.
   Browning, in point of fact, does not exist.'  No, not to
   Mr. Browning, but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose
   fifth list of 'enclitics' ends with the inseparable De,'--
   or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning
   'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage).
   That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated
   'De, meaning but,' was the 'Doctrine' which the Grammarian
   bequeathed to those capable of receiving it."

THE HERETIC'S TRAGEDY

   A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE

   ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
           A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
           CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS-BY-
           THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE,
           Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG
           AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS
           ERAM, Jessides.

           (It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning
   of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314,
   as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain,
   during the course of a couple of centuries.)

           [Molay was Grand Master of the Templars
   when that order was suppressed in 1312.]

   PREADMONISHETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

   The Lord, we look to once for all,
           Is the Lord we should look at, all at once:
   He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul,
           Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce.
   See him no other than as he is!
           Give both the infinitudes their due--
   Infinite mercy, but, I wis,
           As infinite a justice too.

   [Organ: plagal-cadence.]

   As infinite a justice too.

   II

   [ONE SINGETH]
   John, Master of the Temple of God,                             10
           Falling to sin the Unknown Sin,
   What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod,
           He sold it to Sultan Saladin:
   Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there,
           Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive,
   And clipt of his wings in Paris square,
           They bring him now to be burned alive.
                           [And wanteth there grace of lute or
                                   clavicithern, ye shall say to
                                   confirm him who singeth--
           We bring John now to be burned alive.

   In the midst is a goodly gallows built;
           'Twixt fork and fork, a stake is stuck;                20
   But first they set divers tumbrils a-tilt,
           Make a trench all round with the city muck;
   Inside they pile log upon log, good store;
           Faggots no few, blocks great and small,
   Reach a man's mid-thigh, no less, no more,--
           For they mean he should roast in the sight of all.

   CHORUS.

           We mean he should roast in the sight of all.

   IV

   Good sappy bavins that kindle forthwith;
           Billets that blaze substantial and slow;
   Pine-stump split deftly, dry as pith;                          30
           Larch-heart that chars to a chalk-white glow:
   They up they hoist me John in a chafe,
           Sling him fast like a hog to scorch,
   Spit in his face, then leap back safe,
   Sing "Laudes" and bid clap-to the torch.

   CHORUS.

           Laus deo--who bids clap-to the torch.

   V

   John of the Temple, whose fame so bragged,
           Is burning alive in Paris square!
   How can he curse, if his mouth is gagged?
           Or wriggle his neck, with a collar there?              40
   Or heave his chest, which a band goes round?
           Or threat with his fist, since his arms are spliced?
   Or kick with his feet, now his legs are bound?
           --Thinks John, I will call upon Jesus Christ.
                                   [Here one crosseth himself.]

   VI

   Jesus Christ--John had bought and sold,
           Jesus Christ--John had eaten and drunk;
   To him, the Flesh meant silver and gold.
           (Salva reverentia.)
   Now it was, "Saviour, bountiful lamb,
           "I have roasted thee Turks, though men roast me!       50
   "See thy servant, the plight wherein I am!
           "Art thou a saviour? Save thou me!"

   CHORUS.

          'Tis John the mocker cries, "Save thou me!"

   VII

   Who maketh God's menace an idle word?
           --Saith, it no more means what it proclaims,
   Than a damsel's threat to her wanton bird?
           For she too prattles of ugly names.
   --Saith, he knoweth but one thing--what he knows?
           That God is good and the rest is breath;
   Why else is the same styled Sharon's rose?                     60
           Once a rose, ever a rose, he saith.

   CHORUS.

           O, John shall yet find a rose, he saith!

   VIII

   Alack, there be roses and roses, John!
           Some, honied of taste like your leman's  tongue:
   Some, bitter; for why? (roast gaily on!)
           Their tree struck root in devil's-dung.
   When Paul once reasoned of righteousness
           And of temperance and of judgment to come,
   Good Felix trembled, he could no less:
           John, snickering, crook'd his wicked thumb.            70

   CHORUS.

           What cometh to John of the wicked thumb?

   IX

   Ha ha, John plucketh now at his rose
           To rid himself of a sorrow at heart!
   Lo,--petal on petal, fierce rays unclose;
           Anther on anther, sharp spikes outstart;
   And with blood for dew, the bosom boils;
           And a gust of sulphur is all its smell;
   And lo, he is horribly in the toils
           Of a coal-black giant flower of hell!

