Pippa Passes/II

by Robert Browning

II.—NOON.

Scene.—Over Orcana. The house of Jules, who crosses its threshold with Phene: she is silent, on which Jules begins—

Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, youAre mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,If you ’ll not die: so, never die! Sit here—My work-room’s single seat. I over-leanThis length of hair and lustrous front; they turnLike an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, lastYour chin—no, last your throat turns: ’t is their scentPulls down my face upon you. Nay, look everThis one way till I change, grow you—I couldChange into you, beloved! Change into you, beloved! You by me,And I by you; this is your hand in mine,And side by side we sit: all ’s true. Thank God!I have spoken: speak you!I have spoken: speak you! O my life to come!My Tydeus must be carved that ’s there in clay;Yet how be carved, with you about the room?Where must I place you? When I think that onceThis room-full of rough block-work seemed my heavenWithout you! Shall I ever work again,Get fairly into my old ways again,Bid each conception stand while, trait by traitMy hand transfers its lineaments to stone?Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth—The live truth, passing and repassing me,Sitting beside me?Sitting beside me? Now speak!Sitting beside me? Now speak! Only first,See, all your letters! Was ’t not well contrived?Their hiding-place is Psyche’s robe; she keepsYour letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?Ah,—this that swam down like a first moonbeamInto my world!Into my world! Again those eyes completeTheir melancholy survey, sweet and slow,Of all my room holds; to return and restOn me, with pity, yet some wonder too:As if God bade some spirit plague a world,And this were the one moment of surpriseAnd sorrow while she took her station, pausingO’er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;Let your first word to me rejoice them, too: This minion, a Coluthus, writ in redBistre and azure by Bessarion’s scribe—Read this line … no, shame—Homer’s be the GreekFirst breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!This Odyssey in coarse black vivid typeWith faded yellow blossoms ’twixt page and page,To mark great places with due gratitude;“He said, and on Antinous directed
A bitter shaft” … a flower blots out the rest!Again upon your search? My statues, then!—Ah, do not mind that—better that will lookWhen cast in bronze—an Almaign Kaiser, that,Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?I thought you would have seen that here you sitAs I imagined you,—Hippolyta,Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.Recall you this then? “Carve in bold relief”—So you commanded—“carve, against I come,A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,Who rises ’neath the lifted myrtle-branch.‘Praise those who slew Hipparchus!’ cry the guests,‘While o’er thy head the singer’s myrtle wavesAs erst above our champion: stand up, all!’ ”See, I have labored to express your thought.Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,Only consenting at the branch’s endThey strain forward) serves for frame to a sole face,The Praiser’s, in the centre: who with eyesSightless, so bend they back to light insideHis brain where visionary forms throng up. Sings, minding not that palpitating archOf hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wineFrom the drenched leaves o’erhead, nor crowns cast off,Violet and parsley crowns to trample on—Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.But you must say a “well” to that—say “well!”Because you gaze—am I fantastic, sweet?Gaze like my very life’s-stuff, marble—marblyEven to the silence! Why, before I foundThe real flesh Phene, I inured myselfTo see, throughout all nature, varied stuffFor better nature’s birth by means of art:With me, each substance tended to one formOf beauty—to the human archetype.On every side occurred suggestive germsOf that—the tree, the flower—or take the fruit,—Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,Curved beewise o’er its bough; as rosy limbs,Depending, nestled in the leaves; and justFrom a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.But of the stuffs one can be master of,How I divined their capabilities!From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalkThat yields your outline to the air’s embrace,Half-softened by a halo’s pearly gloom;Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sureTo cut its one confided thought clean outOf all the world. But marble!—’neath my toolsMore pliable than jelly—as it wereSome clear primordial creature dug from depthsIn the earth’s heart, where itself breeds itself,And whence all baser substance may be worked; Refine it off to air, you may,—condense itDown to the diamond;—is not metal there,When o’er the sudden speck my chisel trips?—Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprisedBy the swift implement sent home at once,Flushes and glowings radiate and hoverAbout its track?About its track? Phene? what—why is this?That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!Ah, you will die—I knew that you would die!

