Browning's England Part 2

I

What's become of Waring Since he gave us all the slip, Chose land-travel or seafaring, Boots and chest or staff and scrip, Rather than pace up and down Any longer London town?

II

Who'd have guessed it from his lip Or his brow's accustomed bearing, On the night he thus took s.h.i.+p Or started landward?--little caring For us, it seems, who supped together (Friends of his too, I remember) And walked home thro' the merry weather, The snowiest in all December.

I left his arm that night myself For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet Who wrote the book there, on the shelf-- How, forsooth, was I to know it If Waring meant to glide away Like a ghost at break of day?

Never looked he half so gay!

III

He was prouder than the devil: How he must have cursed our revel!

Ay and many other meetings, Indoor visits, outdoor greetings, As up and down he paced this London, With no work done, but great works undone, Where scarce twenty knew his name.

Why not, then, have earlier spoken, Written, bustled? Who's to blame If your silence kept unbroken?

"True, but there were sundry jottings, Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings, Certain first steps were achieved Already which"--(is that your meaning?) "Had well borne out whoe'er believed In more to come!" But who goes gleaning Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening Pride alone, puts forth such claims O'er the day's distinguished names.

IV

Meantime, how much I loved him, I find out now I've lost him.

I who cared not if I moved him, Who could so carelessly accost him, Henceforth never shall get free Of his ghostly company, His eyes that just a little wink As deep I go into the merit Of this and that distinguished spirit-- His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink, As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous Demoniaco-seraphic Penman's latest piece of graphic.

Nay, my very wrist grows warm With his dragging weight of arm.

E'en so, swimmingly appears, Through one's after-supper musings, Some lost lady of old years With her beauteous vain endeavor And goodness unrepaid as ever; The face, accustomed to refusings, We, puppies that we were.... Oh never Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled Being aught like false, forsooth, to?

Telling aught but honest truth to?

What a sin, had we centupled Its possessor's grace and sweetness!

No! she heard in its completeness Truth, for truth's a weighty matter, And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!

Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt From d.a.m.ning us thro' such a sally; And so she glides, as down a valley, Taking up with her contempt, Past our reach; and in, the flowers Shut her unregarded hours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rydal Mount, the Home of Wordsworth]

V

Oh, could I have him back once more, This Waring, but one half-day more!

Back, with the quiet face of yore, So hungry for acknowledgment Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.

Feed, should not he, to heart's content?

I'd say, "to only have conceived, Planned your great works, apart from progress, Surpa.s.ses little works achieved!"

I'd lie so, I should be believed.

I'd make such havoc of the claims Of the day's distinguished names To feast him with, as feasts an ogress Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!

Or as one feasts a creature rarely Captured here, unreconciled To capture; and completely gives Its pettish humors license, barely Requiring that it lives.

VI

Ichabod, Ichabod, The glory is departed!

Travels Waring East away?

Who, of knowledge, by hearsay, Reports a man upstarted Somewhere as a G.o.d, Hordes grown European-hearted, Millions of the wild made tame On a sudden at his fame?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar, With the demurest of footfalls Over the Kremlin's pavement bright With serpentine and syenite, Steps, with five other Generals That simultaneously take snuff, For each to have pretext enough And kerchiefwise unfold his sash Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff To hold fast where a steel chain snaps, And leave the grand white neck no gash?

Waring in Moscow, to those rough Cold northern natures born perhaps, Like the lambwhite maiden dear From the circle of mute kings Unable to repress the tear, Each as his sceptre down he flings, To Dian's fane at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave h.e.l.lenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter!

In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!

Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and s.h.i.+ne, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold blazing pall From some black coffin-lid.

Or, best of all, I love to think The leaving us was just a feint; Back here to London did he slink, And now works on without a wink Of sleep, and we are on the brink Of something great in fresco-paint: Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor, Up and down and o'er and o'er He splashes, as none splashed before Since great Caldara Polidore.

Or Music means this land of ours Some favor yet, to pity won By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,-- "Give me my so-long promised son, Let Waring end what I begun!"

Then down he creeps and out he steals Only when the night conceals His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time, Or hops are picking: or at prime Of March he wanders as, too happy, Years ago when he was young, Some mild eve when woods grew sappy And the early moths had sprung To life from many a trembling sheath Woven the warm boughs beneath; While small birds said to themselves What should soon be actual song, And young gnats, by tens and twelves, Made as if they were the throng That crowd around and carry aloft The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure, Out of a myriad noises soft, Into a tone that can endure Amid the noise of a July noon When all G.o.d's creatures crave their boon, All at once and all in tune, And get it, happy as Waring then, Having first within his ken What a man might do with men: And far too glad, in the even-glow, To mix with the world he meant to take Into his hand, he told you, so-- And out of it his world to make, To contract and to expand As he shut or oped his hand.

Oh Waring, what's to really be?

A clear stage and a crowd to see!

Some Garrick, say, out shall not he The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?

Or, where most unclean beasts are rife, Some Junius--am I right?--shall tuck His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!

Some Chatterton shall have the luck Of calling Rowley into life!

Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world for want of strife Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?

Our men scarce seem in earnest now.

Distinguished names!--but 'tis, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games Of children. Turn our sport to earnest With a visage of the sternest!

Bring the real times back, confessed Still better than our very best!

II

I

"When I last saw Waring...."

(How all turned to him who spoke!

You saw Waring? Truth or joke?

In land-travel or sea-faring?)

II

"We were sailing by Triest Where a day or two we harbored: A sunset was in the West, When, looking over the vessel's side, One of our company espied A sudden speck to larboard.

And as a sea-duck flies and swims At once, so came the light craft up, With its sole lateen sail that trims And turns (the water round its rims Dancing, as round a sinking cup) And by us like a fish it curled, And drew itself up close beside, Its great sail on the instant furled, And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried, (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's) 'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?

Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?

A pilot for you to Triest?

Without one, look you ne'er so big, They'll never let you up the bay!

We natives should know best.'

I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'

Our captain said, 'The 'long-sh.o.r.e thieves Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

III

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back; And one, half-hidden by his side Under the furled sail, soon I spied, With great gra.s.s hat and kerchief black, Who looked up with his kingly throat, Said somewhat, while the other shook His hair back from his eyes to look Their longest at us; then the boat, I know not how, turned sharply round, Laying her whole side on the sea As a leaping fish does; from the lee Into the weather, cut somehow Her sparkling path beneath our bow, And so went off, as with a bound, Into the rosy and golden half O' the sky, to overtake the sun And reach the sh.o.r.e, like the sea-calf Its singing cave; yet I caught one Glance ere away the boat quite pa.s.sed, And neither time nor toil could mar Those features: so I saw the last Of Waring!"--You? Oh, never star Was lost here but it rose afar!

Look East, where whole new thousands are!

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

"May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of grief for the death of a friend.

MAY AND DEATH

I

I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things; Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.

II