   CHORUS.

           What maketh heaven, That maketh hell.                  80

   X

   So, as John called now, through the fire amain,
           On the Name, he had cursed with, all his life--
   To the Person, he bought and sold again--
           For the Face, with his daily buffets rife--
   Feature by feature It took its place:
           And his voice, like a mad dog's choking bark,
   At the steady whole of the Judge's face--
           Died. Forth John's soul flared into the dark.

   SUBJOINETH THE ABBOT DEODAET.

           God help all poor souls lost in the dark!

   NOTES:
   "The Heretic's Tragedy" is an Interlude imagined in the
   manner of the Middle Ages, and typically representing
   this period of human development in its quaint piety and
   prejudice, its childish delight in cruelty, and its cumulative
   legend-making during the course of two centuries as reflected
   through the Flemish nature.  It is supposed to be
   sung by an abbot, a choir-singer, and a chorus, in celebration
   of the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, last
   Grand Master of the wealthy and powerful secular order
   of Knights Templar, which came into rivalry with the
   Church after the Crusades and was finally suppressed by
   Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V, Molay's
   burning at Paris in 1314 being a final scene in their
   discomfiture and the Church's triumph.

   8.  Plagal-cadence: a closing progression of chords in
   which the sub-dominant or chord on the fourth degree of
   the scale precedes the tonic or chord on the first degree
   of the scale.  The name arises from the modes used in
   early church music called Plagal Modes, which were a
   transposition of the authentic modes beginning on the
   fourth degree of the authentic modes.

   12.  Bought of... Aldabrod, etc.:  Clement's arraignment
   of Jacques or John being that the riches won piously
   by the order during the Crusades, he had not scrupled to
   sell again to Saladin, the Sultan, who is portrayed by
   Scott in "The Talisman.''

   14.  Pope Clement:  the fifth Clement (1305-1314).

   18.  Clavicithern:  a cithern with keys like a harpsichord.

   25.  Sing "Laudes":  Sing the seven Psalms of praise
   making up the service of the Church called Lauds.

   48.  Salvâ, etc. the bidding to greet here with a reverence,
   according to custom, the Host, or Christ's flesh,
   which had been mentioned.

   60.  Sharon's rose:  Solomon's Song 2.1.

HOLY-CROSS DAY

   ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME

           [" Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord
   preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the
   merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb at least
   from her conspicuous table here in Rome should be, though but once
   yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon
   beneath the feet of the guests.  And a moving sight in truth, this, of
   so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now
   maternally brought-nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in') haled,
   as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts,
   to partake of the heavenly grace.  What awakening, what striving with
   tears, what working of a yeasty conscience!  Nor was my lord wanting
   to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions
   which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be
   altogether the glory."-Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.]

   What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather
   to this effect:--

   Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
   Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
   Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
   Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff,
   Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
   Gives us the summons--'tis sermon-time!

   II

   Boh, here's Barnabas! Job, that's you?
   Up stumps Solomon--bustling too?
   Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
   To handsel the bishop's shaving-shears?
   Fair play's a jewel! Leave friends in the lurch?               10
   Stand on a line ere you start for the church!

   Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,
   Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye,
   Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
   Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve.
   Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
   And buzz for the bishop--here he comes.

   IV

   Bow, wow, wow--a bone for the dog!
   I liken his Grace to an acorned hog.                           20
   What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass,
   To help and handle my lord's hour-glass!
   Didst ever behold so lithe a chine?
   His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.

   V

   Aaron's asleep--shove hip to haunch,
   Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch!
   Look at the purse with the tassel and knob
   And the gown with the angel and thingumbob!
   What's he at, quotha? reading his text!
   Now you've his curtsey--and what comes next?                   30

   VI

   See to our converts--you doomed black dozen--
   No stealing away--nor cog nor cozen!
   You five, that were thieves, deserve it fairly;
   You seven, that were beggars, will live less sparely;
   You took your turn and dipped in the hat,
   Got fortune--and fortune gets you; mind that!

   VII

   Give your first groan--compunction's at work
   And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
   Lo, Micah,--the selfsame beard on chin
   He was four times already converted in!                        40
   Here's a knife, clip quick--it's a sign of grace--
   Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.

