WITH GERARD DE LAIRESSE

The Art of Painting by Gerard le Lairesse, translated by J. F. Fritsch, was the "tome" to which Browning refers as having interested him when he was a boy and so given rise to this poem. The song at the end of the poem was first printed in a small volume called The New Amphion, published for the Edinburgh University Union Fancy Fair in 1886.

Ah, but—because you were struck blind, could bless

Your sense no longer with the actual view

Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew

In happier days so duteously and true,—

Must I account my Gerard de Lairesse

All sorrow-smitten? He was hindered too

—Was this no hardship?—from producing, plain

To us who still have eyes, the pageantry

Which passed and passed before his busy brain

And, captured on his canvas, showed our sky

Traversed by flying shapes, earth stocked with brood

Of monsters,—centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd,—

Not without much Olympian glory, shapes

Of god and goddess in their gay escapes

From the severe serene: or haply paced

The antique ways, god-counselled, nymph-embraced,

Some early human kingly personage.

Such wonders of the teeming poet's-age

Were still to be: nay, these indeed began—

Are not the pictures extant?—till the ban

Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb

And pencil from his finger.

Blind—not dumb,

Else, Gerard, were my inmost bowels stirred

With pity beyond pity: no, the word

Was left upon your unmolested lips:

Your mouth unsealed, despite of eyes' eclipse,

Talked all brain's yearning into birth. I lack

Somehow the heart to wish your practice back

Which boasted hand's achievement in a score

Of veritable pictures, less or more,

Still to be seen: myself have seen them,—moved

To pay due homage to the man I loved

Because of that prodigious book he wrote

On Artistry's Ideal, by taking note,

Making acquaintance with his artist-work.

So my youth's piety obtained success

Of all too dubious sort: for, though it irk

To tell the issue, few or none would guess

From extant lines and colors, De Lairesse,

Your faculty, although each deftly-grouped

And aptly-ordered figure-piece was judged

Worthy a prince's purchase in its day.

Bearded experience bears not to be duped

Like boyish fancy: 'twas a boy that budged

No foot's breath from your visioned steps away

The while that memorable "Walk" he trudged

In your companionship,—the Book must say

Where, when and whither,—"Walk," come what come may,

No measurer of steps on this our globe

Shall ever match for marvels. Faustus' robe,

And Fortunatus' cap were gifts of price:

But—oh, your piece of sober sound advice

That artists should descry abundant worth

In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth

If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied

In vulgar town and country! Why despond

Because hemmed round by Dutch canals? Beyond

The ugly actual, lo, on every side

Imagination's limitless domain

Displayed a wealth of wondrous sounds and sights

Ripe to be realized by poet's brain

Acting on painter's brush! "Ye doubt? Poor wights,

What if I set example, go before,

While you come after, and we both explore

Holland turned Dreamland, taking care to note

Objects whereto my pupils may devote

Attention with advantage?"

III

So commenced

That "Walk" amid true wonders—none to you,

But huge to us ignobly common-sensed,

Purblind, while plain could proper optics view

In that old sepulchre by lightning split,

Whereof the lid bore carven,—any dolt

Imagines why,—Jove's very thunderbolt:

You who could straight perceive, by glance at it,

This tomb must needs be Phaeton's! In a trice,

Confirming that conjecture, close on hand,

Behold, half out, half in the ploughed-up sand,

A chariot-wheel explained its bolt-device:

What other than the Chariot of the Sun

Ever let drop the like? Consult the tome—

I bid inglorious tarriers-at-home—

For greater still surprise the while that "Walk"

Went on and on, to end as it begun,

Chokefull of chances, changes, every one

No whit less wondrous. What was there to balk

Us, who had eyes, from seeing? You with none

Missed not a marvel: wherefore? Let us talk.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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!