Ferishtah is in training for a dervish, and is anxious to feed hungry souls. Mr. Browning makes his charitable bird an eagle, and the moral is that man is not to play the helpless weakling, but to save the perishing by his helpful strength. The dervish, duly admonished, asks which lacks in him food the more—body or soul? He reflects that, as he starves in soul, so may mankind, wherefore he will go forth to help them; and this Mr. Browning proposes to do by the series of moral and philosophical lessons to be drawn from Ferishtah’s Fancies. The lyric teaches that, though a life with nature is good for meditation and for lovers of solitude, we are human souls and our proper place is “up and down amid men,” for God is soul, and it is the poet’s business to speak to the divine principle existing under every squalid exterior and harsh and hateful personality.
Earth’s Immortalities. (First published in Dramatic Romances and Lyrics—Bells and Pomegranates No. VII.) The poet was famous, and not so very long since; but the gravestones above him are sinking, and the lichens are softening out his very name and date. So fades away his fame. And the lover who could be satisfied with nothing less than “for ever” has the fever of passion quenched in the snows that cover the tomb beside the poet’s. One demanded to be remembered, the other to be loved, for ever. Thus do “Earth’s immortalities” perish either under lichens or snows.
Easter-Day. (Christmas Eve and Easter Day: Florence, 1850.) The poem is a dialogue. The first speaker exclaims, “How very hard it is to be a Christian!” and says the difficulty does not so much consist in living up to the Christ-ideal,—hard enough, by the very terms, but hard to realise it with the moderate success with which we realise the ordinary aims of life. Of course the aim is greater, consequently the required effort harder: may it not be God’s intention that the difficulty of being a Christian should seem unduly great? “Of course the chief difficulty is belief,” says the second speaker: “once thoroughly believe, the rest is simple. Prove to me that the least command of God is really and truly God’s command, and martyrdom itself is easy.” Joint the finite into the infinite life, and fix yourself safely inside, no doubt all external things you would safely despise. The second speaker says, “But faith may be God’s touchstone: God does not reward us with heaven because we see the sun shining, nor crown a man victor because he draws his breath duly. If you would have faith exist at all, there must perforce be some uncertainty with it. We love or hate people because either they do or do not believe in us. But the Creator’s reign, we are apt to think, should be based on exacter laws: we desire God should geometrise.” The first speaker says, “You would grow as a tree, stand as a rock, soar up like fire, be above faith. But creation groans, and out of its pains we have to make our music.” The second speaker replies, “I confess a scientific faith is absurd; the end which it was meant to serve would be lost if faith were certainty. We may grant that, but may we not require at least probability? We do not hang a curtain flat along a wall; we prefer it to hang in folds from point to point. We would not mind the gaps and intervals, if at point and point we could pin our life upon God. It would be no hardship then to renounce the world. There are men who live merely to collect beetles, giving up all the pleasures of life to make a completer collection than has been hitherto formed. Another set lives to collect snuff-boxes, or in learning to play chess blindfold. It would not be hard to renounce the world if we had as much certainty as these hermits obtain in their pleasures to inspire them in renouncing the vanities of life. Of course, as some will say, there is evidence enough of a sort: as is your turn of mind, so is your search—you will find just what you look for, and so you get your Christian evidences in a sense; you may comfort yourself in having found a scrap of papyrus in a mummy-case which declares there really was a living Moses, and you may even get over the difficulty of Jonah and the whale by turning the whale into an island or a rock and set your faith to clap her wings and crow accordingly. You may do better: you may make the human heart the minister of truth, and prove by its wants and needs and hopes and fears how aptly the creeds meet these:
“You wanted to believe; your pains
Are crowned—you do!”
If once in the believing mood, the renunciation of pleasures adds a spice to life. Do you say that the Eternal became incarnate—
“Only to give our joys a zest,
And prove our sorrows for the best?”
The believing man is convinced that to be a Christian the world’s gain is to be accounted loss, and he asks the sceptic what he counsels in that case? The answer is, he would take the safe side—deny himself. The believer does not relish the idea of renouncing life for the sake of death. The collectors of curiosities at least had something for their pains, and the believer gets—well, hope! The sceptic claims that he lives in trusting ease. “Yes,” says the believer, “blind hopes wherewith to flavour life—that is all;” and he proceeds to relate an incident which happened in his life one Easter night, three years ago. He was crossing the common near the chapel (spoken of in Christmas Eve), when he fell to musing on what was his personal relationship to Christianity, how it would be with him were he to fall dead that moment—would he lie faithful or faithless? It was always so with him from childhood; he always desired to know the worst of everything. “Common-sense” told him he had nothing to fear: if he were not a Christian, who was? All at once he had this vision. “Burn it!” was written in lines of fire across the sky; the dome of heaven was one vast rack of ripples, infinite and black; the whole earth was lit with the flames of the Judgment Day. In a moment he realised that he stood before the seat of Judgment, choosing the world—his naked choice, with all the disguises of old and all his trifling with conscience stripped away. A Voice beside him spoke:—
“Life is done,
Time ends, Eternity’s begun,
And thou art judged for evermore.”
The Christ stood before him, told him that, as he had deliberately chosen the world, the finite life in opposition to God, it should be his:—