   VIII

   Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?
   I know a point where his text falls pat.
   I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now
   Went to my heart and made me vow
   I meddle no more with the worst of trades--
   Let somebody else pay his serenades.

   IX

   Groan all together now, whee-hee-hee!
   It's a-work, it's a-work, ah, woe is me!                       50
   It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed,
   Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist;
   Jew brutes, with sweat and blood well spent
   To usher in worthily Christian Lent.

   X

   It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds,
   Yelled, pricked us out to his church like hounds:
   It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed
   Which gutted my purse would throttle my creed:
   And it overflows when, to even the odd,
   Men I helped to their sins help me to their God.               60

   XI

   But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,
   And the rest sit silent and count the clock,
   Since forced to muse the appointed time
   On these precious facts and truths sublime,
   Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,
   In saying Ben Ezra's Song of Death.

   XII

   For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,
   Called sons and sons' sons to his side,
   And spoke, "This world has been harsh and strange;
   Something is wrong: there needeth change.                      70
   But what, or where? at the last or first?
   In one point only we sinned, at worst.

   XIII

   "The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,
   And again in his border see Israel set.
   When Judah beholds Jerusalem,
   The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:
   To Jacob's House shall the Gentiles cleave.
   So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.

   XIV

   "Ay, the children of the chosen race
   Shall carry and bring them to their place:                     80
   In the land of the Lord shall lead the same
   Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame,
   When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er
   The oppressor triumph for evermore?

   XV

   "God spoke, and gave us the word to keep,
   Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
   'Mid a faithless world, at watch and ward,
   Till Christ at the end relieve our guard.
   By His servant Moses the watch was set:
   Though near upon cock-crow, we keep it yet.                    90

   XVI

   "Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
   By the starlight, naming a dubious name!
   And if, too heavy with sleep--too rash
   With fear--O Thou, if that martyr-gash
   Fell on Thee coming to take thine own,
   And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne--

   XVII

   "Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
   But, the Judgment over,  join sides with us!
   Thine too is the cause! and not more thine
   Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine,               100
   Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed!
   Who maintain Thee in word, and defy Thee in deed!

   XVIII

   "We withstood Christ then? Be mindful how
   At least we withstand Barabbas now!
   Was our outrage sore? But the worst we spared,
   To have called these--Christians, had we dared!
   Let defiance to them pay mistrust of Thee,
   And Rome make amends for Calvary!

   XIX

   "By the torture, prolonged from age to age,
   By the infamy, Israel's heritage,                             110
   By the Ghetto's plague, by the garb's disgrace,
   By the badge of shame, by the felon's place,
   By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,
   And the summons to Christian fellowship,--

   XX

   "We boast our proof that at least the Jew
   Would wrest Christ's name from the Devil's crew.
   Thy face took never so deep a shade
   But we fought them in it, God our aid!
   A trophy to bear, as we march, thy band,
   South, East, and on to the Pleasant Land!"                    120

   [Pope Gregory XVI abolished this bad business of the Sermon.
   --R. B.]

   NOTES:
   "Holy-Cross Day" reflects the attitude of the corrupt mediaeval
   Christians and Jews toward each other.  The prose
   preceding the poem gives the point of view of an imaginary
   Bishop's Secretary, who congratulates himself upon
   the good work the Church is doing in forcing its doctrine
   on the Jews in the Holy-Cross Day sermon, and effecting
   many conversions.  The poem shows that the Jews regard
   this solicitude on the part of the Christians with hatred
   and scorn, and that their conversions are in derision of
   their would-be converters. The sarcasm of the speaker
   reaches a pinnacle of bitterness when he accuses the
   Christian bishops of being men he had helped to their sins
   and who now help him to their God. From scorn toward
   such followers of Christ, he passes, in the contemplation
   of Rabbi Ben Ezra's death song, to a defence of Christ
   against these followers who profess but do not act his
   precepts, and a hope that if the Jews were mistaken in
   not accepting Christ, the tortures they now suffer will be
   received as expiation for their sin.

