Chapter II: Introduction: Life of Browning (1)

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London, May 7, 1812. He was contemporary with Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne, Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Dumas, Hugo, Mendelssohn, Wagner, and a score of other men famous in art and science.

Browning's good fortune began with his birth. His father, a clerk in the Bank of England, possessed ample means for the education of his children. He had artistic and literary tastes, a mind richly stored with philosophy, history, literature, and legend, some repute as a maker of verses, and a liberality that led him to assist his gifted son in following his bent. From his father Robert inherited his literary tastes and his vigorous health; in his father he found a critic and companion. His mother was described by Carlyle as a type of the true Scotch gentlewoman. Her "fathomless charity," her love of music, and her deep religious feeling reappear in the poet.

Free from struggles with adversity, and devoid of public or stirring incidents, the story of Browning's life is soon told. It was the life of a scholar and man of letters, devoted to the study of poetry, philosophy, history; to the contemplation of the lives of men and women; and to the exercise of his chosen vocation.

His school life was of meagre extent. He attended a private academy, read at home under a tutor, and for two years attended the University of London. When asked in his later life whether he had been to Oxford or Cambridge, he used to say, "Italy was my University," And, indeed, his many poems on Italian themes bear testimony to the profound influence of Italy upon him. In his teens, he came under the influence of Pope and Byron, and wrote verses after their styles. Then Shelley came by accident in his way, and became to the boy the model of poetic excellence.

In 1838 appeared his first published poem, _Pauline_. It bears the marks of his peculiar genius; it has the germs of his merits and his defects. Though not widely read, it received favorable notice from some of the critics. In 1835 appeared _Paracelsus_, in 1837 _Strafford_, in 1840 _Sordello_. From this time on, for the fifty remaining years of his life, his poetic activity hardly ceased, though his poetry was of uneven excellence. The middle period of his work, beginning with _Bells and Pomegranates_ in 1842, and ending with _Balaustion's Adventure_ (a transcript of Euripides' _Alcestis_) in 1871, was by far the richest in poetic value.

In 1846 he married Elizabeth Barrett, the poet. They left England for Italy, where, because of Mrs. Browning's feeble health, they continued to reside until her death in 1861. The remainder of his life was divided between England and Italy, with frequent visits to southern France. His reputation as a poet had steadily grown. He was now one of the best known men in England. His mental activity continued unabated to the end. Within the last thirty years of his life he wrote _The Ring and the Book_--his longest work, one of the longest and, intellectually, one of the greatest, of English poems; translated the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus and the _Alcestis_ of Euripides; published many shorter poems; kept up the studies which had always been his labor and his pastime; and found leisure also to know a wide circle of men and women. William Sharp gives a pleasing picture of the last years of his life: "Everybody wished him to come and dine; and he did his utmost to gratify Everybody. He saw everything; read all the notable books; kept himself acquainted with the leading contents of the journals and magazines; conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German, and Italian books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Æschylus: knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios; was a frequenter of afternoon tea-parties; and then, over and above it, he was Browning: the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself in poetry since Shakespeare."[1]

He died in Venice, on December 12, 1889, and was buried in the poet's corner of Westminster Abbey.

[Footnote 1: Sharp's _Life of Browning_.]

BROWNING AS POET

The three generations of readers who have lived since Browning's first publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep for common mortals to fathom with line and plummet,--concealing below green depths of ocean priceless gems of thought and feeling; to the third, a poet full of inequalities in conception and expression, who has done many good things well and has made many grave failures.

No poet in our generation has fared so ill at the hands of the critics. Already the Browning library is large. Some of the criticism is good; much of it, regarding the author as philosopher and symbolist, is totally askew. Reams have been written in interpretation of _Childe Roland_, an imaginative fantasy composed in one day. Abstruse ideas have been wrested from the simple story of _My Last Duchess_. His poetry has been the stamping-ground of theologians and the centre of prattling literary circles. In this tortuous maze of futile criticism the one thing lost sight of is the fact that a poet must be judged by the standards of art. It must be confessed, however, that Browning is himself to blame for much of the smoke of commentary that has gathered round him. He has often chosen the oblique expression where the direct would serve better; often interpolated his own musing subtleties between the reader and the life he would present; often followed his theme into intricacies beyond his own power to resolve into the simple forms of art. Thus it has come about that misguided readers became enigma hunters, and the poet their Sphinx.

The real question with Browning, as with any poet, is, What is his work and worth as an artist? What of human life has he presented, and how clear and true are his presentations? What passions, what struggles, what ideals, what activities of men has he added to the art world? What beauty and dignity, what light, has he created? How does he view life: with what of hope, or aspiration, or strength? These questions may be discussed under his sense and mastery of form, and under his views of human life.