Phene begins, on his having long remained silent.Now the end ’s coming; to be sure, it mustHave ended sometime! Tush, why need I speakTheir foolish speech? I cannot bring to mindOne half of it, beside; and do not careFor old Natalia now, nor any of them.Oh, you—what are you?—if I do not tryTo say the words Natalia made me learn,To please your friends,—it is to keep myselfWhere your voice lifted me, by letting thatProceed: but can it? Even you, perhaps,Cannot take up, now you have once let fall,The music’s life, and me along with that—No, or you would! We’ll stay, then, as we are:Above the world.Above the world. You creature with the eyes!If I could look forever up to them,As now you let me,—I believe, all sin,All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth Whence all that ’s low comes, and there touch and stay—Never to overtake the rest of me,All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself,Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so,Above the world!Above the world! But you sink, for your eyesAre altering—altered! Stay—“I love you, love” …I could prevent it if I understood:More of your words to me: was ’t in the toneOr the words, your power?Or the words, your power? Or stay—I will repeatTheir speech, if that contents you! Only changeNo more, and I shall find it presentlyFar back here, in the brain yourself filled up.Natalia threatened me that harm should followUnless I spoke their lesson to the end,But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you.Your friends,—Natalia said they were your friendsAnd meant you well,—because, I doubted it,Observing (what was very strange to see)On every face, so different in all else,The same smile girls like me are used to bear,But never men, men cannot stoop so low:Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceitWhich seems to take possession of the worldAnd make of God a tame confederate.Purveyor to their appetites … you know!But still Natalia said they were your friends,And they assented though they smiled the more, And all came round me,—that thin EnglishmanWith light lank hair seemed leader of the rest;He held a paper—“What we want,” said he,Ending some explanation to his friends—“Is something slow, involved and mystical,To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his tasteAnd lure him on until, at innermostWhere he seeks sweetness’ soul, he may find—this!—As in the apple’s core, the noisome fly:For insects on the rind are seen at once,And brushed aside as soon, but this is foundOnly when on the lips or loathing tongue.”And so he read what I have got by heart:I’ll speak it,—“Do not die, love! I am yours.”No—is not that, or like that, part of wordsYourself began by speaking? Strange to loseWhat cost such pains to learn! Is this more right?

 

I am a painter who cannot paint;In my life, a devil rather than saint;In my brain, as poor a creature too:No end to all I cannot do!Yet do one thing at least I can—Love a man or hate a manSupremely: thus my lore began.Through the Valley of Love I went,In the lovingest spot to abide,And just on the verge where I pitched my tent,I found Hate dwelling beside.(Let the Bridegroom ask what the painter meant,Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!)And further, I traversed Hate’s grove,In the hatefullest nook to dwell;But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched Love Where the shadow threefold fell.(The meaning—those black bride’s-eyes above,Not a painter’s lip should tell!)

 

“And here,” said he, “Jules probably will ask,‘You have black eyes, Love,—you are, sure enough,My peerless bride,—then do you tell indeedWhat needs some explanation! What means this?’ ”—And I am to go on, without a word—

 

So, I grew wise in Love and Hate,From simple that I was of late.Once, when I loved, I would enlaceBreast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and faceOf her I loved, in one embrace—As if by mere love I could love immensely!Once, when I hated, I would plungeMy sword, and wipe with the first lungeMy foe’s whole life out like a sponge—As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!But now I am wiser, know better the fashionHow passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:And if I see cause to love more, hate moreThan ever man loved, ever hated before—And seek in the Valley of Love,The nest, or the nook in Hate’s Grove,Where my soul may surely reachThe essence, naught less, of each,The Hate of all Hates, the LoveOf all Loves, in the Valley or Grove,—I find them the very wardersEach of the other’s borders.When I love most, Lowe is disguisedIn Hate; and when Hate is surprised In Love, then I hate most: askHow Love smiles through Hate’s iron casque,Hate grins through Love’s rose-braided mask,—And how, having hated thee,I sought long and painfullyTo reach thy heart, nor prickThe skin but pierce to the quick—Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straightBy thy bride—how the painter Lutwyche can hate!