           Holy-Cross Day is September 14. The discovery of the
   true cross by Saint Helen inaugurated the festival, celebrated
   both by Latins and Greeks as early as the fifth or
   sixth century, under the title of the Exaltation of the
   Cross and later in commemoration of the alleged miraculous
   appearance of the Cross to Constantine in the sky
   at midday.  Though the particular incidents of the poem
   are not historical, it is a fact (see Milman's "History of the
   Jews'') that, by a Papal Bull issued by Gregory XIII in
   1584, all Jews above the age of twelve years were compelled
   to listen every week to a sermon from a Christian
   priest.

   52.  Corso:  a street in Rome

   67.  Rabbi Ben Ezra:  or Ibn Ezra, a mediaeval Jewish
   writer and thinker, born in Toledo, near the end of the
   eleventh century.

   III.  Ghetto:  the Jew's quarter.  Pope Paul IV first
   shut the Jews up in the Ghetto, and prohibited them from
   leaving it after sunset.

PROTUS

   Among these latter busts we count by scores,
   Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
   Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
   Loric and low-browed Gorgon on the breast,
   One loves a baby face, with violets there,
   Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
   As those were all the little locks could bear.

   Now, read here. "Protus ends a period
   Of empery beginning with a god;
   Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,                        10
   Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant:
   And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire
   Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
   A fame that he was missing spread afar:
   The world from its four corners, rose in war,
   Till he was borne out on a balcony
   To pacify the world when it should see.
   The captains ranged before him, one, his hand
   Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
   And day by day more beautiful he grew                          20
   In shape, all said, in feature and in hue,
   While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child,
   Became with old Greek sculpture reconciled.
   Already sages laboured to condense
   In easy tomes a life's experience:
   And artists took grave counsel to impart
   In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art,
   To make his graces prompt as blossoming
   Of plentifully-watered palms in spring:
   Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne,                30
   For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone,
   And mortals love the letters of his name."

   --Stop! Have you turned two pages?  Still the same.
   New reign, same date.  The scribe goes on to say
   How that same year, on such a month and day,
   "John the Pannonian, groundedly believed
   A blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved
   The Empire from its fate the year before,
   Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore
   The same for six years (during which the Huns                  40
   Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons
   Put something in his liquor"--and so forth.
   Then a new reign.  Stay--"Take at its just worth"
   (Subjoins an annotator) "what I give
   As hearsay.  Some think, John let Protus live
   And slip away.  'Tis said, he reached man's age
   At some blind northern court; made, first a page,
   Then tutor to the children; last, of use
   About the hunting-stables.  I deduce
   He wrote the little tract 'On worming dogs,'                   50
   Whereof the name in sundry catalogues
   Is extant yet.  A Protus of the race
   Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,
   And if the same, he reached senility."

   Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head.  Great eye,
   Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can
   To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!

   NOTES:
   "Protus" sets in contrast the representations by artist and
   annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the
   baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently
   nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John,
   the blacksmith's bastard, predestined to usurp his throne
   and save the empire with his harder hand.

THE STATUE AND THE BUST

   There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
   And a statue watches it from the square,
   And this story of both do our townsmen tell.

   Ages ago, a lady there,
   At the farthest window facing the East
   Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"

   The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased;
   She leaned forth, one on either hand;
   They saw how the blush of the bride increased--

   They felt by its beats her heart expand--                      10
   As one at each ear and both in a breath
   Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand."

   That self-same instant, underneath,
   The Duke rode past in his idle way,
   Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.

   Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,
   Till he threw his head back--"Who is she?"
   "A bride the Riccardi brings home to-day."

   Hair in heaps lay heavily
   Over a pale brow spirit-pure--                                 20
   Carved like the heart of a coal-black tree,

   Crisped like a war-steed's encolure--
   And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes
   Of the blackest black our eyes endure.

   And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise
   Filled the fine empty sheath of a man--
   The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.

   He looked at her, as a lover can;
   She looked at him, as one who awakes:
   The past was a sleep, and her life began.                      30

   Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,
   A feast was held that selfsame night
   In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.

   (For Via Larga is three-parts light,
   But the palace overshadows one,
   Because of a crime which may God requite!

   To Florence and God the wrong was done,
   Through the first republic's murder there
   By Cosimo and his cursed son.)

   The Duke (with the statue's face in the square)                40
   Turned in the midst of his multitude
   At the bright approach of the bridal pair.

   Face to face the lovers stood
   A single minute and no more,
   While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued--

   Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor--
   For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
   As the courtly custom was of yore.