Browning's sense of form has often been attacked and defended. The first impression upon reading him is of harshness amounting to the grotesque. Rhymes often clash and jangle like the music of savages. Such rhymes as

"Fancy the fabric...
Ere mortar dab brick,"

strain dignity and beauty to the breaking-point. Archaic and bizarre words are pressed into service to help out the rhyme and metre; instead of melodic rhythm there are harsh and jolting combinations; until the reader brought up in the traditions of Shakespeare, Milton, and Tennyson, is fain to cry out, This is not poetry!

In internal form, as well, Browning often defies the established laws of literature. Distorted and elliptical sentences, long and irrelevant parentheses, curious involutions of thought, and irregular or incoherent development of the narrative or the picture, often leave the reader in despair even of the meaning. Nor can these departures from orderly beauty always be defended by the exigencies of the subjects. They do not fit the theme. They are the discords of a musician who either has not mastered his instrument or is not sensitive to all the finer effects. Some of his work stands out clear from these faults: _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, _Love Among the Ruins_, the Songs from _Pippa Passes_, _Apparitions_, _Andrea del Sarto_, and a score of others might be cited to show that Browning could write with a sense of form as true, and an ear as delicate, as could any poet of the century, except Tennyson.

To Browning belongs the credit of having created a new poetic form,--the dramatic monologue. In this form the larger number of his poems are cast. Among the best examples in this volume are _My Last Duchess_, _The Bishop Orders his Tomb_, _The Laboratory_, and _Confessions_. One person only is speaking, but reveals the presence, action, and thoughts of the others who are in the scene at the same time that he reveals his own character, as in a conversation in which but one voice is audible. The dramatic monologue has in a peculiar degree the advantages of compression and vividness, and is, in Browning's hands, an instrument of great power.

The charge of obscurity so often made against Browning's poetry must in part be admitted. As has been said above he is often led off by his many-sided interests into irrelevancies and subtleties that interfere with simplicity and beauty. His compressed style and his fondness for unusual words often make an unwarranted demand upon the reader's patience. Such passages are a challenge to his admirers and a repulse to the indifferent. Sometimes, indeed, the ore is not worth the smelting; often it yields enough to reward the greatest patience.

Browning, like all great poets, knew life widely and deeply through men and books. He was born in London, near the great centres of the intellectual movements of his time; he travelled much, especially in Italy and France; he read widely in the literatures and philosophies of many ages and many lands; and so grew into the cosmopolitanism of spirit that belonged to Chaucer and to Shakespeare.

In all art human life is the matter of ultimate interest. To Browning this was so in a peculiar degree. In the epistolary preface to _Sordello_, written thirty years after its first publication, he said: "My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study." This interest in "the development of a soul" is the keynote of nearly all his work. To it are directly traceable many of the most obvious excellences and defects of his poetry. He came to look below the surfaces of things for the soul beneath them. He came to be "the subtlest assertor of the Soul in Song," and like his own pair of lovers on the Campagna, "unashamed of soul." His early preference of Shelley to Keats indicated this bent. His readers are conscious always of revelations of the souls of the men and women he portrays; the sweet and tender womanhood of the Duchess, the sordid and material soul of the old Bishop of St. Praxed's, the devoted and heroic soul of Napoleon's young soldier, the weary and despairing soul of Andrea del Sarto,--and a host of others stand before us cleared of the veil of habit and convention. The souls of men appear as the victors over all material and immaterial obstacles. Human affection transforms the bare room to a bower of fruits and flowers; human courage and resolution carry Childe Roland victoriously past the threats and terrors of malignant nature, and the despair from accumulated memories of failure; death itself is described in _Evelyn Hope_, in _Prospice_, in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, as a phase, a transit of the soul, wherein the material aspects and the physical terrors disappear. In Browning's poetry, the one real and permanent thing is the world of ideas, the world of the spirit. He is in this one of the truest Platonists of modern times.

To many young readers this method in art comes like a revelation. Other poets also portray the souls of men; but Browning does it more obviously, more intentionally, more insistently. It is well, therefore, to have read Browning. To learn to read him aright is to enter the gateway to other good and great poetry.

