MESMERISM
I
All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?
II
If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
And a cat's in the water-butt— 10
III
And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is surmised on the garret-stairs,
And the locks slip unawares—
IV
And the spider, to serve his ends,
By a sudden thread,
Arms and legs outspread,
On the table's midst descends,
Comes to find, God knows what friends!— 20
V
If since eve drew in, I say,
I have sat and brought
(So to speak) my thought
To bear on the woman away,
Till I felt my hair turn grey—
VI
Till I seemed to have and hold,
In the vacancy
'Twixt the wall and me,
From the hair-plait's chestnut gold
To the foot in its muslin fold— 30
VII
Have and hold, then and there,
Her, from head to foot
Breathing and mute,
Passive and yet aware,
In the grasp of my steady stare—
VIII
Hold and have, there and then,
All her body and soul
That completes my whole,
All that women add to men,
In the clutch of my steady ken— 40
IX
Having and holding, till
I imprint her fast
On the void at last
As the sun does whom he will
By the calotypist's skill—
X
Then,—if my heart's strength serve,
And through all and each
Of the veils I reach
To her soul and never swerve,
Knitting an iron nerve— 50
XI
Command her soul to advance
And inform the shape
Which has made escape
And before my countenance
Answers me glance for glance—
XII
I, still with a gesture fit
Of my hands that best
Do my soul's behest,
Pointing the power from it,
While myself do steadfast sit— 60
XIII
Steadfast and still the same
On my object bent,
While the hands give vent
To my ardour and my aim
And break into very flame—
XIV
Then I reach, I must believe,
Not her soul in vain,
For to me again
It reaches, and past retrieve
Is wound in the toils I weave; 70
XV
And must follow as I require,
As befits a thrall,
Bringing flesh and all,
Essence and earth-attire
To the source of the tractile fire:
XVI
Till the house called hers, not mine,
With a growing weight
Seems to suffocate
If she break not its leaden line
And escape from its close confine. 80
XVII
Out of doors into the night!
On to the maze
Of the wild wood-ways,
Not turning to left nor right
From the pathway, blind with sight—
XVIII
Making thro' rain and wind
O'er the broken shrubs,
'Twixt the stems and stubs,
With a still, composed, strong mind,
Nor a care for the world behind— 90
XIX
Swifter and still more swift,
As the crowding peace
Doth to joy increase
In the wide blind eyes uplift
Thro' the darkness and the drift!
XX
While I—to the shape, I too
Feel my soul dilate
Nor a whit abate,
And relax not a gesture due,
As I see my belief come true. 100
XXI
For, there! have I drawn or no
Life to that lip?
Do my fingers dip
In a flame which again they throw
On the cheek that breaks a-glow?
XXII
Ha! was the hair so first?
What, unfilleted,
Made alive, and spread
Through the void with a rich outburst,
Chestnut gold-interspersed? 110
XXIII
Like the doors of a casket-shrine,
See, on either side,
Her two arms divide
Till the heart betwixt makes sign,
Take me, for I am thine!
XXIV
"Now—now"—the door is heard!
Hark, the stairs! and near—
Nearer—and here—
"Now!" and at call the third
She enters without a word. 120
XXV
On doth she march and on
To the fancied shape;
It is, past escape,
Herself, now: the dream is done
And the shadow and she are one.
XXVI
First I will pray. Do Thou
That ownest the soul,
Yet wilt grant control
To another, nor disallow
For a time, restrain me now! 130
XXVII
I admonish me while I may,
Not to squander guilt,
Since require Thou wilt
At my hand its price one day!
What the price is, who can say?
NOTES:
"Mesmerism." With a continuous tension of will, whose
unbroken concentration impregnates the very structure of
the poem, a mesmerist describes the processes of the act
by which he summons shape and soul of the woman he
desires; and then reverent perception of the sacredness
of the soul awes him from trespassing upon another's
individuality.
THE GLOVE
(Peter Ronsard, loquitur)
"Heigho!" yawned one day King Francis,
"Distance all value enhances.
When a man's busy, why, leisure
Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
Faith, and at leisure once is he?
Straightway he wants to be busy.
Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
Caught thinking war the true pastime.
Is there a reason in metre?
Give us your speech, master Peter!" 10
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er am at loss with my Naso
"Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets:
"Men are the merest Ixions"—
Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's
—Heigho—go look at our lions."
Such are the sorrowful chances
If you talk fine to King Francis.
And so, to the courtyard proceeding,
Our company, Francis was leading, 20
Increased by new followers tenfold
Before he arrived at the penfold;
Lords, ladies, like clouds which bedizen
At sunset the western horizon.
And Sir De Lorge pressed 'mid the foremost
With the dame he professed to adore most.
Oh, what a face! One by fits eyed
Her, and the horrible pitside;
For the penfold surrounded a hollow
Which led where the eye scarce dared follow 30
And shelved to the chamber secluded
Where Bluebeard, the great lion, brooded.
The King hailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster.
They opened a hole in the wire-work
Across it, and dropped there a firework,
And fled: one's heart's beating redoubled;
A pause, while the pit's mouth was troubled, 40
The blackness and silence so utter,
By the firework's slow sparkling and sputter;
Then earth in a sudden contortion
Gave out to our gaze her abortion.