   In a minute can lovers exchange a word?
   If a word did pass, which I do not think,                      50
   Only one out of the thousand heard.

   That was the bridegroom.  At day's brink
   He and his bride were alone at last
   In a bedchamber by a taper's blink.

   Calmly he said that her lot was cast,
   That the door she had passed was shut on her
   Till the final catafalk repassed.

   The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,
   Through a certain window facing the East,
   She could watch like a convent's chronicler.                   60

   Since passing the door might lead to a feast
   And a feast might lead to so much beside,
   He, of many evils, chose the least.

   "Freely I choose too," said the bride--
   "Your window and its world suffice,"
   Replied the tongue, while the heart replied--

   "If I spend the night with that devil twice,
   May his window serve as my loop of hell
   Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

   "I fly to the Duke who loves me well,                          70
   Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow!
   Ere I count another ave-bell,

   "'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,
   And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim,
   And I save my soul--but not to-morrow"--

   (She checked herself and her eye grew dim)
   "My father tarries to bless my state:
   I must keep it one day more for him.

   "Is one day more so long to wait?
   Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;                          80
   We shall see each other, sure as fate."

   She turned on her side and slept. Just so!
   So we resolve on a thing and sleep:
   So did the lady, ages ago.

   That night the Duke said, "Dear or cheap
   As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove
   To body or soul, I will drain it deep."

   And on the morrow, bold with love,
   He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,
   As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove)                        90

   And smiled, "'Twas a very funeral,
   Your lady will think, this feast of ours,
   A shame to efface, whate'er befall!

   "What if we break from the Arno bowers,
   And try if Petraja, cool and green,
   Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?"

   The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen
   On his steady brow and quiet mouth,
   Said, "Too much favour for me so mean!

   "But, alas! my lady leaves the South;                         100
   Each wind that comes from the Apennine
   Is a menace to her tender youth:

   "Nor a way exists, the wise opine,
   If she quits her palace twice this year,
   To avert the flower of life's decline."

   Quoth the Duke, "A sage and a kindly fear.
   Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:
   Be our feast to-night as usual here!"

   And then to himself--"Which night shall bring
   Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool--                     110
   Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

   "Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool--
   For to-night the Envoy arrives from France
   Whose heart I unlock with thyself my tool.

   "I need thee still and might miss perchance.
   To-day is not wholly lost, beside,
   With its hope of my lady's countenance:

   "For I ride--what should I do but ride?
   And passing her palace, if I list,
   May glance at its window-well betide!"                        120

   So said, so done: nor the lady missed
   One ray that broke from the ardent brow,
   Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

   Be sure that each renewed the vow,
   No morrow's sun should arise and set
   And leave them then as it left them now.

   But next day passed, and next day yet,
   With still fresh cause to wait one day more
   Ere each leaped over the parapet.

   And still, as love's brief morning wore,                      130
   With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,
   They found love not as it seemed before.

   They thought it would work infallibly,
   But not in despite of heaven and earth:
   The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

   Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth
   By store of fruits that supplant the rose:
   The world and its ways have a certain worth:

   And to press a point while these oppose
   Were simple policy; better wait:                              140
   We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

   Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate
   Who daily may ride and pass and look
   Where his lady watches behind the grate!

   And she--she watched the square like a book
   Holding one picture and only one,
   Which daily to find she undertook:

   When the picture was reached the book was done,
   And she turned from the picture at night to scheme
   Of tearing it out for herself next sun.                       150

   So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
   The glory dropped from their youth and love,
   And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

   Which hovered as dreams do, still above:
   But who can take a dream for a truth?
   Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

   One day as the lady saw her youth
   Depart, and the silver thread that streaked
   Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

   The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,                     160
   And wondered who the woman was,
   Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

   Fronting her silent in the glass--
   "Summon here," she suddenly said,
   "Before the rest of my old self pass,

   "Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,
   Who fashions the clay no love will change
   And fixes a beauty never to fade.

   "Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange
   Arrest the remains of young and fair,                         170
   And rivet them while the seasons range.

   "Make me a face on the window there,
   Waiting as ever, mute the while,
   My love to pass below in the square!

