Chapter CXIII: Epilogue (3)

Say am I right? Your sealed sense moved your mind,
Free from obstruction, to compassionate
Art's power left powerless, and supply the blind
With fancies worth all facts denied by fate.
Mind could invent things, add to--take away,
At pleasure, leave out trifles mean and base
Which vex the sight that cannot say them nay
But, where mind plays the master, have no place.
And bent on banishing was mind, be sure,
All except beauty from its mustered tribe
Of objects apparitional which lure
Painter to show and poet to describe--
That imagery of the antique song
Truer than truth's self. Fancy's rainbow-birth
Conceived 'mid clouds in Greece, could glance along
Your passage o'er Dutch veritable earth,
As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng
About our pacings men and women worth
Nowise a glance--so poets apprehend--
Since naught avails portraying them in verse:
While painters turn upon the heel, intend
To spare their work the critic's ready curse
Due to the daily and undignified.

V

I who myself contentedly abide
Awake, nor want the wings of dream,--who tramp
Earth's common surface, rough, smooth, dry or damp,
--I understand alternatives, no less
Conceive your soul's leap, Gerard de Lairesse!
How were it could I mingle false with true,
Boast, with the sights I see, your vision too?
Advantage would it prove or detriment
If I saw double? Could I gaze intent
On Dryope plucking the blossoms red,
As you, whereat her lote-tree writhed and bled!
Yet lose no gain, no hard fast wide-awake
Having and holding nature for the sake
Of nature only--nymph and lote-tree thus
Gained by the loss of fruit not fabulous,
Apple of English homesteads, where I see
Nor seek more than crisp buds a struggling bee
Uncrumples, caught by sweet he clambers through?
Truly, a moot point: make it plain to me,
Who, bee-like, sate sense with the simply true,
Nor seek to heighten that sufficiency
By help of feignings proper to the page--
Earth's surface-blank whereon the elder age
Put color, poetizing--poured rich life
On what were else a dead ground--nothingness--
Until the solitary world grew rife
With Joves and Junos, nymphs and satyrs. Yes,
The reason was, fancy composed the strife
'Twixt sense and soul: for sense, my De Lairesse,
Cannot content itself with outward things,
Mere beauty: soul must needs know whence there springs--
How, when and why--what sense but loves, nor lists
To know at all.

VI

Not one of man's acquists
Ought he resignedly to lose, methinks:
So, point me out which was it of the links
Snapt first, from out the chain which used to bind
Our earth to heaven, and yet for you, since blind,
Subsisted still efficient and intact?
Oh, we can fancy too! but somehow fact
Has got to--say, not so much push aside
Fancy, as to declare its place supplied
By fact unseen but no less fact the same,
Which mind bids sense accept. Is mind to blame,
Or sense,--does that usurp, this abdicate?
First of all, as you "walked"--were it too late
For us to walk, if so we willed? Confess
We have the sober feet still, De Lairesse!
Why not the freakish brain too, that must needs
Supplement nature--not see flowers and weeds
Simply as such, but link with each and all
The ultimate perfection--what we call
Rightly enough the human shape divine?
The rose? No rose unless it disentwine
From Venus' wreath the while she bends to kiss
Her deathly love?

VII

Plain retrogression, this!
No, no: we poets go not back at all:
What you did we could do--from great to small
Sinking assuredly: if this world last
One moment longer when Man finds its Past
Exceed its Present--blame the Protoplast!
If we no longer see as you of old,
'Tis we see deeper. Progress for the bold!
You saw the body, 'tis the soul we see.
Try now! Bear witness while you walk with me,
I see as you: if we loose arms, stop pace,
'Tis that you stand still, I conclude the race
Without your company. Come, walk once more
The "Walk:" if I to-day as you of yore
See just like you the blind--then sight shall cry
--The whole long day quite gone through--victory!

VIII

Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling
Doom o'er the mountain, while a sharp white fire
Now shone, now sheared its rusty herbage, troubling
Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire
Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire
Crashed down, defiant to the last: till--lo,
The motive of the malice!--all aglow,
Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift
I' the rock-face, and I saw a form erect
Front and defy the outrage, while--as checked,
Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift--
Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing outspread
In deprecation o'er the crouching head
Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile.
O thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile,
Was it when this--Jove's feathered fury--slipped
Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he ripped--
This eagle-hound--neither reproach nor prayer--
Baffled, in one more fierce attempt to tear
Fate's secret from thy safeguard,--was it then
That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air
To reach thee, pay thy patronage of men?
He thundered,--to withdraw, as beast to lair,
Before the triumph on thy pallid brow.
Gather the night again about thee now,
Hate on, love ever! Morn is breaking there--
The granite ridge pricks through the mist, turns gold
As wrong turns right. O laughters manifold
Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair!

IX

But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight
Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree
Stir themselves from the stupor of the night,
And every strangled branch resumes its right
To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free
In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge,
While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge,
Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see,
Each grass-blade's glory-glitter. Had I known
The torrent now turned river?--masterful
Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage--stone
And stub which barred the froths and foams: no bull
Ever broke bounds in formidable sport
More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm
Sets him to dare that last mad leap: report
Who may--his fortunes in the deathly chasm
That swallows him in silence! Rather turn
Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled
Into the broad day-splendor, whom discern
These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called
Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below,
Earth's huntress-queen? I note the garb succinct
Saving from smirch that purity of snow
From breast to knee--snow's self with just the tinct
Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ah, the bow
Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory-linked
Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair
Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so--
As if a star's live restless fragment winked
Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair!
What hope along the hillside, what far bliss
Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss
Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe
Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss
Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe
Its victim, thou unerring Artemis?
Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark
Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed
Was bred of liquid marble in the dark
Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed
With novel births of wonder? Not one spark
Of pity in that steel-gray glance which gleamed
At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped
Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen
From thy proud presence: well mayst thou be queen
Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped
So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit
For happy marriage till the maidens paled
And perished on the temple-step, assailed
By--what except to envy must man's wit
Impute that sure implacable release
Of life from warmth and joy? But death means peace.