Such a brute! Were I friend Clement Marot
(Whose experience of nature's but narrow
And whose faculties move in no small mist
When he versifies David the Psalmist)
I should study that brute to describe you
Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu. 50
One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy
To see the black mane, vast and heapy,
The tail in the air stiff and straining
The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning,
As over the barrier which bounded
His platform, and us who surrounded
The barrier, they reached and they rested
On space that might stand him in best stead:
For who knew, he thought, what the amazement,
The eruption of clatter and blaze meant, 60
And if, in this minute of wonder,
No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder,
Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered,
The lion at last was delivered?
Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead!
And you saw by the flash on his forehead,
By the hope in those eyes wide and steady,
He was leagues in the desert already
Driving the flocks up the mountain
Or catlike couched hard by the fountain 70
To waylay the date-gathering negress:
So guarded he entrance or egress.
"How he stands!" quoth the King: "we may well swear,
(No novice, we've won our spurs elsewhere
And so can afford the confession)
We exercise wholesome discretion
In keeping aloof from his threshold;
Once hold you, those jaws want no fresh hold,
Their first would too pleasantly purloin
The visitor's brisket or surloin: 80
But who's he would prove so fool-hardy?
Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!"
The sentence no sooner was uttered,
Than over the rails a glove fluttered,
Fell close to the lion, and rested:
The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested
With life so, De Lorge had been wooing
For months past; he sat there pursuing
His suit, weighing out with nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance. 90
Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!
De Lorge made one leap at the barrier,
Walked straight to the glove—while the lion
Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on
The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire,
And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir—
Picked it up, and as calmly retreated,
Leaped back where the lady was seated,
And full in the face of its owner
Flung the glove.
"Your heart's queen, you dethrone her? 100
So should I!"—cried the King—"'twas mere vanity
Not love set that task to humanity!"
Lords and ladies alike turned with loathing
From such a proved wolf in sheep's clothing.
Not so, I; for I caught an expression
In her brow's undisturbed self-possession
Amid the Court's scoffing and merriment,
As if from no pleasing experiment
She rose, yet of pain not much heedful
So long as the process was needful,— 110
As if she had tried in a crucible,
To what "speeches like gold" were reducible,
And, finding the finest prove copper,
Felt the smoke in her face was but proper;
To know what she had not to trust to,
Was worth all the ashes and dust too.
She went out 'mid hooting and laughter;
Clement Marot stayed; I followed after,
And asked, as a grace, what it all meant?
If she wished not the rash deed's recalment? 120
For I"—so I spoke—"am a poet:
Human nature,—behoves that I know it!"
She told me, "Too long had I heard
Of the deed proved alone by the word:
For my love—what De Lorge would not dare!
With my scorn—what De Lorge could compare!
And the endless descriptions of death
He would brave when my lip formed a breath,
I must reckon as braved, or, of course,
Doubt his word—and moreover, perforce, 130
For such gifts as no lady could spurn,
Must offer my love in return.
When I looked on your lion, it brought
All the dangers at once to my thought,
Encountered by all sorts of men,
Before he was lodged in his den—
From the poor slave whose club or bare hands
Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
With no King and no Court to applaud,
By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, 140
Yet to capture the creature made shift,
That his rude boys might laugh at the gift
—To the page who last leaped o'er the fence
Of the pit, on no greater pretence
Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,
Lest his pay for a week should be stopped.
So, wiser I judged it to make
One trial what 'death for my sake'
Really meant, while the power was yet mine,
Than to wait until time should define 150
Such a phrase not so simply as I,
Who took it to mean just 'to die.'
The blow a glove gives is but weak:
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?"
I looked, as away she was sweeping.
And saw a youth eagerly keeping
As close as he dared to the doorway.
No doubt that a noble should more weigh 160
His life than befits a plebeian;
And yet, had our brute been Nemean—
(I judge by a certain calm fervour
The youth stepped with, forward to serve her)
—He'd have scarce thought you did him the worst turn
If you whispered "Friend, what you'd get, first earn!"
And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre
The voice of the Court, I dared augur. 170
For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,
Those in wonder and praise, these in envy;
And in short stood so plain a head taller.
That he wooed and won... how do you call her?
The beauty, that rose in the sequel
To the King's love, who loved her a week well.
And 'twas noticed he never would honour
De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her)
With the easy commission of stretching
His legs in the service, and fetching 180
His wife, from her chamber, those straying
Sad gloves she was always mislaying,
While the King took the closet to chat in,—
But of course this adventure came pat in.
And never the King told the story,
How bringing a glove brought such glory,
But the wife smiled—"His nerves are grown firmer:
Mine he brings now and utters no murmur."
Venienti occurrite morbo!