Out of this predominating interest in the souls of men, and out of his intense intellectual activity and scientific curiosity, grows one of Browning's greatest defects. He is often led too far afield, into intricacies and anomalies of character beyond the range of common experience and sympathy. The criminal, the "moral idiot," belong to the alienist rather than to the poet. The abnormalities of nature have no place in the world of great art; they do not echo the common experience of mankind. Already the interest is decreasing in that part of his poetry which deals with such themes. Bishop Blougram and Mr. Sludge will not take place in the ranks of artistic creations. Nor can the poet's "special pleading" for such types, however ingenious it may be, whatever philanthropy of soul it may imply, be regarded as justification. Sometimes, indeed, the poet is led by his sympathy and his intellectual ingenuity into defences that are inconsistent with his own standards of the true and the beautiful.

The trait in Browning which appeals to the largest number of readers is his strenuous optimism. He will admit no evil or sorrow too great to be borne, too irrational to have some ultimate purpose of beneficence. "There shall never be one lost good," says Abt Vogler. The suicides in the morgue only serve to call forth his declaration:--

"My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;

* * * * *

That what began best can't end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."

He has no fear of death; he will face it gladly, in confidence of the life beyond. His Grammarian is content to assume an order of things which will justify in the next life his ceaseless toil in this, merely to learn how to live. Rabbi Ben Ezra's old age is serene in the hope of the continuity of life and the eternal development of character; he finds life good, and the plan of things perfect. In brief, Browning accepts life as it is, and believes it good, piecing out his conception of the goodness of life by drawing without limit upon his hopes of the other world. With the exception of a few poems like _Andrea del Sarto_, this is the unbroken tone of his poetry. Calvinism, asceticism, pessimism in any form, he rejects. He sustains his position not by argument, but by hope and assertion. It is a matter of temperament: he is optimistic because he was born so. Different from the serene optimism of Shakespeare's later life, in _The Tempest_ and _The Winter's Tale_, in that it is not, like Shakespeare's, born of long and deep suffering from the contemplation of the tragedies of human life, it bears, in that degree, less of solace and conviction.

To Browning's temperament, also, may be ascribed another prominent trait in his work. He steadily asserts the right of the individual to live out his own life, to be himself in fulfilling his desires and aspirations. _The Statue and the Bust_ is the famous exposition of this doctrine. It is a teaching that neither the poet's optimism nor his acumen has justified in the minds of men. It is a return to the unbridled freedom of nature advocated by Whitman and Rousseau; an extreme assertion of the value of the individual man, and of unregulated democracy; an outgrowth, it may be, of the robustness and originality of Browning's nature, and interesting--not as a clew to his life, which conformed to that of organized society--but as a clew to his independence of classical and conventional forms in the exercise of his art.

Creative energy Browning has in high degree. With the poet's insight into character and motives, the poet's grasp of the essential laws of human life, the poet's vividness of imagination, he has portrayed a host of types distinct from each other, true to life, strongly marked and consistent. With fine dramatic instinct he has shown these characters in true relation to the facts of life and to each other. In this respect he has satisfied the most exigent demands of art, and has already taken rank as one of the great creative minds of the nineteenth century.

True poet he is, also, in his depth of feeling and range of sympathy. Beneath a ruggedness of intellect, like his landscape in _De Gustibus_, there is always sympathy and tenderness. It is, indeed, more like the serenity of Chaucer's emotions than like the tragic fervor of Shakespeare's. Mrs. Browning's estimate of him in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_,--

"Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity,"

is true criticism.

His love of nature, and his sense of the joy and beauty of it, appear often in his poetry; but not with the same insistence as in Wordsworth and Burns, and seldom with the same pervasiveness, or with the same beauty, as in Tennyson. He was rather the poet of men's souls. When he does use nature, it is generally to illustrate some phase or experience of the soul, and not for the sake of its beauty. He has, however, some nature-descriptions so exquisite that English poetry would be the poorer for their loss. Witness _De Gustibus_, _Up at a Villa_, _Home Thoughts from Abroad_, _Pippa's Songs_, and _Saul_.

It is too early to guess at Browning's permanent place in our literature. But his vigor of intellect, his insight into the human heart, his originality in phrase and conception, his unquenchable and fearless optimism, and his grasp of the problems of his century, make him beyond question one of its greatest figures.

APPRECIATIONS

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore, on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man has walked along our roads with step
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine heights thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.

--WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Tennyson has a vivid feeling of the dignity and potency of _law_.... Browning vividly feels the importance, the greatness and beauty of passions and enthusiasms, and his imagination is comparatively unimpressed by the presence of law and its operations.... It is not the order and regularity in the processes of the natural world which chiefly delight Browning's imagination, but the streaming forth of power, and will, and love from the whole face of the visible universe....