X

Noon is the conqueror,--not a spray, nor leaf,
Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up
Its morning dew: the valley seemed one cup
Of cloud-smoke, but the vapor's reign was brief;
Sun-smitten, see, it hangs--the filmy haze--
Gray-garmenting the herbless mountain-side,
To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and wide
Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze
With fierce immitigable blue, no bird
Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks
Which still presume there, plain each pale point speaks
In wan transparency of waste incurred
By over-daring: far from me be such!
Deep in the hollow, rather, where combine
Tree, shrub and brier to roof with shade and cool
The remnant of some lily-strangled pool,
Edged round with mossy fringing soft and fine.
Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead
Watch elder, bramble, rose, and service-tree
And one beneficent rich barberry
Jewelled all over with fruit-pendants red.
What have I seen! O Satyr, well I know
How sad thy case, and what a world of woe
Was hid by the brown visage furry-framed
Only for mirth: who otherwise could think--
Marking thy mouth gape still on laughter's brink,
Thine eyes a-swim with merriment unnamed
But haply guessed at by their furtive wink?
And all the while a heart was panting sick
Behind that shaggy bulwark of thy breast--
Passion it was that made those breath-bursts thick
I took for mirth, subsiding into rest.
So, it was Lyda--she of all the train
Of forest-thridding nymphs,--'twas only she
Turned from thy rustic homage in disdain,
Saw but that poor uncouth outside of thee,
And, from her circling sisters, mocked a pain
Echo had pitied--whom Pan loved in vain--
For she was wishful to partake thy glee,
Mimic thy mirth--who loved her not again,
Savage for Lyda's sake. She crouches there--
Thy cruel beauty, slumberously laid
Supine on heaped-up beast-skins, unaware
Thy steps have traced her to the briery glade,
Thy greedy hands disclose the cradling lair,
Thy hot eyes reach and revel on the maid!

XI

Now, what should this be for? The sun's decline
Seems as he lingered lest he lose some act
Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact
Like thunder from the safe sky's sapphirine
About to alter earth's conditions, packed
With fate for nature's self that waits, aware
What mischief unsuspected in the air
Menaces momently a cataract.
Therefore it is that yonder space extends
Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree,
Shrub, weed well-nigh; they keep their bounds, leave free
The platform for what actors? Foes or friends,
Here come they trooping silent: heaven suspends
Purpose the while they range themselves. I see!
Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree
This present and no after-contest ends
One or the other's grasp at rule in reach
Over the race of man--host fronting host,
As statue statue fronts--wrath-molten each,
Solidified by hate,--earth halved almost,
To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes
Show prominent, each from the universe
Of minions round about him, that disperse
Like cloud-obstruction when a bolt escapes.
Who flames first? Macedonian, is it thou?
Ay, and who fronts thee, King Darius, drapes
His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow.

XII

What, then the long day dies at last? Abrupt
The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt
Our mountain-ridge, is mastered: black the belt
Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt,
Barriers again the valley, lets the flow
Of lavish glory waste itself away
--Whither? For new climes, fresh eyes breaks the day!
Night was not to be baffled. If the glow
Were all that's gone from us! Did clouds, afloat
So filmily but now, discard no rose,
Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows
A sullen uniformity. I note
Rather displeasure,--in the overspread
Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead
Oppressive to malevolence,--than late
Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate
Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate
Its passion and partake in relics red
Of day's bequeathment: now, a frown instead
Estranges, and affrights who needs must fare
On and on till his journey ends: but where?
Caucasus? Lost now in the night. Away
And far enough lies that Arcadia.
The human heroes tread the world's dark way
No longer. Yet I dimly see almost--
Yes, for my last adventure! 'Tis a ghost.
So drops away the beauty! There he stands
Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands ...

XIII

Enough! Stop further fooling, De Lairesse!
My fault, not yours! Some fitter way express
Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed
Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,
The all-including Future! What were life
Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul,
Nothing has been which shall not bettered be
Hereafter,--leave the root, by law's decree
Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree!
Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, climb--
Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower--reach, rest sublime
Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day!
O'erlook, despise, forget, throw flower away,
Intent on progress? No whit more than stop
Ascent therewith to dally, screen the top
Sufficiency of yield by interposed
Twistwork bold foot gets free from. Wherefore glozed
The poets--"Dream afresh old godlike shapes,
Recapture ancient fable that escapes,
Push back reality, repeople earth
With vanished falseness, recognize no worth
In fact new-born unless 't is rendered back
Pallid by fancy, as the western rack
Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam
Of its gone glory!"

XIV

Let things be--not seem,
I counsel rather,--do, and nowise dream!
Earth's young significance is all to learn:
The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn
Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth!
What was the best Greece babbled of as truth?
"A shade, a wretched nothing,--sad, thin, drear,
Cold, dark, it holds on to the lost loves here,
If hand have haply sprinkled o'er the dead
Three charitable dust-heaps, made mouth red
One moment by the sip of sacrifice:
Just so much comfort thaws the stubborn ice
Slow-thickening upward till it choke at length
The last faint flutter craving--not for strength,
Not beauty, not the riches and the rule
O'er men that made life life indeed." Sad school
Was Hades! Gladly,--might the dead but slink
To life back,--to the dregs once more would drink
Each interloper, drain the humblest cup
Fate mixes for humanity.

XV

Cheer up,--
Be death with me, as with Achilles erst,
Of Man's calamities the last and worst:
Take it so! By proved potency that still
Makes perfect, be assured, come what come will,
What once lives never dies--what here attains
To a beginning, has no end, still gains
And never loses aught: when, where, and how--
Lies in Law's lap. What 's death then? Even now
With so much knowledge is it hard to bear
Brief interposing ignorance? Is care
For a creation found at fault just there--
There where the heart breaks bond and outruns time,
To reach not follow what shall be?

XVI

Here 's rhyme
Such as one makes now,--say, when Spring repeats
That miracle the Greek Bard sadly greets:
"Spring for the tree and herb--no Spring for us!"
Let Spring come: why, a man salutes her thus:

Dance, yellows and whites and reds,--
Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads
Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds!

There 's sunshine; scarcely a wind at all
Disturbs starved grass and daisies small
On a certain mound by a churchyard wall.

Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows
On the mound wind spares and sunshine mellows:
Dance you, reds and whites and yellows!

WITH CHARLES AVISON

The manuscript of the _Grand March_ written by Avison was in the possession of Browning's father, and a copy is given at the end of the poem. The _Relfe_ who is two or three times mentioned was Browning's teacher of music, who was a learned contrapuntist.