 

Jules interposes.Lutwyche! Who else? But all of them, no doubt,Hated me: they at Venice—presentlyTheir turn, however! You I shall not meet:If I dreamed, saying this would wake me.If I dreamed, saying this would wake me. KeepWhat ’s here, the gold—we cannot meet again,Consider! and the money was but meantFor two years’ travel, which is over now,All chance or hope or care or need of it.This—and what comes from selling these, my castsAnd books and medals, except … let them goTogether, so the produce keeps you safeOut of Natalia’s clutches! If by chance(For all ’s chance here) I should survive the gangAt Venice, root out all fifteen of them,We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing— 

 

Give her but a least excuse to love me!When—where—How—can this arm establish her above me,If fortune fixed her as my lady there, There already, to eternally reprove me? (“Hist?”—said Kate the Queen; But “Oh!”—cried the maiden, binding her tresses, “’Tis only a page that carols unseen, Crumbling your hounds their messes!”)

Is she wronged?—To the rescue of her honor,My heart!Is she poor?—What costs it to be styled a donor?Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her! (“Nay, list”—bade Kate the Queen; And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, “’T is only a page that carols unseen, Fitting your hawks their jesses!”)[Pippa passes. 

 

Jules resumes.What name was that the little girl sang forth?Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renouncedThe crown of Cyprus to be lady hereAt Asolo, where still her memory stays,And peasants sing how once a certain pagePined for the grace of her so far aboveHis power of doing good to, “Kate the Queen—She never could be wronged, be poor,” he sighed,“Need him to help her!”“Need him to help her!” Yes, a bitter thingTo see our lady above all need of us;Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,But the world looks so. If whoever lovesMust be, in some sort, god or worshipper,The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,Why should we always choose the page’s part?

Here is a woman with utter need of me,—I find myself queen here, it seems!I find myself queen here, it seems! How strange!Look at the woman here with the new soul,Like my own Psyche,—fresh upon her lipsAlit, the visionary butterfly,Waiting my word to enter and make bright,Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.This body had no soul before, but sleptOr stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, freeFrom taint or foul with stain, as outward thingsFastened their image on its passiveness:Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again!Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuffBe Art—and further, to evoke a soulFrom form be nothing? This new soul is mine!

Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do?—saveA wretched dauber, men will hoot to deathWithout me, from their hooting. Oh, to hearGod’s voice plain as I heard it first, beforeThey broke in with their laughter! I heard themHenceforth, not God.Henceforth, not God. To Ancona—Greece—some isle!I wanted silence only; there is clayEverywhere. One may do whate’er one likesIn Art: the only thing is, to make sureThat one does like it—which takes pains to know. Scatter all this, my Phene—this mad dream!Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia’s friends,What the whole world except our love—my own,Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,Ere night we travel for your land—some isleWith the sea’s silence on it? Stand aside— I do but break these paltry models upTo begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I—And save him from my statue meeting him?Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!Like a god going through his world, there standsOne mountain for a moment in the dusk,Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:And you are ever by me while I gaze—Are in my arms as now—as now—as now!Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!

 

Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with Bluphocks, an English vagabond, just in view of the Turret.

 

Bluphocks. So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop’s Intendant’s money shall be honestly earned:—now, don’t make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop’s name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors: we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to, was the Armenian: for I have travelled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there ’s a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity; ’t was the Grand Rabbi’s abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac—(these are vowels, you dogs,—follow my stick’s end in the mud—Celarent, Darii, Ferio!) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c,—I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you ’ll say—“How Moses hocuspocussed Egypt’s land with fly and locust,”—or, “How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish,”—or, “How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam.” In no wise! “Shackabrack—Boach—somebody or other—Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of—Stolen Goods!” So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge—mean to live so—and die—As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon’s wherry, With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate’s supper, And never an obolus… (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant—I possess a burning pocketful of zwanzigers) …To pay the Stygian Ferry!

1st Policeman. There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [To the rest.] I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!

2nd Policeman. Old Luca Gaddi’s, that owns the silk-mills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never molest such a household, they mean well.

Bluphocks. Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name. Pippa—that is, short for Felippa—rhyming to Panurge consults Hertrippa—Believest thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name.

2nd Policeman. Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a zwanziger! Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon’s over or nearly so.

3rd Policeman. Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What ’s there beside a simple signature? (That English fool’s busy watching.)

2nd Policeman. Flourish all round—“Put all possible obstacles in his way;” oblong dot at the end—“Detain him till further advices reach you;” scratch at bottom—“Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;” ink-spirt on right-hand side (which is the case here)—“Arrest him at once.” Why and wherefore, I don’t concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna—well and good, the passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-night—there has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.