With which moral I drop my theorbo. 190
NOTES:
"The Glove" gives a transcript from Court life, in Paris,
under Francis I. In making Ronsard the mouthpiece for
a deeper observation of the meaning of the incident he is
supposed to witness and describe than Marot and the rest
saw, characteristic differences between these two poets of
the time are brought out, the genuineness of courtly love
and chivalry is tested, and to the original story of the glove
is added a new view of the lady's character; a sketch of
her humbler and truer lover, and their happiness; and a
pendent scene showing the courtier De Lorges, having
won a beauty for his wife, in the ignominious position of
assisting the king to enjoy her favors and of submitting to
pleasantries upon his discomfiture. The original story as
told by Poullain de St. Croix in his Essais Historiques sur
Paris ran thus: "One day whilst Francis I amused himself
with looking at a combat between his lions, a lady,
having let her glove drop, said to De Lorges, 'If you
would have me believe that you love me as much as you
swear you do, go and bring back my glove.' De Lorges
went down, picked up the glove from amidst the ferocious
beasts, returned, and threw it in the lady's face; and in
spite of all her advances and cajoleries would never look
at her again.'' Schiller running across this anecdote of
St. Croix, in 1797, as he writes Goethe, wrote a poem
on it which adds nothing to the story. Leigh Hunt's
'The Glove and the Lions' adds some traits. It characterizes
the lady as shallow and vain, with smiles and
eyes which always seem'd the same.'' She calculates
since "king, ladies, lovers, all look on," that "the occasion
is divine" to drop her glove and "prove his love,
then look at him and smile"; and after De Lorges has
returned and thrown the glove, "but not with love, right
in the lady's face,'' Hunt makes the king rise and swear
"rightly done! No love, quoth he, but vanity, sets love
a task like that!'' This is the material Browning worked
on; he makes use of this speech of the king's, but remodels
the lady's character wholly, and gives her an appreciative
lover, and also a keen-eyed young poet to tell her
story afresh and to reveal through his criticism the narrowness
of the Court and the Court poets.
12. Naso: Ovid. Love of the classics and curiosity as
to human nature were both characteristic of Peter Ronsard
(1524-1585), at one time page to Francis I, the
most erudite and original of French medieval poets.
45. Clement Marot: (1496-1544), Court poet to Francis I.
His nature and verse were simpler than Ronsard's,
and he belonged more peculiarly to his own day.
48. Versifies David: Marot was suspected of Protestant
leanings which occasioned his imprisonment twice, and put
him in need of the protection Francis and his sister gave
him. Among his works were sixty-five epistles addressed
to grandees, attesting his courtiership, and the paraphrase
of forty-nine of the Psalms to which Ronsard alludes.
50. Illum Juda, etc.: that lion of the tribe of Judah.
89. Venienti, etc.: Meet the coming disease; that is,
if evil be anticipated, don't wait till it seizes you, but
dare to assure yourself and then forestall it as the lady did.
190. Theorbo: an old Italian stringed instrument such as
pages used.
TIME'S REVENGES
I've a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me.
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books.
He does himself though,—and if some vein
Were to snap tonight in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly, 10
Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land
To be my nurse in this poor place,
And make my broth and wash my face
And light my fire and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humoured smile
That I told him "Better have kept away
Than come and kill me, night and day,
With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,
The creaking of his clumsy boots." 20
I am as sure that this he would do,
As that Saint Paul's is striking two.
And I think I rather... woe is me!
—Yes, rather would see him than not see,
If lifting a hand could seat him there
Before me in the empty chair
To-night, when my head aches indeed,
And I can neither think nor read
Nor make these purple fingers hold
The pen; this garret's freezing cold! 30
And I've a Lady—there he wakes,
The laughing fiend and prince of snakes
Within me, at her name, to pray
Fate send some creature in the way
Of my love for her, to be down-torn,
Upthrust and outward-borne,
So I might prove myself that sea
Of passion which I needs must be!
Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint
And my style infirm and its figures faint, 40
All the critics say, and more blame yet,
And not one angry word you get.
But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady's foot
Rather than trample under mine
That laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends!
I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with love's best crown, 50
And feasted with love's perfect feast,
To think I kill for her, at least,
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim,
—So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
Filled full, eaten out and in
With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips, the little chin, the stir
Of shadow round her mouth; and she
—I'll tell you,—calmly would decree 60
That I should roast at a slow fire,
If that would compass her desire
And make her one whom they invite
To the famous ball to-morrow night.
There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime, there is our earth here—well!
NOTES:
"Time's Revenges." An author soliloquizes in his garret
over the fact that he possesses a friend who loves him and
would do anything in his power to serve him, but for
whom he cares almost nothing. At the same time he
himself loves a woman to such distraction that he counts
himself crowned with love's best crown while sacrificing
his soul, his body, his peace, and his fame in brooding on
his love, while she could calmly decree that he should
roast at a slow fire if it would compass her frivolously
ambitious designs. Thus his indifference to his friend is
avenged by the indifference the lady shows toward him.
46. The Florentine: Dante. Used here, seemingly, as
a symbol of the highest attainments in poesy, his (the
speaker's) reverence for which is so great that he would
rather put his cheek under his lady's foot than that poetry
should suffer any indignity at his hands; yet in spite of
all the possibilities open to him through his enthusiasm for
poetry, he prefers wasting his entire energies upon one
unworthy of him.
THE ITALIAN IN ENGLAND