Tennyson considers the chief instruments of human progress to be a vast increase of knowledge and of political organization. Browning makes that progress dependent on the production of higher passions, and aspirations,--hopes, and joys, and sorrows; Tennyson finds the evidence of the truth of the doctrine of progress in the universal presence of a self-evolving law. Browning obtains his assurance of its truth from inward presages and prophecies of the soul, from anticipations, types, and symbols of a higher greatness in store for man, which even now reside within him, a creature ever unsatisfied, ever yearning upward in thought, feeling, and endeavour.

... Hence, it is not obedience, it is not submission to the law of duty, which points out to us our true path of life, but rather infinite desire and endless aspiration. Browning's ideal of manhood in this world always recognizes the fact that it is the ideal of a creature who never can be perfected on earth, a creature whom other and higher lives await in an endless hereafter....

The gleams of knowledge which we possess are of chief value because they "sting with hunger for full light." The goal of knowledge, as of love, is God himself. Its most precious part is that which is least positive--those momentary intuitions of things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard. The needs of the highest parts of our humanity cannot be supplied by ascertained truth, in which we might rest, or which we might put to use for definite ends; rather by ventures of faith, which test the courage of the soul, we ascend from surmise to assurance, and so again to higher surmise.--Condensed from EDWARD DOWDEN, _Studies in Literature_.

... Browning has not cared for that poetic form which bestows perennial charm, or else he was incapable of it. He fails in beauty, in concentration of interest, in economy of language, in selection of the best from the common treasure of experience. In those works where he has been most indifferent, as in the _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_, he has been merely whimsical and dull; in those works where the genius he possessed is most felt, as in _Saul_, _A Toccata of Galuppi's_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _The Flight of the Duchess_, _The Bishop Orders his Tomb in Saint Praxed's Church_, _Hervé Riel_, _Cavalier Tunes_, _Time's Revenges_, and many more, he achieves beauty, or nobility, or fitness of phrase such as only a poet is capable of. It is in these last pieces and their like that his fame lies for the future. It was his lot to be strong as the thinker, the moralist, with "the accomplishment of verse," the scholar interested to rebuild the past of experience, the teacher with an explicit dogma in an intellectual form with examples from life, the anatomist of human passions, instincts, and impulses in all their gamut, the commentator on his own age; he was weak as the artist, often unnecessarily and by choice, in the repulsive form,--in the awkward, the obscure, the ugly. He belongs with Jonson, with Dryden, with the heirs of the masculine intellect, the men of power not unvisited by grace, but in whom mind is predominant. Upon the work of such poets time hesitates, conscious of their mental greatness, but also of their imperfect art, their heterogeneous matter; at last the good is sifted from that whence worth has departed.--From GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY'S _Studies in Letters and Life_.

When it is urged that for a poet the intellectual energies are too strong in Browning, that for poetry the play of intellectual interests and activities is too great in his work, and that Browning often and at times ruthlessly sacrifices the requirements and effects of art for the expression of thought, that "though he refreshes the heart he tires the brain," we should admit this with regard to a good deal of the work of the third period. We should allow that this is the side to which he leans generally, but still hold that, though to many his intellectual quality and energy may well seem excessive, yet in great part of his work, and that of course, his best, the passion of the poet and his kind of imagination are just as fresh and powerful as the intellectual force and subtlety are keen and abundant.--JAMES FROTHINGHAM, _Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning_.

Now dumb is he who waked the world to speak,
And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier,
Our words are sobs, our cry or praise a tear:
We are the smitten mortal, we the weak.
We see a spirit on earth's loftiest peak
Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear:
See a great Tree of Life that never sere
Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak;
Such ending is not death: such living shows
What wide illumination brightness sheds
From one big heart,--to conquer man's old foes:
The coward, and the tyrant, and the force
Of all those weedy monsters raising heads
When Song is muck from springs of turbid source.

--GEORGE MEREDITH.

* * * * *

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF BROWNING'S WORKS

1833. Pauline.
1835. Paracelsus.
1837. Strafford (A tragedy).
1840. Sordello.
1841. Bells and Pomegranates, No I.,
Pippa Passes.
1842. Bells and Pomegranates, No. II.,
King Victor and King Charles.
1842. Bells and Pomegranates, No. III.,
Dramatic Lyrics.
Cavalier Tunes.
Italy and France.
Camp and Cloister.
In a Gondola.
Artemis Prologises.
Waring.
Queen Worship.
Madhouse Cells.
Through the Metidja.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
1843. Bells and Pomegranates, No. IV.,
The Return of the Druses (A tragedy).
1843. Bells and Pomegranates, No. V.,
A Blot In the 'Scutcheon (A tragedy).
1844. Bells and Pomegranates, No. VI.,
Colombe's Birthday (A play).
1845. Bells and Pomegranates, No. VII.
"How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix."
Pictor Ignotos.
The Italian in England.
The Englishman in Italy.
The Lost Leader.
The Lost Mistress.
Home Thoughts from Abroad.
The Bishop Orders his Tomb.
Garden Fancies.
The Laboratory.
The Confessional.
The Flight of the Duchess.
Earth's Immortalities.
Song: "Nay, but you,--who do not love her."
The Boy and the Angel.
Night and Morning.
Claret and Tokay.
Saul.
Time's Revenges.
The Glove.
1846. Bells and Pomegranates, No. VIII.,
Luria, and A Soul's Tragedy.
1850. Christmas Eve and Easterday.
1852. Introductory Essay to Shelley's Letters.
1855. Men and Women.