I

How strange!--but, first of all, the little fact
Which led my fancy forth. This bitter morn
Showed me no object in the stretch forlorn
Of garden-ground beneath my window, backed
By yon worn wall wherefrom the creeper, tacked
To clothe its brickwork, hangs now, rent and racked
By five months' cruel winter,--showed no torn
And tattered ravage worse for eyes to see
Than just one ugly space of clearance, left
Bare even of the bones which used to be
Warm wrappage, safe embracement: this one cleft--
--Oh, what a life and beauty filled it up
Startlingly, when methought the rude clay cup
Ran over with poured bright wine! 'T was a bird
Breast-deep there, tugging at his prize, deterred
No whit by the fast-falling snow-flake: gain
Such prize my blackcap must by might and main--
The cloth-shred, still a-flutter from its nail
That fixed a spray once. Now, what told the tale
To thee,--no townsman but born orchard-thief,--
That here--surpassing moss-tuft, beard from sheaf
Of sun-scorched barley, horsehairs long and stout,
All proper country-pillage--here, no doubt,
Was just the scrap to steal should line thy nest
Superbly? Off he flew, his bill possessed
The booty sure to set his wife's each wing
Greenly a-quiver. How they climb and cling,
Hang parrot-wise to bough, these blackcaps! Strange
Seemed to a city-dweller that the finch
Should stray so far to forage: at a pinch,
Was not the fine wool's self within his range
--Filchings on every fence? But no: the need
Was of this rag of manufacture, spoiled
By art, and yet by nature near unsoiled,
New-suited to what scheming finch would breed
In comfort, this uncomfortable March.

II

Yet--by the first pink blossom on the larch!--
This was scarce stranger than that memory,--
In want of what should cheer the stay-at-home,
My soul,--must straight clap pinion, well-nigh roam
A century back, nor once close plume, descry
The appropriate rag to plunder, till she pounced--
Pray, on what relic of a brain long still?
What old-world work proved forage for the bill
Of memory the far-flyer? "March" announced,
I verily believe, the dead and gone
Name of a music-maker: one of such
In England as did little or did much,
But, doing, had their day once. Avison!
Singly and solely for an air of thine,
Bold-stepping "March," foot stept to ere my hand
Could stretch an octave, I o'erlooked the band
Of majesties familiar, to decline
On thee--not too conspicuous on the list
Of worthies who by help of pipe or wire
Expressed in sound rough rage or soft desire--
Thou, whilom of Newcastle organist!

III

So much could one--well, thinnish air effect!
Am I ungrateful? for, your March, styled "Grand,"
Did veritably seem to grow, expand,
And greaten up to title as, unchecked,
Dream-marchers marched, kept marching, slow and sure,
In time, to tune, unchangeably the same,
From nowhere into nowhere,--out they came,
Onward they passed, and in they went. No lure
Of novel modulation pricked the flat
Forthright persisting melody,--no hint
That discord, sound asleep beneath the flint,
Struck--might spring spark-like, claim due tit-for-tat,
Quenched in a concord. No! Yet, such the might
Of quietude's immutability,
That somehow coldness gathered warmth, well-nigh
Quickened--which could not be!--grew burning-bright
With fife-shriek, cymbal-clash and trumpet-blare,
To drum-accentuation: pacing turned
Striding, and striding grew gigantic, spurned
At last the narrow space 'twixt earth and air,
So shook me back into my sober self.

IV

And where woke I? The March had set me down
There whence I plucked the measure, as his brown
Frayed flannel-bit my blackcap. Great John Relfe,
Master of mine, learned, redoubtable,
It little needed thy consummate skill
To fitly figure such a bass! The key
Was--should not memory play me false--well, C.
Ay, with the Greater Third, in Triple Time,
Three crochets to a bar: no change, I grant,
Except from Tonic down to Dominant.
And yet--and yet--if I could put in rhyme
The manner of that marching!--which had stopped
--I wonder, where?--but that my weak self dropped
From out the ranks, to rub eyes disentranced
And feel that, after all the way advanced,
Back must I foot it, I and my compeers,
Only to reach, across a hundred years,
The bandsman Avison whose little book
And large tune thus had led me the long way
(As late a rag my blackcap) from to-day
And to-day's music-manufacture,--Brahms,
Wagner, Dvorak, Liszt,--to where--trumpets, shawms,
Show yourselves joyful!--Handel reigns--supreme?
By no means! Buononcini's work is theme
For fit laudation of the impartial few:
(We stand in England, mind you!) Fashion too
Favors Geminiani--of those choice
Concertos: nor there wants a certain voice
Raised in thy favor likewise, famed Pepusch
Dear to our great-grandfathers! In a bush
Of Doctor's wig, they prized thee timing beats
While Greenway trilled "Alexis." Such were feats
Of music in thy day--dispute who list--
Avison, of Newcastle organist!

V

And here 's your music all alive once more--
As once it was alive, at least: just so
The figured worthies of a waxwork-show
Attest--such people, years and years ago,
Looked thus when outside death had life below,
--Could say "We are now" not "We were of yore,"
--"Feel how our pulses leap!" and not "Explore--
Explain why quietude has settled o'er
Surface once all awork!" Ay, such a "Suite"
Roused heart to rapture, such a "Fugue" would catch
Soul heavenwards up, when time was: why attach
Blame to exhausted faultlessness, no match
For fresh achievement? Feat once--ever feat!
How can completion grow still more complete?
Hear Avison! He tenders evidence
That music in his day as much absorbed
Heart and soul then as Wagner's music now,
Perfect from centre to circumference--
Orbed to the full can be but fully orbed:
And yet--and yet--whence comes it that "O Thou"--
Sighed by the soul at eve to Hesperus--
Will not again take wing and fly away
(Since fatal Wagner fixed it fast for us)
In some unmodulated minor? Nay,
Even by Handel's help!

VI

I state it thus:
There is no truer truth obtainable
By Man than comes of music. "Soul"--(accept
A word which vaguely names what no adept
In word-use fits and fixes so that still
Thing shall not slip word's fetter and remain
Innominate as first, yet, free again,
Is no less recognized the absolute
Fact underlying that same other fact
Concerning which no cavil can dispute
Our nomenclature when we call it "Mind"--
Something not Matter)--"Soul," who seeks shall find
Distinct beneath that something. You exact
An illustrative image? This may suit.