   "And let me think that it may beguile
   Dreary days which the dead must spend
   Down in their darkness under the aisle,

   "To say, 'What matters it at the end?
   'I did no more while my heart was warm
   Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'                  180

   "Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
   The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
   And the blood that blues the inside arm--

   "Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
   The earthly gift to an end divine?
   A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

   But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine,
   With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,
   Was set where now is the empty shrine--

   (And, leaning out of a bright blue space,                     190
   As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,
   The passionate pale lady's face--

   Eyeing ever, with earnest eye
   And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,
   Some one who ever is passing by)

   The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch
   In Florence, "Youth--my dream escapes!
   Will its record stay?"  And he bade them fetch

   Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes--
   "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man                     200
   Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

   "John of Douay shall effect my plan,
   Set me on horseback here aloft,
   Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

   "In the very square I have crossed so oft:
   That men may admire, when future suns
   Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

   "While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze--
   Admire and say, 'When he was alive
   How he would take his pleasure once!'                         210

   "And it shall go hard but I contrive
   To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb
   At idleness which aspires to strive."

    --------------------------------

   So!  While these wait the trump of doom,
   How do their spirits pass, I wonder,
   Nights and days in the narrow room?

   Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder
   What a gift life was, ages ago,
   Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

   Only they see not God, I know,                                220
   Nor all that chivalry of his,
   The soldier-saints who, row on row,

   Burn upward each to his point of bliss--
   Since, the end of life being manifest,
   He had burned his way thro' the world to this.

   I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,
   For their end was a crime."  Oh, a crime will do
   As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

   As a virtue golden through and through,
   Sufficient to vindicate itself                                230
   And prove its worth at a moment's view!

   Must a game be played for the sake of pelf
   Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram
   To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

   The true has no value beyond the sham:
   As well the counter as coin, I submit,
   When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

   Stake your counter as boldly every whit,
   Venture as warily, use the same skill,
   Do your best, whether winning or losing it,                   240

   If you choose to play!--is my principle.
   Let a man contend to the uttermost
   For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

   The counter our lovers staked was lost
   As surely as if it were lawful coin:
   And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

   Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
   Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
   You of the virtue (we issue join)
   How strive you?  De te, fabula!                               250

   NOTES:
   "The Statue and the Bust" creates the characters and the
   situation, and dramatically represents a story which is based
   on a Florentine tradition that Duke Ferdinand I placed
   his equestrian statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata so that
   he might gaze forever towards the old Riccardi Palace,
   where a lady he loved was imprisoned by her jealous husband.
   The bride and her ducal lover are seen exchanging
   their first looks, through which they perceive the genuineness
   of their love; and the temporizing of each is presented,
   through which, for the sake of petty conveniences,
   they submit to be thwarted by the wary husband, and to
   have the end they count supreme delayed until love and
   youth have gone, and the best left them is the artificial
   gaze interchanged by a bronze statue in the square and a
   clay face at the window.  The closing stanzas point the
   moral against the palsy of the will, whose strenuous exercise
   is life's main gift.

   I.  There's a palace in Florence:  refers to the old
   Riccardi Palace, now the Palazzo Antinori, in the square
   of the Annunziata, where the statue still stands.

   22.  encolure:  neck and shoulder of a horse

   33.  The pile which the mighty shadow makes:  refers to
   another palace in the Via Larga where the duke (not the
   lady) lived, and which is to-day known as the Riccardi
   Palace.  Cooke's "Browning Guide Book" and Berdoe's
   "Browning Cyclopaedia" both confuse the two, attributing
   error to Browning in spite of his letter about it.  This
   confusion was cleared up by Harriet Ford (Poet-lore, Dec.
   1891, vol. iii. p. 648, "Browning right about the Riccardi Palace'').

   36.  Because of a crime, etc.:  refers to the destroying of
   the liberties of the Florentine republic by Cosimo dei
   Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo, who lived in the then
   Medici (now Riccardi) Palace, whose darkening of the
   street with its bulk symbolizes the crime which took the
   light from Florence.

   57.  catafalk:  the stage or scaffolding for a coffin whilst in the church

   94.  Arno bowers:  the palace by the Arno, the river
   flowing through Florence.

   95.  Petraja:  a Florentine suburb.

   169.  Robbia's craft:  the Robbia family were skilled in
   shaping the bisque known as Della Robbia ware which
   was long one of the Florentine manufactures, and traces
   of which, when Browning wrote, still adorned the outer
   cornice of the palace.