VOLUME I.

Love among the Ruins.
A Lover's Quarrel.
Evelyn Hope.
Up at a Villa--Down in the City.
A Woman's Last Word.
Fra Lippo Lippi.
A Toccata of Galuppi's.
By the Fireside.
Any Wife to Any Husband.
An Epistle (Karshish).
Mesmerism.
A Serenade at the Villa.
My Star.
Instans Tyrannus.
A Pretty Woman.
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."
Respectability.
A Light Woman.
The Statue and the Bust.
Love in a Life.
Life in a Love.
How it Strikes a Contemporary.
The Last Ride Together.
The Patriot.
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha.
Bishop Blougram's Apology.
Memorabilia.

VOLUME II.

Andrea del Sarto.
Before and After.
In Three Days.
In a Year.
Old Pictures in Florence.
In a Balcony.
Saul.
"De Gustibus--."
Women and Roses.
Protus.
Holy-Cross Day.
The Guardian Angel.
Cleon.
The Twins.
Popularity.
The Heretic's Tragedy.
Two in the Campagna.
A Grammarian's Funeral.
One Way of Love.
Another Way of Love.
"Transcendentalism."
Misconceptions.
One Word More.
1864. Dramatis Personæ.
James Lee.
Gold Hair.
The Worst of It.
Dîs Aliter Visum.
Too Late.
Abt Vogler.
Rabbi Ben Ezra.
A Death in the Desert.
Caliban upon Setebos.
Confessions.
May and Death.
Prospice.
Youth and Art.
A Face.
A Likeness.
Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."
Apparent Failure.
Epilogue.
1868-69. The Ring and the Book.
1871. Balaustion's Adventure.
1871. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.
1872. Fifine at the Fair.
1873. Red Cotton Night-Cap Country.
1875. Aristophanes' Apology.
1875. The Inn Album.
1876. Pacchiarotto, and other Poems
(including Natural Magic and Hervé Riel).
1877. The Agamemnon of Æschylus.
1878. La Saisiaz, and The Two Poets of Croisic.
1879-80. Dramatic Idyls.
1883. Jocoseria.
1884. Ferishtah's Fancies.
1887. Parleyings with Certain People.
1890. Asolando.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (The Macmillan Company, ten vols.). Browning's Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., one vol.). Selections from Browning (Crowell & Co., one vol.). Life of Browning, by William Sharp. Life of Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr. Introduction to Browning, by Hiram Corson. Guide Book to Browning, by George Willis Cook. Browning Cyclopædia, by Edward Berdoe. Literary Studies, by Walter Bagehot. Studies in Literature, by Edward Dowden. Makers of Literature, by George Edward Woodberry (New York, 1901). Boston Browning Society Papers. A Handbook to the Works of Robert Browning, by Mrs Sutherland Orr. Robert Browning: Personalia, by Edmund Gosse. Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets, by Vida D. Scudder. Victorian Poetry, by Edmund Clarence Stedman. Studies of the Mind and Art of Robert Browning, by James Fotheringham. Browning Society Papers. Our Living Poets, by H. Buxton Forman. Browning's Message to his Times, by Edward Berdoe (London, 1897). Browning Studies, by Edward Berdoe (London, 1895). The Poetry of Robert Browning, by Stopford Brooke (New York, 1902). Browning, Poet and Man, by E.L. Cary (New York, 1899). (An extensive bibliography, biographical and critical, is given in the Appendix to Sharp's Life of Browning; London, Walter Scott, 1890.)

* * * * *

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN

A CHILD'S STORY _(Written for, and inscribed to W. M. the Younger)_

I

Hamelin° town's in Brunswick, °1 By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on either side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, was a pity.

II

Rats! 10 They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats. Made nests inside men's Sunday hats. And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats. 20

III

At last the people in a body To the Town Hall came flocking: "'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy; And as for our Corporation, shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's best to rid us of our vermin! You hope, because you're old and obese, To find in the furry civic robe ease! Rouse up, sirs! give your brains a racking 30 To find the remedy we're lacking, Or, sure as fate, we'll send you packing!" At this the Mayor and Corporation Quaked with a mighty consternation.