VII

We see a work: the worker works behind,
Invisible himself. Suppose his act
Be to o'erarch a gulf: he digs, transports,
Shapes and, through enginery--all sizes, sorts,
Lays stone by stone until a floor compact
Proves our bridged causeway. So works Mind--by stress
Of faculty, with loose facts, more or less,
Builds up our solid knowledge: all the same,
Underneath rolls what Mind may hide not tame,
An element which works beyond our guess,
Soul, the unsounded sea--whose lift of surge,
Spite of all superstructure, lets emerge,
In flower and foam, Feeling from out the deeps
Mind arrogates no mastery upon--
Distinct indisputably. Has there gone
To dig up, drag forth, render smooth from rough
Mind's flooring,--operosity enough?
Still the successive labor of each inch,
Who lists may learn: from the last turn of winch
That let the polished slab-stone find its place,
To the first prod of pickaxe at the base
Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all
Mind's varied process except natural,
Nay, easy even, to descry, describe,
After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe
Of senses ministrant above, below,
Far, near, or now or haply long ago
Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,
Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence
Of ebb and flow, that 's felt beneath the tread,
Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work overhead,--
Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?
Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll
This side and that, except to emulate
Stability above? To match and mate
Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest
Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,
Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink
Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,
A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread
Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,
Run mercury into a mould like lead,
And henceforth have the plain result to show--
How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--
This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which
Music essays to solve: and here 's the hitch
That balks her of full triumph else to boast.

VIII

All Arts endeavor this, and she the most
Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?
Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?
What 's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,
Dissociate, re-distribute, interchange
Part with part, lengthen, broaden, high or deep
Construct their bravest,--still such pains produce
Change, not creation: simply what lay loose
At first lies firmly after, what design
Was faintly traced in hesitating line
Once on a time, grows firmly resolute
Henceforth and evermore. Now, could we shoot
Liquidity into a mould,--some way
Arrest Soul's evanescent moods, and keep
Unalterably still the forms that leap
To life for once by help of Art!--which yearns
To save its capture: Poetry discerns,
Painting is 'ware of passion's rise and fall,
Bursting, subsidence, intermixture--all
A-seethe within the gulf. Each Art a-strain
Would stay the apparition,--nor in vain:
The Poet's word-mesh, Painter's sure and swift
Color-and-line-throw--proud the prize they lift!
Thus felt Man and thus looked Man,--passions caught
I' the midway swim of sea,--not much, if aught,
Of nether-brooding loves, hates, hopes and fears,
Enwombed past Art's disclosure. Fleet the years,
And still the Poet's page holds Helena
At gaze from topmost Troy--"But where are they,
My brothers, in the armament I name
Hero by hero? Can it be that shame
For their lost sister holds them from the war?"
--Knowing not they already slept afar
Each of them in his own dear native land.
Still on the Painter's fresco, from the hand
Of God takes Eve the life-spark whereunto
She trembles up from nothingness. Outdo
Both of them, Music! Dredging deeper yet,
Drag into day,--by sound, thy master-net,--
The abysmal bottom-growth, ambiguous thing
Unbroken of a branch, palpitating
With limbs' play and life's semblance! There it lies.
Marvel and mystery, of mysteries
And marvels, most to love and laud thee for!
Save it from chance and change we most abhor!
Give momentary feeling permanence,
So that thy capture hold, a century hence,
Truth's very heart of truth as, safe to-day,
The Painter's Eve, the Poet's Helena
Still rapturously bend, afar still throw
The wistful gaze! Thanks, Homer, Angelo!
Could Music rescue thus from Soul's profound,
Give feeling immortality by sound,
Then were she queenliest of Arts! Alas--
As well expect the rainbow not to pass!
"Praise 'Radamisto'--love attains therein
To perfect utterance! Pity--what shall win
Thy secret like 'Rinaldo'?"--so men said:
Once all was perfume--now, the flower is dead--
They spied tints, sparks have left the spar! Love, hate,
Joy, fear, survive,--alike importunate
As ever to go walk the world again,
Nor ghost-like pant for outlet all in vain
Till Music loose them, fit each filmily
With form enough to know and name it by
For any recognizer sure of ken
And sharp of ear, no grosser denizen
Of earth than needs be. Nor to such appeal
Is Music long obdurate: off they steal--
How gently, dawn-doomed phantoms! back come they
Full-blooded with new crimson of broad day--
Passion made palpable once more. Ye look
Your last on Handel? Gaze your first on Gluck!
Why wistful search, O waning ones, the chart
Of stars for you while Haydn, while Mozart
Occupies heaven? These also, fanned to fire,
Flamboyant wholly,--so perfections tire,--
Whiten to wanness, till ... let others note
The ever-new invasion!

IX

I devote
Rather my modicum of parts to use
What power may yet avail to re-infuse
(In fancy, please you!) sleep that looks like death
With momentary liveliness, lend breath
To make the torpor half inhale. O Relfe,
An all-unworthy pupil, from the shelf
Of thy laboratory, dares unstop
Bottle, ope box, extract thence pinch and drop
Of dusts and dews a many thou didst shrine
Each in its right receptacle, assign
To each its proper office, letter large
Label and label, then with solemn charge,
Reviewing learnedly the list complete
Of chemical reactives, from thy feet
Push down the same to me, attent below,
Power in abundance: armed wherewith I go
To play the enlivener. Bring good antique stuff!
Was it alight once? Still lives spark enough
For breath to quicken, run the smouldering ash
Red right-through. What, "stone-dead" were fools so rash
As style my Avison, because he lacked
Modern appliance, spread out phrase unracked
By modulations fit to make each hair
Stiffen upon his wig? See there--and there!
I sprinkle my reactives, pitch broadcast
Discords and resolutions, turn aghast
Melody's easy-going, jostle law
With license, modulate (no Bach in awe)
Change enharmonically (Hudl to thank)
And lo, upstart the flamelets,--what was blank
Turns scarlet, purple, crimson! Straightway scanned
By eyes that like new lustre--Love once more
Yearns through the Largo, Hatred as before
Rages in the Rubato: e'en thy March,
My Avison, which, sooth to say--(ne'er arch
Eyebrows in anger!)--timed, in Georgian years
The step precise of British Grenadiers
To such a nicety,--if score I crowd,
If rhythm I break, if beats I vary,--tap
At bar's off-starting turns true thunder-clap,
Eyer the pace augmented till--what 's here?
Titanic striding toward Olympus!