   202.  John of Douay [Giovanni of Bologna], sculptor (1524-1608).
   The statue is one of his finest works.

   250.  De te, fabula! Concerning thee, this fable!

PORPHYRIA'S LOVER

   The rain set early in to-night,
           The sullen wind was soon awake,
   It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
           And did its worst to vex the lake:
           I listened with heart fit to break.
   When glided in Porphyria; straight
           She shut the cold out and the storm,
   And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
           Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
           Which done, she rose, and from her form                10
   Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
           And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
   Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
           And, last, she sat down by my side
           And called me. When no voice replied,
   She put my arm about her waist,
           And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
   And all her yellow hair displaced,
           And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
           And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,                 20
   Murmuring how she loved me--she
           Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
   To set its struggling passion free
           From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
           And give herself to me for ever.
   But passion sometimes would prevail,
           Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
   A sudden thought of one so pale
           For love of her, and all in vain:
           So, she was come through wind and rain.                30

   Be sure I looked up at her eyes
           Happy and proud; at last I knew
   Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
           Made my heart swell, and still it grew
           While I debated what to do.
   That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
           Perfectly pure and good: I found
   A thing to do, and all her hair
           In one long yellow string I wound
           Three times her little throat around,                  40
   And strangled her.  No pain felt she;
           I am quite sure she felt no pain.
   As a shut bud that holds a bee,
           I warily oped her lids: again
           Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
   And I untightened next the tress
           About her neck; her cheek once more
   Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
           I propped her head up as before,
           Only, this time my shoulder bore                       50
   Her head, which droops upon it still:
           The smiling rosy little head,
   So glad it has its utmost will,
           That all it scorned at once is fled,
   And I, its love, am gained instead!
   Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
           Her darling one wish would be heard.
   And thus we sit together now,
           And all night long we have not stirred,
           And yet God has not said a word!                       60

   NOTES:
   "Porphyria's Lover" relates how, by strangling Porphyria
   with her own yellow hair, the lover seized and preserved
   the moment of perfect love when, pure and good, Porphyria
   left the world she could not forego for his sake,
   and came to him, for once conquered by her love.  A
   latent misgiving as to his action is intimated in the closing
   line of the poem.
           Remarking upon the fact that Browning removed the
   original title, "Madhouse Cells," which headed this poem,
   and "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," Mrs. Orr says:
   "Such a crime might be committed in a momentary
   aberration, or even intense excitement of feeling.  It is
   characterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which is
   its sign of madness.  The distinction, however, is subtle;
   and we can easily guess why this and its companion poem
   did not retain their title.  A madness which is fit for
   dramatic treatment is not sufficiently removed from
   sanity."

"CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME."

   (See Edgar's song in "LEAR.")

   My first thought was, he lied in every word,
           That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
           Askance to watch the working of his lie
   On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
   Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
           Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

   II

   What else should he be set for, with his staff?
           What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
           All travellers who might find him posted there,        10
   And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
   Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
           For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

   If at his counsel I should turn aside
           Into that ominous tract which, all agree
           Hides the Dark Tower.  Yet acquiescingly
   I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
   Nor hope rekindling at the end descried
           So much as gladness that some end might be.

   IV

   For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
           What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope     20
           Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
   With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
   I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
           My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

   V

   As when a sick man very near to death
           Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
           The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
   And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
   Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
           "And the blow fallen no grieving can amend");          30

   VI

   While some discuss if near the other graves
           Be room enough for this, and when a day
           Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
   With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
   And still the man hears all, and only craves
           He may not shame such tender love and stay.

   VII

   Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
           Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
           So many times among "The Band"--to wit,
   The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed           40
   Their steps--that just to fail as they, seemed best,
           And all the doubt was now--should I be fit?

   VIII

   So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
           That hateful cripple, out of his highway
           Into the path he pointed.  All the day
   Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
   Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
           Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

   IX

   For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
           Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,             50
           Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
   O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
   Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
           I might go on; nought else remained to do.

   X

   So, on I went.  I think I never saw
           Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
           For flowers-as well expect a cedar grove!
   But cockle, spurge, according to their law
   Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
           You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.         60

   XI

   No! penury, inertness and grimace,
           In some strange sort, were the land's portion.  "See
           Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
   "It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
   'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
           Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."