IV

An hour they sat in council; At length the Mayor broke silence: "For a guilder I'd my ermine gown sell, I wish I were a mile hence! It's easy to bid one rack one's brain-- I'm sure my poor head aches again, 40 I've scratched it so, and all in vain. Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!" Just as he said this, what should hap At the chamber door but a gentle tap? "Bless us," cried the Mayor, "what's that?" (With the Corporation as he sat, Looking little, though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous 50 For a plate of turtle, green and glutinous) "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat? Anything like the sound of a rat Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!"

V

"Come in!"--the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked his way from his painted tombstone!"

VI

He advanced to the council-table: 70 And, "Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep or swim or fly or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole and toad and newt and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper." (And here they noticed round his neck 80 A scarf of red and yellow stripe, To match with his coat of self-same cheque: And at the scarf's end hung a pipe; And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying, As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham,° °89 Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; 90 I eased in Asia the Nizam° °91 Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!"--was the exclamation Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

VII

Into the street the Piper stept, Smiling first a little smile, As if he knew what magic slept 100 In his quiet pipe the while: Then, like a musical adept, To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled, And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled, Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered, You heard as if an army muttered: And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. 110 Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives-- Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, 120 Until they came to the river Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished! --Save one, who, stout as Julius Cæsar, Swam across and lived to carry (As he, the manuscript he cherished) To Rat-land home his commentary: Which was: "At the first shrill notes of the pipe, I heard a sound as of scraping tripe, And putting apples, wondrous ripe, Into a cider press's gripe; 130 And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards, And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards, And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks, And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks: And it seemed as if a voice (Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery Is breathed) called out, 'Oh, rats, rejoice! The world is grown to one vast drysaltery! So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon, Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!' 140 And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon, Already staved, like a great sun shone Glorious scarce an inch before me, Just as methought it said, 'Come, bore me!' --I found the Weser rolling o'er me."

VIII

You should have heard the Hamelin people Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple. "Go," cried the Mayor, "and get long poles, Poke out the nests and block up the holes! Consult with carpenters and builders, 150 And leave in our town, not even a trace Of the rats!"--when suddenly, up the face Of the Piper perked in the market-place, With a, "First, if you please, my thousand guilders!"

IX

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; So did the Corporation, too. For council dinners made rare havoc With Claret,° Moselle,° Vin-de-Grave,° Hock°; °158 And half the money would replenish Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish°. °160 To pay this sum to a wandering fellow With a gypsy coat of red and yellow! "Beside," quoth the Mayor, with a knowing wink, "Our business was done at the river's brink; We saw with our eyes the vermin sink, And what's dead can't come to life, I think. So, friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke 170 Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Beside, our losses have made us thrifty. A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!"

X

The Piper's face fell, and he cried, "No trifling! I can't wait! Beside, I've promised to visit by dinner-time Bagdat, and accept the prime Of the Head-Cook's pottage, all he's rich in, For having left, in the Caliph's° kitchen, °179 Of a nest of scorpions no survivor: 180 With him I proved no bargain-driver, With you, don't think I'll bate a stiver! And folks who put me in a passion May find me pipe after another fashion."

XI

"How?" cried the Mayor, "d'ye think I brook Being worse treated than a cook? Insulted by a lazy ribald With idle pipe and vesture piebald? You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst! Blow your pipe there till you burst!" 190

XII

Once more he stept into the street, And to his lips again Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane; And ere he blew three notes (such sweet, Soft notes as yet musician's cunning Never gave the enraptured air) There was a rustling that seemed like a bustling Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling; Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, 200 Little hands clapping, and little tongues chattering, And, like fowls in a farm-yard, when barley is scattering, Out came the children running. All the little boys and girls. With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls, Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

XIII

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood As if they were changed into blocks of wood. Unable to move a step, or cry 210 To the children merrily skipping by, --Could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the piper's back. But how the Mayor was on the rack, And the wretched Council's bosom beat, As the Piper turned from the High Street To where the Weser rolled its waters, Right in the way of their sons and daughters! However, he turned from South to West, And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, 220 And after him the children pressed: Great was the joy in every breast. "He never can cross that mighty top! He's forced to let the piping drop, And we shall see our children stop." When lo, as they reached the mountain-side, A wondrous portal opened wide, As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed; And the Piper advanced, and the children followed, And when all were in, to the very last, 230 The door in the mountain-side shut fast. Did I say all? No! One was lame, And could not dance the whole of the way; And in after years, if you would blame His sadness, he was used to say,-- "It's dull in our town since my playmates left! I can't forget that I'm bereft Of all the pleasant sights they see, Which the Piper also promised me. For he led us, he said, to a joyous land. 240 Joining the town, and just at hand, Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, And flowers put forth a fairer hue, And everything was strange and new: The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here, And their dogs outran our fallow deer. And honey-bees had lost their stings, And horses were born with eagles' wings; And just as I became assured, My lame foot would be speedily cured, 250 The music stopped and I stood still, And found myself outside the hill, Left alone against my will, To go now limping as before. And never hear of that country more!"