X

Fear
No such irreverent innovation! Still
Glide on, go rolling, water-like, at will--
Nay, were thy melody in monotone,
The due three-parts dispensed with!

XI

This alone
Comes of my tiresome talking: Music's throne
Seats somebody whom somebody unseats,
And whom in turn--by who knows what new feats
Of strength--shall somebody as sure push down,
Consign him dispossessed of sceptre, crown,
And orb imperial--whereto? Never dream
That what once lived shall ever die! They seem
Dead--do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring
Our life to kindle theirs, and straight each king
Starts, you shall see, stands up, from head to foot
No inch that is not Purcell! Wherefore? (Suit
Measure to subject, first--no marching on
Yet in thy bold C major, Avison,
As suited step a minute since: no: wait--
Into the minor key first modulate--
Gently with A, now--in the Lesser Third!)

XII

Of all the lamentable debts incurred
By Man through buying knowledge, this were worst:
That he should find his last gain prove his first
Was futile--merely nescience absolute,
Not knowledge in the bud which holds a fruit
Haply undreamed of in the soul's Spring-tide,
Pursed in the petals Summer opens wide,
And Autumn, withering, rounds to perfect ripe,--
Not this,--but ignorance, a blur to wipe
From human records, late it graced so much.
"Truth--this attainment? Ah, but such and such
Beliefs of yore seemed inexpugnable
When we attained them! E'en as they, so will
This their successor have the due morn, noon,
Evening and night--just as an old-world tune
Wears out and drops away, until who hears
Smilingly questions--'This it was brought tears
Once to all eyes,--this roused heart's rapture once?'
So will it be with truth that, for the nonce,
Styles itself truth perennial: 'ware its wile!
Knowledge turns nescience,--foremost on the file,
Simply proves first of our delusions."

XIII

Now--
Blare it forth, bold C major! Lift thy brow,
Man, the immortal, that wast never fooled
With gifts no gifts at all, nor ridiculed--
Man knowing--he who nothing knew! As Hope,
Fear, Joy, and Grief,--though ampler stretch and scope
They seek and find in novel rhythm, fresh phrase,--
Were equally existent in far days
Of Music's dim beginning--even so,
Truth was at full within thee long ago,
Alive as now it takes what latest shape
May startle thee by strangeness. Truths escape
Time's insufficient garniture: they fade,
They fall--those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid
Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine
And free through March frost: May dews crystalline
Nourish truth merely,--does June boast the fruit
As--not new vesture merely but, to boot,
Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall
Myth after myth--the husk-like lies I call
New truth's corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes,
So much the better!

XIV

Therefore--bang the drums,
Blow the trumpets, Avison! March-motive? that's
Truth which endures resetting. Sharps and flats,
Lavish at need, shall dance athwart thy score
When ophicleide and bombardon's uproar
Mate the approaching trample, even now
Big in the distance--or my ears deceive--
Of federated England, fitly weave
March-music for the Future!

XV

Or suppose
Back, and not forward, transformation goes?
Once more some sable-stoled procession--say,
From Little-ease to Tyburn--wends its way,
Out of the dungeon to the gallows-tree
Where heading, hacking, hanging is to be
Of half-a-dozen recusants--this day
Three hundred years ago! How duly drones
Elizabethan plain-song--dim antique
Grown clarion-clear the while I humbly wreak
A classic vengeance on thy March! It moans--
Larges and Longs and Breves displacing quite
Crotchet-and-quaver pertness--brushing bars
Aside and filling vacant sky with stars
Hidden till now that day return to night.

XVI

Nor night nor day: one purpose move us both,
Be thy mood mine! As thou wast minded, Man 's
The cause our music champions: I were loth
To think we cheered our troop to Preston Pans
Ignobly: back to times of England's best!
Parliament stands for privilege--life and limb
Guards Hollis, Haselrig, Strode, Hampden, Pym,
The famous Five. There 's rumor of arrest.
Bring up the Train Bands, Southwark! They protest:
Shall we not all join chorus? Hark the hymn,
--Rough, rude, robustious--homely heart a-throb,
Harsh voice a-hallo, as beseems the mob!
How good is noise! what 's silence but despair
Of making sound match gladness never there?
Give me some great glad "subject," glorious Bach,
Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!
Join in, give voice robustious rude and rough,--
Avison helps--so heart lend noise enough!

Fife, trump, drum, sound! and singers then
Marching say "Pym, the man of men!"
Up, heads, your proudest,--out throats, your loudest--
"Somerset's Pym!"

Strafford from the block, Eliot from the den,
Foes, friends, shout "Pym, our citizen!"
Wail, the foes he quelled,--hail, the friends he held,
"Tavistock's Pym!"

Hearts prompt heads, hands that ply the pen
Teach babes unborn the where and when.
--Tyrants, he braved them,--patriots, he saved them--
"Westminster's Pym!"

[Music]

FUST AND HIS FRIENDS

AN EPILOGUE

(_Inside the House of Fust, Mayence, 1457._)

_First Friend._ Up, up, up--next step of the staircase
Lands us, lo, at the chamber of dread!

_Second Friend._ Locked and barred?

_Third Friend._ Door open--the rare case!

_Fourth Friend._ Ay, there he leans--lost wretch!

_Fifth Friend._ His head
Sunk on his desk 'twixt his arms outspread!

* * * * *

_Sixth Friend._ Hallo,--wake, man, ere God thunderstrike Mayence
--Mulct for thy sake who art Satan's, John Fust!
Satan installed here, God's rule in abeyance,
Mayence some morning may crumble to dust.
Answer our questions thou shalt and thou must!

_Seventh Friend._ Softly and fairly! Wherefore a-gloom?
Greet us, thy gossipry, cousin and sib!
Raise the forlorn brow, Fust! Make room--
Let daylight through arms which, enfolding thee, crib
From those clenched lids the comfort of sunshine!

_First Friend._ So glib

Thy tongue slides to "comfort" already? Not mine!
Behoove us deal roundly: the wretch is distraught
--Too well I guess wherefore! Behooves a Divine
--Such as I, by grace, boast me--to threaten one caught
In the enemy's toils,--setting "comfort" at naught.

