In a Copy of Browning

Browning, old fellow,Your leaves grow yellow,Beginning to mellowAs seasons pass.Your cover is wrinkled,And stained and sprinkled,And warped and crinkledFrom sleep on the grass.

Is it a wine stain,Or only a pine stain,That makes such a fine stainOn your dull blue,--Got as we numberedThe clouds that lumberedSouthward and slumberedWhen day was through?

What is the dear markThere like an earmark,Only a tear markA woman let fall?--As bending overShe bade me discover,"Who plays the lover,He loses all!"

With you for teacherWe learned love's featureIn every creatureThat roves or grieves;When winds were brawling,Or bird-folk calling,Or leaf-folk falling,About our eaves.

No law must straitenThe ways they wait in,Whose spirits greatenAnd hearts aspire.The world may dwindle,And summer brindle,So love but kindleThe soul to fire.

Here many a red line,Or pencilled headline,Shows love could wed lineTo golden sense;And something betterThan wisdom's fetterHas made your letterDense to the dense.

No April robin,Nor clacking bobbin,Can make of DobbinA Pegasus;But Nature's pleadingTo man's unheeding,Your subtile readingMade clear to us.

You made us farersAnd equal sharersWith homespun wearersIn home-made joys;You made us princesNo plea convincesThat spirit wincesAt dust and noise.

When Fate was nagging,And days were dragging,And fancy lagging,You gave it scope,--When eaves were drippy,And pavements slippy,--From Lippo LippiTo Evelyn Hope.

When winter's arrowPierced to the marrow,And thought was narrow,You gave it room;We guessed the warderOn Roland's border,And helped to orderThe Bishop's Tomb.

When winds were harshish,And ways were marshish,We found with KarshishEscape at need;Were bold with WaringIn far seafaring,And strong in snaringBen Ezra's creed.

We felt the menaceOf lovers pen us,Afloat in VeniceDevising fibs;And little matteredThe rain that pattered,While Blougram chatteredTo Gigadibs.

And we too waitedWith heart elatedAnd breathing bated,For Pippa's song;Saw Satan hover,With wings to coverPorphyria's lover,Pompilia's wrong.

Long thoughts were started,When youth departedFrom the half-heartedRiccardi's bride;For, saith your fable,Great Love is ableTo slip the cableAnd take the tide.

Or truth compels usWith Paracelsus,Till nothing else isOf worth at all.Del Sarto's visionIs our own mission,And art's ambitionIs God's own call.

Through all the seasons,You gave us reasonsFor splendid treasonsTo doubt and fear;Bade no foot falter,Though weaklings palter,And friendships alterFrom year to year.

Since first I sought you,Found you and bought you,Hugged you and brought youHome from Cornhill,While some upbraid you,And some parade you,Nine years have made youMy master still.

The body is no prison where we lieShut out from our true heritage of sun;It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly.Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon,No ray of light had reached the caverned mind,No thrill of pleasure through the life had run,No love of nature or of humankind,Were it but love of self, had stirred the heartTo its first deed. Such freedom as we find,We find but through its service, not apart.And as an eagle's wings upbear him higherThan Andes or Himalaya, and chartRivers and seas beneath; so our desire,With more celestial members yet, may soarInto the space of empyrean fire,Still bodied but more richly than before.

The body is the man; what lurks behindThrough it alone unveils itself. ThereforeWe are not wrong, who seek to keep in mindThe form and feature of the mighty dead.So back of all the giving is divinedThe giver, back of all things done or saidThe man himself in elemental speechOf flesh and bone and sinew uttered.

This is thy language, Sculpture. Thine to reachBeneath all thoughts, all feelings, all desires,To that which thinks and lives and loves, and teachThe world the primal selfhood of its sires,Its heroes and its lovers and its gods.So shall Apollo flame in marble fires,The mien of Zeus suffice before he nods,So Gautama in ivory dream outThe calm of Time's untrammelled periods,So Sigurd's lips be in themselves a shout.

Mould us our Shakespeare, sculptor, in the formHis comrades knew, rare Ben and all the routThat found the taproom of the Mermaid warmWith wit and wine and fellowship, the faceWherein the men he chummed with found a charmTo make them love him; carve for us the graceThat caught Anne Hathaway in Shottery-side,The hand that clasped Southampton's in the daysEre that dark dame, of passion and of prideBurned in his heart the brand of her disdain,The eyes that wept when little Hamnet died,The lips that learned from Marlowe's and againTaught riper lore to Fletcher and the rest,The presence and demeanor sovereignAt last at Stratford calm and manifest,That rested on the seventh day and scannedHis work and knew it good, and left the questAnd like his own enchanter broke his wand.

No viewless mind! The very shape, no less,He used to speak and smile with, move and stand!God is most God not in his loneliness,Unfellowed, discreationed, unrevealed,Nor thundering on Sinai, pitiless,Nor when the seven vials are unsealed,But when his spirit companions with our thoughtAnd in his fellowship our pain is healed;And we are likest God when we are broughtMost near to all men. Bring us near to him,The gentle, human soul whose calm might wroughtImperious Lear and made our eyes grow dimFor Imogen,--who, though he heard the spheres"Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim,"Could laugh with Falstaff and his loose compeersAnd love the rascal with the same big heartThat o'er Cordelia could not stay its tears.

For still the man is greater than his art.And though thy men and women, Shakespeare, riseLike giants in our fancy and depart,Thyself art more than all their masteries,Thy wisdom more than Hamlet's questioningsOr the cold searching of Ulysses' eyes,Thy mirth more sweet than Benedick's flouts and flings,Thy smiling dearer than Mercutio's,Thy dignity past that of all thy kings,And thy enchantment more than Prospero's.

For thou couldst not have had Othello's flaw,Not erred with Brutus,--greater, then, than thoseFor all their nobleness. Oh, albeit with awe,Leave we the mighty phantoms and draw nearThe man that fashioned them and gave them law!The Master Poet found with scarce a peerIn all the ages his domain to share,Yet of all singers gentlest and most dear!Oh, how shall words thy proper praise declare,Divine in thy supreme humanityAnd near as the inevitable air?

So he that wrought this image deemed of thee;So I, thy lover, keep thee in my heart;So may this figure set for men to seeWhere the world passes eager for the mart,Be as a sudden insight of the soulThat makes a darkness into order start,And lift thee up for all men, fair and whole,Till scholar, merchant farmer, artisan,Seeing, divine beneath the aureoleThe fellow heart and know thee for a man.