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

How the ineptitude of the time,

And the penman’s prejudice, expanding

Fact into fable fit for the clime,

Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it

Into this myth, this Individuum, —

Which, when reason had strained and abated it

Of foreign matter, gave, for residuum,

A Man! — a right true man, however,

Whose work was worthy a man’s endeavour!

Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient

To his disciples, for rather believing

He was just omnipotent and omniscient,

As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving

His word, their tradition, — which, though it meant

Something entirely different

From all that those who only heard it,

In their simplicity thought and averred it,

Had yet a meaning quite as respectable:

For, among other doctrines delectable,

Was he not surely the first to insist on,

The natural sovereignty of our race? —

Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place.

And while his cough, like a drouthy piston,

Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him,

I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him,

The Vesture still within my hand.

XVI.

I could interpret its command.

This time He would not bid me enter

The exhausted air-bell of the Critic.

Truth’s atmosphere may grow mephitic

When Papist struggles with Dissenter,

Impregnating its pristine clarity,

— One, by his daily fare’s vulgarity,

Its gust of broken meat and garlic;

— One, by his soul’s too-much presuming,

To turn the frankincense’s fuming

And vapours of the candle starlike

Into the cloud her wings she buoys on:

And each, that sets the pure air seething,

Poisoning it for healthy breathing —

But the Critic leaves no air to poison;

Pumps out by a ruthless ingenuity

Atom by atom, and leaves you — vacuity.

Thus much of Christ, does he reject?

And what retain? His intellect?

What is it I must reverence duly?

Poor intellect for worship, truly,

Which tells me simply what was told

(If mere morality, bereft

Of the God in Christ, be all that’s left)

Elsewhere by voices manifold;

With this advantage, that the stater

Made nowise the important stumble

Of adding, he, the sage and humble,

Was also one with the Creator.

You urge Christ’s followers’ simplicity:

But how does shifting blame, evade it?

Have wisdom’s words no more felicity?

The stumbling-block, His speech — who laid it?

How comes it that for one found able,

To sift the truth of it from fable,

Millions believe it to the letter?

Christ’s goodness, then — does that fare better?

Strange goodness, which upon the score

Of being goodness, the mere due

Of man to fellow-man, much more

To God, — should take another view

Of its possessor’s privilege,

And bid him rule his race! You pledge

Your fealty to such rule? What, all —

From Heavenly John and Attic Paul,

And that brave weather-battered Peter

Whose stout faith only stood completer

For buffets, sinning to be pardoned,

As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened, —

All, down to you, the man of men,

Professing here at Göttingen,

Compose Christ’s flock! So, you and I

Are sheep of a good man! and why?

The goodness, — how did he acquire it?

Was it self-gained, did God inspire it?

Choose which; then tell me, on what ground

Should its possessor dare propound

His claim to rise o’er us an inch?

Were goodness all some man’s invention,

Who arbitrarily made mention

What we should follow, and where flinch, —

What qualities might take the style

Of right and wrong, — and had such guessing

Met with as general acquiescing

As graced the Alphabet erewhile,

When A got leave an Ox to be,

No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G, —

For thus inventing thing and title

Worship were that man’s fit requital.

But if the common conscience must

Be ultimately judge, adjust

Its apt name to each quality

Already known, — I would decree

Worship for such mere demonstration

And simple work of nomenclature,

Only the day I praised, not Nature,

But Harvey, for the circulation.

I would praise such a Christ, with pride

And joy, that he, as none beside,

Had taught us how to keep the mind

God gave him, as God gave his kind,

Freer than they from fleshly taint!

I would call such a Christ our Saint,

As I declare our Poet, him

Whose insight makes all others dim:

A thousand poets pried at life,

And only one amid the strife

Rose to be Shakespeare! Each shall take

His crown, I’d say, for the world’s sake —

Though some objected — ”Had we seen

“The heart and head of each, what screen

“Was broken there to give them light,

“While in ourselves it shuts the sight,

“We should no more admire, perchance,

“That these found truth out at a glance,

“Than marvel how the bat discerns

“Some pitch-dark cavern’s fifty turns,

“Led by a finer tact, a gift

“He boasts, which other birds must shift

“Without, and grope as best they can.”

No, freely I would praise the man. —

Nor one whit more, if he contended

That gift of his, from God, descended.

Ah, friend, what gift of man’s does not?

No nearer Something, by a jot,

Rise an infinity of Nothings

Than one: take Euclid for your teacher:

Distinguish kinds: do crownings, clothings,

Make that Creator which was creature?

Multiply gifts upon his head,

And what, when all’s done, shall be said

But … the more gifted he, I ween!

That one’s made Christ, another, Pilate,

And This might be all That has been, —

So what is there to frown or smile at?

What is left for us, save, in growth,

Of soul, to rise up, far past both,

From the gift looking to the Giver,

And from the cistern to the River,

And from the finite to Infinity,

And from man’s dust to God’s divinity?

XVII.

Take all in a word: the Truth in God’s breast

Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:

Though He is so bright and we so dim,

We are made in His image to witness Him;

And were no eye in us to tell,

Instructed by no inner sense.

The light of Heaven from the dark of Hell,

That light would want its evidence, —

Though Justice, Good and Truth were still

Divine, if by some demon’s will,

Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed

Law through the worlds, and Right misnamed.

No mere exposition of morality

Made or in part or in totality,

Should win you to give it worship, therefore:

And, if no better proof you will care for,

— Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?

Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more

Of what Right is, than arrives at birth

In the best man’s acts that we bow before:

This last knows better — true; but my fact is,

’Tis one thing to know, and another to practise;

And thence I conclude that the real God-function

Is to furnish a motive and injunction

For practising what we know already.

And such an injunction and such a motive

As the God in Christ, do you waive, and “heady

High minded,” hang your tablet-votive

Outside the fane on a finger-post?

Morality to the uttermost,

Supreme in Christ as we all confess,

Why need we prove would avail no jot

To make Him God, if God He were not?