_Second Friend._ Nay, Brother, so hasty? I heard--nor long since--
Of a certain Black Art'sman who,--helplessly bound
By rash pact with Satan,--through paying--why mince
The matter?--fit price to the Church,--safe and sound
Full a year after death in his grave-clothes was found.

Whereas 't is notorious the Fiend claims his due
During lifetime,--comes clawing, with talons aflame,
The soul from the flesh-rags left smoking and blue:
So it happed with John Faust; lest John Fust fare the same,--
Look up, I adjure thee by God's holy name!

For neighbors and friends--no foul hell-brood flock we!
Saith Solomon "Words of the wise are as goads:"
Ours prick but to startle from torpor, set free
Soul and sense from death's drowse!

_First Friend._ And soul, wakened, unloads
Much sin by confession: no mere palinodes!

--"I was youthful and wanton, am old yet no sage:
When angry I cursed, struck and slew: did I want?
Right and left did I rob: though no war I dared wage
With the Church (God forbid!)--harm her least ministrant--
Still I outraged all else. Now that strength is grown scant,

"I am probity's self"--no such bleatings as these!
But avowal of guilt so enormous, it balks
Tongue's telling. Yet penitence prompt may appease
God's wrath at thy bond with the Devil who stalks
--Strides hither to strangle thee!

_Fust._ Childhood so talks.--

Not rare wit nor ripe age--ye boast them, my neighbors!--
Should lay such a charge on your townsman, this Fust
Who, known for a life spent in pleasures and labors
If freakish yet venial, could scarce be induced
To traffic with fiends.

_First Friend._ So, my words have unloosed

A plie from those pale lips corrugate but now?

_Fust._ Lost count me, yet not as ye lean to surmise.

_First Friend._ To surmise? to establish! Unbury that brow!
Look up, that thy judge may read clear in thine eyes!

_Second Friend._ By your leave, Brother Barnabite! Mine to advise!

--Who arraign thee, John Fust! What was bruited erewhile
Now bellows through Mayence. All cry--thou hast trucked
Salvation away for lust's solace! Thy smile
Takes its hue from hell's smoulder!

_Fust._ Too certain! I sucked
--Got drunk at the nipple of sense.

_Second Friend._ Thou hast ducked--

Art drowned there, say rather! Faugh--fleshly disport!
How else but by help of Sir Belial didst win
That Venus-like lady, no drudge of thy sort
Could lure to become his accomplice in sin?
Folk nicknamed her Helen of Troy!

_First Friend._ Best begin

At the very beginning. Thy father,--all knew,
A mere goldsmith ...

_Fust._ Who knew him, perchance may know this--
He dying left much gold and jewels no few:
Whom these help to court with, but seldom shall miss
The love of a leman: true witchcraft, I wis!

* * * * *

_First Friend_. Dost flout me? 'T is said, in debauchery's guild
Admitted prime guttler and guzzler--O swine!--
To honor thy headship, those tosspots so swilled
That out of their table there sprouted a vine
Whence each claimed a cluster, awaiting thy sign

To out knife, off mouthful: when--who could suppose
Such malice in magic?--each sot woke and found
Cold steel but an inch from the neighbor's red nose
He took for a grape-bunch!

_Fust._ Does that so astound
Sagacity such as ye boast,--who surround

Your mate with eyes staring, hairs standing erect
At his magical feats? Are good burghers unversed
In the humors of toping? Full oft, I suspect,
Ye, counting your fingers, call thumbkin their first,
And reckon a groat every guilder disbursed.

What marvel if wags, while the skinker fast brimmed
Their glass with rare tipple's enticement, should gloat
--Befooled and beflustered--through optics drink-dimmed--
On this draught and that, till each found in his throat
Our Rhenish smack rightly as Raphal? For, note--

They fancied--their fuddling deceived them so grossly--
That liquor sprang out of the table itself
Through gimlet-holes drilled there,--nor noticed how closely
The skinker kept plying my guests, from the shelf
O'er their heads, with the potable madness. No elf

Had need to persuade them a vine rose umbrageous,
Fruit-bearing, thirst-quenching! Enough! I confess
To many such fool-pranks, but none so outrageous
That Satan was called in to help me: excess
I own to, I grieve at--no more and no less.

* * * * *

_Second Friend._ Strange honors were heaped on thee--medal for
breast,
Chain for neck, sword for thigh: not a lord of the land
But acknowledged thee peer! What ambition possessed
A goldsmith by trade, with craft's grime on his hand,
To seek such associates?

_Fust._ Spare taunts! Understand--

I submit me! Of vanities under the sun,
Pride seized me at last as concupiscence first,
Crapulosity ever: true Fiends, every one,
Haled this way and that my poor soul: thus amerced--
Forgive and forget me!

_First Friend._ Had flesh sinned the worst,

Yet help were in counsel: the Church could absolve:
But say not men truly thou barredst escape
By signing and sealing ...

_Second Friend._ On me must devolve
The task of extracting ...

_First Friend._ Shall Barnabites ape
Us Dominican experts?

_Seventh Friend._ Nay, Masters,--agape

When Hell yawns for a soul, 't is myself claim the task
Of extracting, by just one plain question, God's truth!
Where 's Peter Genesheim thy partner? I ask
Why, cloistered up still in thy room, the pale youth
Slaves tongue-tied--thy trade brooks no tattling forsooth!

No less he, thy _famulus_, suffers entrapping,
Succumbs to good fellowship: barrel a-broach
Runs freely nor needs any subsequent tapping:
Quoth Peter, "That room, none but I dare approach,
Holds secrets will help me to ride in my coach."

He prattles, we profit: in brief, he assures
Thou hast taught him to speak so that all men may hear
--Each alike, wide world over, Jews, Pagans, Turks, Moors,
The same as we Christians--speech heard far and near
At one and the same magic moment!

_Fust._ That 's clear!

Said he--how?

_Seventh Friend._ Is it like he was licensed to learn?
Who doubts but thou dost this by aid of the Fiend?
Is it so? So it is, for thou smilest! Go, burn
To ashes, since such proves thy portion, unscreened
By bell, book and candle! Yet lately I weened

Balm yet was in Gilead,--some healing in store
For the friend of my bosom. Men said thou wast sunk
In a sudden despondency: not, as before,
Fust gallant and gay with his pottle and punk,
But sober, sad, sick as one yesterday drunk!

