Delphi Poetry Anthology: The World's Greatest Poems (Delphi Poets Series Book 50) (261 page)

A Toccata of Galuppi’s

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

OH Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, ’tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here’s all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
  
5
Where St. Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea’s the street there, and ’tis arched by … what you call
… Shylock’s bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England — it’s as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
  
10
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red, —
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?
  
15

Well, and it was graceful of them — they’d break talk off and afford
 
— She, to bite her mask’s black velvet — he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions— “Must we die?”
  
20
Those commiserating sevenths— “Life might last! we can but try!”

“Were you happy?”— “Yes.”— “And are you still as happy?”— “Yes. And you?”
— “Then, more kisses!”— “Did
I
stop them, when a million seemed so few?”
Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to!

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
  
25
“Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!”

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.
  
30

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
“Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
  
35
The soul, doubtless, is immortal — where a soul can be discerned.

“Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction, — you’ll not die, it cannot be!

“As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
  
40
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

“Dust and ashes!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dear women, with such hair, too — what’s become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.
  
45

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

Memorabilia

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

AH, did you once see Shelley plain,
 
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again?
 
How strange it seems and new!

But you were living before that,
  
5
 
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at —
 
My starting moves your laughter!

I crossed a moor, with a name of its own
 
And a certain use in the world no doubt,
  
10
Yet a hand’s-breadth of it shines alone
 
‘Mid the blank miles round about:

For there I picked up on the heather
 
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
  
15
 
Well, I forget the rest.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

The Patriot

An Old Story

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

IT was roses, roses, all the way,
 
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad:
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
 
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.
  
5

The air broke into a mist with bells,
 
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good folk, mere noise repels —
 
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”
  
10

Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
 
To give it my loving friends to keep!
Naught man could do, have I left undone:
 
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
  
15

There’s nobody on the house-tops now —
 
Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
 
At the Shambles’ Gate — or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
  
20

I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
 
A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
 
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
  
25

Thus I entered, and thus I go!
 
In triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
“Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
 
Me?” — God might question; now instead,
’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.
  
30

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order

A Grammarian’s Funeral

Shortly After the Revival of Learning in Europe

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

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,
  
5
 
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,
  
15
 
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,
  
25
 
‘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 the lived nameless: how should Spring take note
  
35
 
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 mountainside,
 
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
  
45
 
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,
  
55
 
“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,
  
65
 
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
  
75
 
(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:
  
85
 
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)
  
95
 
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
  
105
 
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,
  
115
 
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,
  
125
 
Ground he at grammar;
Still, through 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,
  
135
 
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:
  
145
 
Loftily lying,
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects,
 
Living and dying.

List of Poems in Alphabetical Order

List of Poets in Alphabetical Order