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

Sucked along in the flying wake

Of the luminous water-snake.

Darkness and cold were cloven, as through

I passed, upborne yet walking too.

And I turned to myself at intervals, —

“So He said, and so it befals.

“God who registers the cup

“Of mere cold water, for His sake

“To a disciple rendered up,

“Disdains not His own thirst to slake

“At the poorest love was ever offered:

“And because it was my heart I proffered,

“With true love trembling at the brim,

“He suffers me to follow Him

“For ever, my own way, — dispensed

“From seeking to be influenced

“By all the less immediate ways

“That earth, in worships manifold,

“Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise,

‘The Garment’s hem, which, lo, I hold!”

X.

And so we crossed the world and stopped.

For where am I, in city or plain,

Since I am ‘ware of the world again?

And what is this that rises propped

With pillars of prodigious girth?

Is it really on the earth,

This miraculous Dome of God?

Has the angel’s measuring-rod

Which numbered cubits, gem from gem,

‘Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem,

Meted it out, — and what he meted,

Have the sons of men completed?

— Binding, ever as he bade,

Columns in this colonnade

With arms wide open to embrace

The entry of the human race

To the breast of … what is it, yon building,

Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding,

With marble for brick, and stones of price

For garniture of the edifice?

Now I see: it is no dream:

It stands there and it does not seem;

For ever, in pictures, thus it looks,

And thus I have read of it in books,

Often in England, leagues away,

And wondered how those fountains play,

Growing up eternally

Each to a musical water-tree,

Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon,

Before my eyes, in the light of the moon,

To the granite lavers underneath.

Liar and dreamer in your teeth!

I, the sinner that speak to you,

Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew

Both this and more! For see, for see,

The dark is rent, mine eye is free

To pierce the crust of the outer wall,

And I view inside, and all there, all,

As the swarming hollow of a hive,

The whole Basilica alive!

Men in the chancel, body, and nave,

Men on the pillars’ architrave,

Men on the statues, men on the tombs

With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs,

All famishing in expectation

Of the main-altar’s consummation.

For see, for see, the rapturous moment

Approaches, and earth’s best endowment

Blends with heaven’s: the taper-fires

Pant up, the winding brazen spires

Heave loftier yet the baldachin:

The incense-gaspings, long kept in,

Suspire in clouds; the organ blatant

Holds his breath and grovels latent,

As if God’s hushing finger grazed him,

(Like Behemoth when He praised him)

At the silver bell’s shrill tinkling,

Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling

On the sudden pavement strewed

With faces of the multitude.

Earth breaks up, time drops away,

In flows heaven, with its new day

Of endless life, when He who trod,

Very Man and very God,

This earth in weakness, shame and pain,

Dying the death whose signs remain

Up yonder on the accursed tree, —

Shall come again, no more to be

Of captivity the thrall,

But the one God, all in all,

King of kings, and Lord of lords,

As His servant John received the words,

“I died, and live for evermore!”

XI.

Yet I was left outside the door.

Why sate I there on the threshold-stone,

Left till He returns, alone

Save for the Garment’s extreme fold

Abandoned still to bless my hold? —

My reason, to my doubt, replied,

As if a book were opened wide,

And at a certain page I traced

Every record undefaced,

Added by successive years, —

The harvestings of truth’s stray ears

Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf

Bound together for belief.

Yes, I said — that He will go

And sit with these in turn, I know.

Their faith’s heart beats, though her head swims

Too giddily to guide her limbs,

Disabled by their palsy-stroke

From propping me. Though Rome’s gross yoke

Drops off, no more to be endured,

Her teaching is not so obscured

By errors and perversities,

That no truth shines athwart the lies:

And He, whose eye detects a spark

Even where, to man’s, the whole seems dark,

May well see flame where each beholder

Acknowledges the embers smoulder.

But I, a mere man, fear to quit

The clue God gave me as most fit

To guide my footsteps through life’s maze,

Because Himself discerns all ways

Open to reach Him: I, a man

He gave to mark where faith began

To swerve aside, till from its summit

Judgment drops her damning plummet,

Pronouncing such a fatal space

Departed from the Founder’s base:

He will not bid me enter too,

But rather sit, as now I do,

Awaiting His return outside.

— ’Twas thus my reason straight replied,

And joyously I turned, and pressed

The Garment’s skirt upon my breast,

Until, afresh its light suffusing me,

My heart cried, — what has been abusing me

That I should wait here lonely and coldly,

Instead of rising, entering boldly,

Baring truth’s face, and letting drift

Her veils of lies as they choose to shift?

Do these men praise Him? I will raise

My voice up to their point of praise!

I see the error; but above

The scope of error, see the love. —

Oh, love of those first Christian days!

— Fanned so soon into a blaze,

From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,

That the antique sovereign Intellect

Which then sate ruling in the world,

Like a change in dreams, was hurled

From the throne he reigned upon:

— You looked up, and he was gone!

Gone, his glory of the pen!

— Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,

Bade her scribes abhor the trick

Of poetry and rhetoric,

And exult, with hearts set free,

In blessed imbecility

Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet,

Leaving Livy incomplete.

Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!

— Love, while able to acquaint her

With the thousand statues yet

Fresh from chisel, pictures wet

From brush, she saw on every side,

Chose rather with an infant’s pride

To frame those portents which impart

Such unction to true Christian Art.

Gone, Music too! The air was stirred

By happy wings: Terpander’s bird

(That, when the cold came, fled away)

Would tarry not the wintry day, —

As more-enduring sculpture must,

Till a filthy saint rebuked the gust

With which he chanced to get a sight

Of some dear naked Aphrodite

He glanced a thought above the toes of,

By breaking zealously her nose off.

Love, surely, from that music’s lingering,

Might have filched her organ-fingering,

Nor chose rather to set prayings

To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.

Love was the startling thing, the new;

Love was the all-sufficient too;

And seeing that, you see the rest.

As a babe can find its mother’s breast

As well in darkness as in light,

Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.

True, the world’s eyes are open now:

— Less need for me to disallow

Some few that keep Love’s zone unbuckled,