* * * * *

_Fust._ Spare Fust, then, thus contrite!--who, youthful and
healthy,
Equipped for life's struggle with culture of mind,
Sound flesh and sane soul in coherence, born wealthy,
Nay, wise--how he wasted endowment designed
For the glory of God and the good of mankind!

That much were misused such occasions of grace
Ye well may upbraid him, who bows to the rod.
But this should bid anger to pity give place--
He has turned from the wrong, in the right path to plod,
Makes amends to mankind and craves pardon of God.

"Yea, friends, even now from my lips the _Heureka_--
Soul saved!" was nigh bursting--unduly elate!
Have I brought Man advantage, or hatched--so to speak--a
Strange serpent, no cygnet? 'T is this I debate
Within me. Forbear, and leave Fust to his fate!

* * * * *

_First Friend._ So abject, late lofty? Methinks I spy respite.
Make clean breast, discover what mysteries hide
In thy room there!

_Second Friend._ Ay, out with them! Do Satan despite!
Remember what caused his undoing was pride!

_First Friend._ Dumb devil! Remains one resource to be tried!

* * * * *

_Second Friend._ Exorcise!

_Seventh Friend._ Nay, first--is there any remembers
In substance that potent "_Ne pulvis_"--a psalm
Whereof some live spark haply lurks 'mid the embers
Which choke in my brain. Talk of "Gilead and balm"?
I mind me, sung half through, this gave such a qualm

To Asmodeus inside of a Hussite, that, queasy,
He broke forth in brimstone with curses. I'm strong
In--at least the commencement: the rest should go easy,
Friends helping. "_Ne pulvis et ignis_" ...

_Sixth Friend._ All wrong!

_Fifth Friend._ I 've conned till I captured the whole.

_Seventh Friend._ Get along!

"_Ne pulvis et cinis superbe te geras,_
_Nam fulmina_" ...

_Sixth Friend._ Fiddlestick! Peace, dolts and dorrs!
Thus runs it "_Ne Numinis fulmina feras_"--
Then "_Hominis perfidi justa sunt sors_
_Fulmen et grando et horrida mors._"

* * * * *

_Seventh Friend_. You blunder ... "_Irati ne._"

_Sixth Friend._ Mind your own
business!

_Fifth Friend._ I do not so badly, who gained the monk's leave
To study an hour his choice parchment. A dizziness
May well have surprised me. No Christian dares thieve,
Or I scarce had returned him his treasure. These cleave:

"_Nos pulvis et cinis, trementes, gementes,_
_Venimus_"--some such word--"_ad te, Domine!_
_Da lumen, juvamen, ut sancta sequentes_
_Cor ... corda_" ... Plague take it!

_Seventh Friend._ --"_erecta sint spe:_"
Right text, ringing rhyme, and ripe Latin for me!

* * * * *

_Sixth Friend._ A Canon's self wrote it me fair: I was tempted
To part with the sheepskin.

_Seventh Friend._ Didst grasp and let go
Such a godsend, thou Judas? My purse had been emptied
Ere part with the prize!

_Fust._ Do I dream? Say ye so?
Clouds break, then! Move, world! I have gained my "_Pou sto_"!

I am saved: Archimedes, salute me!

_Omnes._ Assistance!
Help, Angels! He summons ... Aroint thee!--by name,
His familiar!

_Fust._ Approach!

_Omnes._ Devil, keep thy due distance!

_Fust._ Be tranquillized, townsmen! The knowledge ye claim
Behold, I prepare to impart. Praise or blame,--

Your blessing or banning, whatever betide me,
At last I accept. The slow travail of years,
The long-teeming brain's birth--applaud me, deride me,--
At last claims revealment. Wait!

_Seventh Friend._ Wait till appears
Uncaged Archimedes cooped-up there?

_Second Friend._ Who fears?

Here 's have at thee!

_Seventh Friend._ Correctly now! "_Pulvis et cinis_" ...

_Fust._ The verse ye so value, it happens I hold
In my memory safe from _initium_ to _finis_.
Word for word, I produce you the whole, plain enrolled,
Black letters, white paper--no scribe's red and gold!

* * * * *

_Omnes._ Aroint thee!

_Fust._ I go and return.

(_He enters the inner room._)

_First Friend._ Ay, 't is "_ibis_"
No doubt: but as boldly "_redibis_"--who 'll say?
I rather conjecture "_in Orco peribis!_"

_Seventh Friend._ Come, neighbors!

_Sixth Friend._ I 'm with you! Show courage and
stay
Hell's outbreak? Sirs, cowardice here wins the day!

* * * * *

_Fifth Friend_. What luck had that student of Bamberg who ventured
To peep in the cell where a wizard of note
Was busy in getting some black deed debentured
By Satan? In dog's guise there sprang at his throat
A flame-breathing fury. Fust favors, I note,

An ugly huge lurcher!

_Seventh Friend._ If I placed reliance
As thou, on the beads thou art telling so fast,
I 'd risk just a peep through the keyhole.

_Sixth Friend._ Appliance
Of ear might be safer. Five minutes are past.

_Omnes._ Saints, save us! The door is thrown open at last!

* * * * *

_Fust_ (_re-enters, the door closing behind him_).
As I promised, behold I perform! Apprehend you
The object I offer is poison or pest?
Receive without harm from the hand I extend you
A gift that shall set every scruple at rest!
Shrink back from mere paper-strips? Try them and test!

Still hesitate? Myk,-was it thou who lamentedst
Thy five wits clean failed thee to render aright
A poem read once and no more?--who repentedst
Vile pelf had induced thee to banish from sight
The characters none but our clerics indite?

Take and keep!
_First Friend._ Blessed Mary and all Saints about her!

_Second Friend._ What imps deal so deftly,--five minutes suffice
To play thus the penman?

_Third Friend._ By Thomas the Doubter,
Five minutes, no more!

_Fourth Friend._ Out on arts that entice
Such scribes to do homage!

_Fifth Friend._ Stay! Once--and now twice--

Yea, a third time, my sharp eye completes the inspection
Of line after line, the whole series, and finds
Each letter join each--not a fault for detection!
Such upstrokes, such downstrokes, such strokes of all kinds
In the criss-cross, all perfect!

_Sixth Friend._ There 's nobody minds

His quill-craft with more of a conscience, o'er-scratches
A sheepskin more nimbly and surely with ink,
Than Paul the Sub-Prior: here 's paper that matches
His parchment with letter on letter, no link
Overleapt--underlost!