XIV

Alas, alas for Hamelin! There came into many a burgher's pate A text which says that Heaven's gate Opes to the rich at as easy a rate As the needle's eye takes a camel in! 260 The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South, To offer the Piper, by word of mouth, Wherever it was men's lot to find him, Silver and gold to his heart's content, If he'd only return the way he went, And bring the children behind him. But when they saw 'twas a lost endeavor, And Piper and dancers were gone forever, They made a decree that lawyers never Should think their records dated duly 270 If, after the day of the month and year, These words did not as well appear, "And so long after what happened here On the twenty-second of July, Thirteen hundred and seventy-six;" And the better in memory to fix The place of the children's last retreat, They called it the Pied Piper's Street-- Where any one playing on pipe or tabor Was sure for the future to lose his labour. 280 Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern To shock with mirth a street so solemn; But opposite the place of the cavern They wrote the story on a column, And on the great church window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away. And there it stands to this very day. And I must not omit to say That in Transylvania there's a tribe 290 Of alien people who ascribe The outlandish ways and dress On which their neighbours lay such stress, To their fathers and mothers having risen Out of some subterraneous prison Into which they were trepanned Long time ago in a mighty band Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, But how or why, they don't understand.

XV

So, Willy, let me and you be wipers 300 Of scores out with all men--especially pipers! And, whether they pipe us free from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!

* * * * *

TRAY

Sing me a hero! Quench my thirst Of soul, ye bards! Quoth Bard the first: "Sir Olaf,° the good knight, did don °3 His helm, and eke his habergeon ..." Sir Olaf and his bard----!

"That sin-scathed brow"° (quoth Bard the second), °6 "That eye wide ope as tho' Fate beckoned My hero to some steep, beneath Which precipice smiled tempting Death ..." You too without your host have reckoned! 10

"A beggar-child" (let's hear this third!) "Sat on a quay's edge: like a bird Sang to herself at careless play, And fell into the stream. 'Dismay! Help, you the standers-by!' None stirred.

"Bystanders reason, think of wives And children ere they risk their lives. Over the balustrade has bounced A mere instinctive dog, and pounced Plumb on the prize. 'How well he dives! 20

"'Up he comes with the child, see, tight In mouth, alive too, clutched from quite A depth of ten feet--twelve, I bet! Good dog! What, off again? There's yet Another child to save? All right!

"'How strange we saw no other fall! It's instinct in the animal. Good dog! But he's a long while under: If he got drowned I should not wonder-- Strong current, that against the wall! 30

"'Here he comes, holds in mouth this time --What may the thing be? Well, that's prime! Now, did you ever? Reason reigns In man alone, since all Tray's pains Have fished--the child's doll from the slime!'

"And so, amid the laughter gay, Trotted my hero off,--old Tray,-- Till somebody, prerogatived With reason, reasoned: 'Why he dived, His brain would show us, I should say. 40

"'John, go and catch--or, if needs be, Purchase that animal for me! By vivisection, at expense Of half-an-hour and eighteen pence, How brain secretes dog's soul, we'll see!'"

* * * * *

INCIDENT OF THE FRENCH CAMP

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon°: °1
A mile or so away
On a little mound, Napoleon
Stood on our storming-day;
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.

Just as perhaps he mused "My plans
That soar, to earth may fall, 10
Let once my army-leader Lannes° °11
Waver at yonder wall"--
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew
A rider, bound on bound
Full-galloping; nor bridle drew
Until he reached the mound,

Then off there flung in smiling joy,
And held himself erect
By just his horse's mane, a boy:
You hardly could suspect°-- °20
(So tight he kept his lips compressed.
Scarce any blood came through)
You looked twice ere you saw his breast
Was all but shot in two.

"Well," cried he, "Emperor, by God's grace
We've got you Ratisbon!
The Marshal's in the market-place,
And you'll be there anon
To see your flag-bird flap his vans
Where I, to heart's desire, 30
Perched him!" The chief's eye flashed; his plans
Soared up again like fire.

