Robert Browning - The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition

(Whenever it was the thought first struck hin

How Death, at unawares, might duck him

Deeper than the grave, and quench

The gin-shop’s light in Hell’s grim drench)

Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence,

As to hug the Book of books to pieces:

And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance,

Not improved by the private dog’s-ears and creases,

Having clothed his own soul with, he’d fain see equipt yours, —

So tossed you again your Holy Scriptures.

And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt:

Nay, had but a single face of my neighbours

Appeared to suspect that the preacher’s labours

Were help which the world could be saved without,

’Tis odds but I had borne in quiet

A qualm or two at my spiritual diet;

Or, who can tell? had even mustered

Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon:

But the flock sate on, divinely flustered,

Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon

With such content in every snuffle,

As the devil inside us loves to ruffle.

My old fat woman purred with pleasure,

And thumb round thumb went twirling faster

While she, to his periods keeping measure,

Maternally devoured the pastor.

The man with the handkerchief, untied it.

Showed us a horrible wen inside it,

Gave his eyelids yet another screwing.

And rocked himself as the woman was doing.

The shoemaker’s lad, discreetly choking,

Kept down his cough. ’Twas too provoking!

My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it,

And saying, like Eve when she plucked the apple,

“I wanted a taste, and now there’s enough of it,”

I flung out of the little chapel.

IV.

There was a lull in the rain, a lull

In the wind too; the moon was risen,

And would have shone out pure and full,

But for the ramparted cloud-prison,

Block on block built up in the west,

For what purpose the wind knows best,

Who changes his mind continually.

And the empty other half of the sky

Seemed in its silence as if it knew

What, any moment, might look through

A chance-gap in that fortress massy: —

Through its fissures you got hints

Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints,

Now, a dull lion-colour, now, brassy

Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow,

Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow,

All a-simmer with intense strain

To let her through, — then blank again,

At the hope of her appearance failing.

Just by the chapel, a break in the railing

Shows a narrow path directly across;

’Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss —

Besides, you go gently all the way uphill:

I stooped under and soon felt better:

My head grew light, my limbs more supple,

As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter;

My mind was full of the scene I had left,

That placid flock, that pastor vociferant,

— How this outside was pure and different!

The sermon, now — what a mingled weft

Of good and ill! were either less,

Its fellow had coloured the whole distinctly;

But alas for the excellent earnestness,

And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly,

But as surely false, in their quaint presentment,

However to pastor and flock’s contentment!

Say rather, such truths looked false to your eyes,

With his provings and parallels twisted and twined,

Till how could you know them, grown double their size,

In the natural fog of the good man’s mind?

Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps,

Haloed about with the common’s damps.

Truth remains true, the fault’s in the prover;

The zeal was good, and the aspiration;

And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over,

Pharaoh received no demonstration

By his Baker’s dream of Baskets Three,

Of the doctrine of the Trinity, —

Although, as our preacher thus embellished it,

Apparently his hearers relished it

With so unfeigned a gust — who knows if

They did not prefer our friend to Joseph?

But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them!

These people have really felt, no doubt,

A something, the motion they style the Call of them;

And this is their method of bringing about,

By a mechanism of words and tones,

(So many texts in so many groans)

A sort of reviving or reproducing,

More or less perfectly, (who can tell? — )

Of the mood itself, that strengthens by using;

And how it happens, I understand well.

A tune was born in my head last week,

Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek

Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester;

And when, next week, I take it back again,

My head will sing to the engine’s clack again,

While it only makes my neighbour’s haunches stir,

— Finding no dormant musical sprout

In him, as in me, to be jolted out.

’Tis the taught already that profit by teaching;

He gets no more from the railway’s preaching,

Than, from this preacher who does the rail’s office, I,

Whom therefore the flock casts a jealous eye on.

Still, why paint over their door “Mount Zion,”

To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy?

V.

But wherefore be harsh on a single case?

After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve,

Does the selfsame weary thing take place?

The same endeavour to make you believe,

And much with the same effect, no more:

Each method abundantly convincing,

As I say, to those convinced before,

But scarce to he swallowed without wincing,

By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me,

I have my own church equally.

And in this church my faith sprang first!

(I said, as I reached the rising ground,

And the wind began again, with a burst

Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me,

I entered His church-door, Nature leading me)

— In youth I looked to these very skies,

And probing their immensities,

I found God there, His visible power;

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense

Of that power, an equal evidence

That His love, there too, was the nobler dower.

For the loving worm within its clod,

Were diviner than a loveless god

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

You know what I mean: God’s all, man’s nought:

But also, God, whose pleasure brought

Man into being, stands away

As it were, an handbreadth off, to give

Room for the newly-made to live,

And look at Him from a place apart,

And use his gifts of brain and heart,

Given, indeed, but to keep for ever.

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever

Man’s very elements from man,

Saying, “But all is God’s” — whose plan

Was to create man and then leave him

Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,

But able to glorify Him too,

As a mere machine could never do,

That prayed or praised, all unaware

Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,

Made perfect as a thing of course.

Man, therefore, stands on his own stock

Of love and power as a pin-point rock,

And, looking to God who ordained divorce

Of the rock from His boundless continent,

Sees in His Power made evident,

Only excess by a million fold

O’er the power God gave man in the mould.

For, see: Man’s hand, first formed to carry

A few pounds’ weight, when taught to marry

Its strength with an engine’s, lifts a mountain,

— Advancing in power by one degree;

And why count steps through eternity?

But Love is the ever springing fountain:

Man may enlarge or narrow his bed