_Seventh Friend._ No erasure, I think--

No blot, I am certain!

_Fust._ Accept the new treasure!

_Sixth Friend._ I remembered full half!

_Seventh Friend._ But who other than I
(Bear witness, bystanders!) when he broke the measure
Repaired fault with "_fulmen_"?

_Fust._ Put bickerings by!
Here 's for thee--thee--and thee, too: at need a supply

(_Distributing Proofs._)

For Mayence, though seventy times seven should muster!
How now? All so feeble of faith that no face
Which fronts me but whitens--or yellows, were juster?
Speak out lest I summon my Spirits!

_Omnes._ Grace--grace!
Call none of thy--helpmates! We 'll answer apace!

My paper--and mine--and mine also--they vary
In nowise--agree in each tittle and jot!
Fust, how--why was this?

_Fust._ Shall such "_Cur_" miss a "_quare_"?
Within, there! Throw doors wide! Behold who complot
To abolish the scribe's work--blur, blunder and blot!

(_The doors open, and the Press is discovered in operation._)

Brave full-bodied birth of this brain that conceived thee
In splendor and music,--sustained the slow drag
Of the days stretched to years dim with doubt,--yet believed thee,
Had faith in thy first leap of life! Pulse might flag--
--Mine fluttered how faintly!--Arch-moment might lag

Its longest--I bided, made light of endurance,
Held hard by the hope of an advent which--dreamed,
Is done now: night yields to the dawn's reassurance:
I have thee--I hold thee--my fancy that seemed,
My fact that proves palpable! Ay, Sirs, I schemed

Completion that 's fact: see this Engine--be witness
Yourselves of its working! Nay, handle my Types!
Each block bears a Letter: in order and fitness
I range them. Turn, Peter, the winch! See, it gripes
What 's under! Let loose--? draw! In regular stripes

Lies plain, at one pressure, your poem--touched, tinted,
Turned out to perfection! The sheet, late a blank,
Filled--ready for reading,--not written but PRINTED!
Omniscient omnipotent God, thee I thank,
Thee ever, thee only!--thy creature that shrank

From no task thou, Creator, imposedst! Creation
Revealed me no object, from insect to Man,
But bore thy hand's impress: earth glowed with salvation:
"Hast sinned? Be thou saved, Fust! Continue my plan,
Who spake and earth was: with my word things began.

"As sound so went forth, to the sight be extended
Word's mission henceforward! The task I assign,
Embrace--thy allegiance to evil is ended!
Have cheer, soul impregnate with purpose! Combine
Soul and body, give birth to my concept--called thine!

"Far and wide, North and South, East and West, have dominion
O'er thought, wingèd wonder, O Word! Traverse world
In sun-flash and sphere-song! Each beat of thy pinion
Bursts night, beckons day: once Truth's banner unfurled,
Where 's Falsehood? Sun-smitten, to nothingness hurled!"

More humbly--so, friends, did my fault find redemption.
I sinned, soul-entoiled by the tether of sense:
My captor reigned master: I plead no exemption,
From Satan's award to his servant: defence
From the fiery and final assault would be--whence?

By making--as man might--to truth restitution!
Truth is God: trample lies and lies' father, God's foe!
Fix fact fast: truths change by an hour's revolution:
What deed's very doer, unaided, can show
How 't was done a year--month--week--day--minute ago?

At best, he relates it--another reports it--
A third--nay, a thousandth records it: and still
Narration, tradition, no step but distorts it,
As down from truth's height it goes sliding until
At the low level lie-mark it stops--whence no skill

Of the scribe, intervening too tardily, rescues
--Once fallen--lost fact from lie's fate there. What scribe
--Eyes horny with poring, hands crippled with desk-use,
Brains fretted by fancies--the volatile tribe
That tease weary watchers--can boast that no bribe

Shuts eye and frees hand and remits brain from toiling?
Truth gained--can we stay, at whatever the stage,
Truth a-slide,--save her snow from its ultimate soiling
In mire,--by some process, stamp promptly on page
Fact spoiled by pen's plodding, make truth heritage

Not merely of clerics, but poured out, full measure,
On clowns--every mortal endowed with a mind?
Read, gentle and simple! Let labor win leisure
At last to bid truth do all duty assigned,
Not pause at the noble but pass to the hind!

How bring to effect such swift sure simultaneous
Unlimited multiplication? How spread
By an arm-sweep a hand-throw--no helping extraneous--
Truth broadcast o'er Europe? "The goldsmith," I said,
"Graves limning on gold: why not letters on lead?"

So, Tuscan artificer, grudge not thy pardon
To me who played false, made a furtive descent,
Found the sly secret workshop,--thy genius kept guard on
Too slackly for once,--and surprised thee low-bent
O'er thy labor--some chalice thy tool would indent

With a certain free scroll-work framed round by a border
Of foliage and fruitage: no scratching so fine,
No shading so shy but, in ordered disorder,
Each flourish came clear,--unbewildered by shine,
On the gold, irretrievably right, lay each line.

How judge if thy hand worked thy will? By reviewing,
Revising again and again, piece by piece,
Tool's performance,--this way, as I watched. 'T was through glueing
A paper-like film-stuff--thin, smooth, void of crease,
On each cut of the graver: press hard! at release,

No mark on the plate but the paper showed double:
His work might proceed: as he judged--space or speck
Up he filled, forth he flung--was relieved thus from trouble
Lest wrong--once--were right never more: what could check
Advancement, completion? Thus lay at my beck--

At my call--triumph likewise! "For," cried I, "what hinders
That graving turns Printing? Stamp one word--not one
But fifty such, phœnix-like, spring from death's cinders,--
Since death is word's doom, clerics hide from the sun
As some churl closets up this rare chalice." Go, run

Thy race now, Fust's child! High, O Printing, and holy
Thy mission! These types, see, I chop and I change
Till the words, every letter, a pageful, not slowly
Yet surely lies fixed: last of all, I arrange
A paper beneath, stamp it, loosen it!

_First Friend._ Strange!

* * * * *

_Second Friend._ How simple exceedingly!

_Fust._ Bustle, my Schœffer!
Set type,--quick, Genesheim! Turn screw now!

_Third Friend._ Just that!

_Fourth Friend._ And no such vast miracle!