The chief's eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes.
"You're wounded!" "Nay," the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said:
"I'm killed, Sire!" And his chief beside,
Smiling, the boy fell dead. 40

* * * * *

"HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX"

[16--]

I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we kept the great pace Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, 10 Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit.

'Twas moonset at starting; but while we drew near Lokeren°, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear: °14 At Boom°, a great yellow star came out to see; °15 At Düffeld°, 'twas morning as plain as could be; °16 And from Mecheln° church-steeple we heard the half-chime, °17 So, Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is time!"

At Aershot° up leaped of a sudden the sun, °19 And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 To stare through the mist at us galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland, at last, With resolute shoulders, each butting away The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray:

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track; And one eye's black intelligence,--ever that glance O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 30

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned; and cried Joris, "Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix"--for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank.

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff; 40 Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in sight!"

"How they'll greet us!"--and all in a moment his roan Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone; And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim.

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, each holster let fall, Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 50 Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer; Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or good, Till at length, into Aix Roland galloped and stood.

And all I remember is,--friends flocking round As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, Which (the burgesses voted by common consent) Was no more than his due who brought good news from Ghent. 60

* * * * *

HERVÉ RIEL

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety two, Did the English fight the French,--woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue. Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance,° °5 With the English fleet in view.

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in full chase;
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, Damfreville;
Close on him fled, great and small,
Twenty-two good ships in all; 10
And they signalled to the place
"Help the winners of a race!
Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick--or, quicker still,
Here's the English can and will!"

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on board; "Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to pass?" laughed they: "Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the '_Formidable_' here, with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, 20 And with flow at full beside? Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will leave the bay!"

Then was called a council straight. Brief and bitter the debate: "Here's the English at our heels; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound? 30 Better run the ships aground!" (Ended Damfreville his speech). Not a minute more to wait! "Let the Captains all and each Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the beach! France must undergo her fate.

"Give the word!" But no such word
Was ever spoke or heard;
For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all these
--A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate--first, second, third? 40
No such man of mark, and meet
With his betters to compete!
But a simple Breton sailor pressed° by Tourville for the fleet, °43
A poor coasting-pilot he, Hervé Riel the Croisickese.° °44

And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries Hervé Riel:
"Are you mad, you Malouins°? Are you cowards, fools, or rogues? °46
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying's for? 50
Morn and eve, night and day,
Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there's a way!
Only let me lead the line,
Have the biggest ship to steer,
Get this '_Formidable_' clear,
Make the others follow mine,
And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know well, 60
Right to Solidor past Grève,
And there lay them safe and sound;
And if one ship misbehave,
--Keel so much as grate the ground.
Why, I've nothing but my life,--here's my head!" cries Hervé Riel.

Not a minute more to wait. "Steer us in then, small and great! Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron!" cried its chief. Captains, give the sailor place! He is Admiral, in brief. 70

Still the north-wind, by God's grace! See the noble fellow's face As the big ship, with a bound, Clears the entry like a hound, Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea's profound! See, safe thro' shoal and rock, How they follow in a flock, Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground, Not a spar that comes to grief! The peril, see, is past, 80 All are harboured to the last, And just as Hervé Kiel hollas "Anchor!"--sure as fate Up the English come, too late!

So, the storm subsides to calm:
They see the green trees wave
On the heights o'erlooking Grève.
Hearts that bled are staunched with balm.
"Just our rapture to enhance,
Let the English rake the bay,
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 90
As they cannonade away!
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Rance!"
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's countenance!
Out burst all with one accord,
"This is Paradise for Hell!
Let France, let France's King
Thank the man that did the thing!"
What a shout, and all one word,
"Hervé Riel!"
As he stepped in front once more, 100
Not a symptom of surprise
In the frank blue Breton eyes,
Just the same man as before.

Then said Damfreville, "My friend, I must speak out at the end, Tho' I find the speaking hard. Praise is deeper than the lips: You have saved the King his ships, You must name your own reward, 'Faith our sun was near eclipse! 110 Demand whate'er you will, France remains your debtor still. Ask to heart's content and have! or my name's not Damfreville."

Then a beam of fun outbroke On the bearded mouth that spoke, As the honest heart laughed through Those frank eyes of Breton blue: "Since I needs must say my say, Since on board the duty's done, And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it but a run?-- 120 Since 'tis ask and have, I may-- Since the others go ashore-- Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!" That he asked and that he got,--nothing more.

Name and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, 130 In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank. Search, the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre,° face and flank! °135 You shall look long enough ere you come to Hervé Riel. So, for better and for worse, Hervé Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle Aurore! 140

* * * * *