   XII

   If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
           Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
           Were jealous else.  What made those holes and rents
   In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk         70
   All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
           Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

   XIII

   As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
           In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
           Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
   One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
   Stood stupefied, however he came there:
           Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

   XIV

   Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
           With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,        80
           And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
   Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
   I never saw a brute I hated so;
           He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

   XV

   I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
           As a man calls for wine before he fights,
           I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
   Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
   Think first, fight afterwards--the soldier's art:
           One taste of the old time sets all to rights.          90

   XVI

   Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
           Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
           Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
   An arm in mine to fix me to the place
   That way he used.  Alas, one night's disgrace!
           Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

   XVII

   Giles then, the soul of honour--there he stands
           Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
           What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
   Good-=but the scene shifts--faugh! what hangman hands         100
   Pin to his breast a parchment?  His own bands
           Read it.  Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

   XVIII

   Better this present than a past like that;
           Back therefore to my darkening path again!
           No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
   Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
   I asked: when something on the dismal flat
           Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

   XIX

   A sudden little river crossed my path
           As unexpected as a serpent comes.                     110
           No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
   This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
   For the fiend's glowing hoof--to see the wrath
           Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

   XX

   So petty yet so spiteful!  All along,
           Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it
           Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
   Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
   The river which had done them all the wrong,
           Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.       120

   XXI

   Which, while I forded,--good saints, how I feared
           To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
           Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
   For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
   --It may have been a water-rat I speared,
           But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

   XXII

   Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
           Now for a better country.  Vain presage!
           Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
   Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank                  130
   Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
           Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage--

   XXIII

   The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
           What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
           No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
   None out of it.  Mad brewage set to work
   Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
              Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

   XXIV

   And more than that--a furlong on--why, there!
           What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,         140
           Or brake, not wheel--that harrow fit to reel
   Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
   Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware
           Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

   XXV

   Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
           Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
           Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
   Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
   Changes and off he goes!) within a rood--
           Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.    150

   XXVI

   Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
           Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
           Broke into moss or substances like boils;
   Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
   Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
           Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

   XXVII

   And just as far as ever from the end!
           Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
           To point my footstep further! At the thought
   A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,                  160
   Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
           That brushed my cap--perchance the guide I sought.

   XXVIII

   For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
           'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
           All round to mountains--with such name to grace
   Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
   How thus they had surprised me,--solve it, you!
           How to get from them was no clearer case.

   XXIX

   Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
           Of mischief happened to me, God knows when--          170
           In a bad dream perhaps.   Here ended, then,
   Progress this way.  When, in the very nick
   Of giving up, one time more, came a click
           As when a trap shuts--you're inside the den!

   XXX

   Burningly it came on me all at once,
           This was the place! those two hills on the right
           Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
   While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
   Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
           After a life spent training for the sight!            180

   XXXI

   What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
           The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
           Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
   In the whole world.  The tempest's mocking elf
   Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
           He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

   XXXII

   Not see? because of night perhaps?--why, day
           Came back again for that! before it left,
           The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
   The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,                     190
   Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,--
           "Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"

   XXXIII

   Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
           Increasing like a bell.  Names in my ears
           Of all the lost adventurers my peers,--
   How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
   And such was fortunate, yet each of old
           Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

   XXXIV

   There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
           To view the last of me, a living frame                200
           For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
   I saw them and I knew them all.  And yet
   Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
           And blew.  "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

   NOTES:
   "Childe Roland" symbolizes the conquest of despair by fealty
   to the ideal. Browning emphatically disclaimed any precise
   allegorical intention in this poem.  He acknowledged
   only an ideal purport in which the significance of the
   whole, as suggesting a vision of life and the saving power
   of constancy, had its due place.  Certain picturesque
   materials which had made their impressions on the poet's
   mind contributed towards the building up of this realistic
   fantasy:  a tower he saw in the Carrara Mountains; a
   painting which caught his eye later in Paris; the figure of
   a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room--welded
   together with the remembrance of the line cited from
   King Lear, iii. 4, 187, which last, it should be remembered,
   has a background of ballads and legend cycles
   of which a man like Browning was not unaware.  For
   allegorical schemes of the Poem see Nettleship's "Essays
   and Thoughts," and The Critic, Apr. 24, 1886; for an
   antidote to these, The Critic, May 8, 1886; an orthodox
   view, Poet-lore, Nov. 1890: for interpretations touching
   on the ballad sources, London Browning Society Papers,
   part iii. p. 21, and Poet-lore, Aug.-Sept. 1892.