Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) (12 page)

Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

[70] ‘I fly to the Duke who loves me well,

Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow

Ere I count another ave-bell.

‘’Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,

And tie my hair in a horse-boy’s trim,

And I save my soul – but not tomorrow’ –

(She checked herself and her eye grew dim)

‘My father tarries to bless my state:

I must keep it one day more for him.

‘Is one day more so long to wait?

[80] Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;

We shall see each other, sure as fate.’

She turned on her side and slept. Just so!

So we resolve on a thing and sleep:

So did the lady, ages ago.

That night the Duke said, ‘Dear or cheap

As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove

To body or soul, I will drain it deep.’

And on the morrow, bold with love,

He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,

[90] As his duty bade, by the Duke’s alcove)

And smiled ‘’Twas a very funeral,

Your lady will think, this feast of ours, –

A shame to efface, whate’er befall!

‘What if we break from the Arno bowers,

And try if Petraja, cool and green,

Cure last night’s fault with this morning’s flowers?’

The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen

On his steady brow and quiet mouth,

Said, ‘Too much favour for me so mean!

[100] ‘But, alas! my lady leaves the South;

Each wind that comes from the Apennine

Is a menace to her tender youth:

‘Nor a way exists, the wise opine,

If she quits her palace twice this year,

To avert the flower of life’s decline.’

Quoth the Duke, ‘A sage and a kindly fear.

Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:

Be our feast tonight as usual here!’

And then to himself – ‘Which night shall bring

[110] Thy bride to her lover’s embraces, fool –

Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

‘Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool –

For tonight the Envoy arrives from France

Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.

‘I need thee still and might miss perchance.

Today is not wholly lost, beside,

With its hope of my lady’s countenance:

‘For I ride – what should I do but ride?

And passing her palace, if I list,

[120] May glance at its window – well betide!’

So said, so done: nor the lady missed

One ray that broke from the ardent brow,

Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

Be sure that each renewed the vow,

No morrow’s sun should arise and set

And leave them then as it left them now.

But next day passed, and next day yet,

With still fresh cause to wait one day more

Ere each leaped over the parapet.

[130] And still, as love’s brief morning wore,

With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,

They found love not as it seemed before.

They thought it would work infallibly,

But not in despite of heaven and earth:

The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

Meantime they could profit in winter’s dearth

By store of fruits that supplant the rose:

The world and its ways have a certain worth:

And to press a point while these oppose

[140] Were simple policy; better wait:

We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

Meantime, worse fates than a lover’s fate,

Who daily may ride and pass and look

Where his lady watches behind the grate!

And she – she watched the square like a book

Holding one picture and only one,

Which daily to find she undertook:

When the picture was reached the book was done,

And she turned from the picture at night to scheme

[150] Of tearing it out for herself next sun.

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam

The glory dropped from their youth and love,

And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

Which hovered as dreams do, still above:

But who can take a dream for a truth?

Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

One day as the lady saw her youth

Depart, and the silver thread that streaked

Her hair, and, worn by the serpent’s tooth,

[160] The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, –

And wondered who the woman was,

Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

Fronting her silent in the glass –

‘Summon here,’ she suddenly said,

‘Before the rest of my old self pass,

‘Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,

Who fashions the clay no love will change,

And fixes a beauty never to fade.

‘Let Robbia’s craft so apt and strange

[170] Arrest the remains of young and fair,

And rivet them while the seasons range.

‘Make me a face on the window there,

Waiting as ever, mute the while,

My love to pass below in the square!

‘And let me think that it may beguile

Dreary days which the dead must spend

Down in their darkness under the aisle,

‘To say, “What matters it at the end?

I did no more while my heart was warm

[180] Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.”

‘Where is the use of the lip’s red charm,

The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,

And the blood that blues the inside arm –

‘Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,

The earthly gift to an end divine?

A lady of clay is as good, I trow.’

But long ere Robbia’s cornice, fine,

With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,

Was set where now is the empty shrine –

[190] (And, leaning out of a bright blue space,

As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,

The passionate pale lady’s face –

Eyeing ever, with earnest eye

And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,

Some one who ever is passing by –)

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch

In Florence, ‘Youth – my dream escapes!

Will its record stay?’ And he bade them fetch

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes –

[200] ‘Can the soul, the will, die out of a man

Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

‘John of Douay shall effect my plan,

Set me on horseback here aloft,

Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

‘In the very square I have crossed so oft:

That men may admire, when future suns

Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

‘While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze –

Admire and say, “When he was alive

[210] How he would take his pleasure once!”

‘And it shall go hard but I contrive

To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb

At idleness which aspires to strive.’

So! While these wait the trump of doom,

How do their spirits pass, I wonder,

Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder

What a gift life was, ages ago,

Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

[220] Only they see not God, I know,

Nor all that chivalry of his,

The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss –

Since, the end of life being manifest,

He had burned his way through the world to this.

I hear you reproach, ‘But delay was best,

For their end was a crime.’ – Oh, a crime will do

As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,

[230] Sufficient to vindicate itself

And prove its worth at a moment’s view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?

Where a button goes, ’twere an epigram

To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham:

As well the counter as coin, I submit,

When your table’s a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,

Venture as warily, use the same skill,

[240] Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play! – is my principle.

Let a man contend to the uttermost

For his life’s set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost

As surely as if it were lawful coin:

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is – the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,

Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

You of the virtue (we issue join)

[250] How strive you?
De te, fabula
.

How It Strikes a Contemporary

I only knew one poet in my life:

And this, or something like it, was his way.

You saw go up and down Valladolid,

A man of mark, to know next time you saw.

His very serviceable suit of black

Was courtly once and conscientious still,

And many might have worn it, though none did:

The cloak, that somewhat shone and showed the threads,

Had purpose, and the ruff, significance.

[10] He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,

Scenting the world, looking it full in face,

An old dog, bald and blindish, at his heels.

They turned up, now, the alley by the church,

That leads nowhither; now, they breathed themselves

On the main promenade just at the wrong time:

You’d come upon his scrutinizing hat,

Making a peaked shade blacker than itself

Against the single window spared some house

Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work, –

[20] Or else surprise the ferrel of his stick

Trying the mortar’s temper ’tween the chinks

Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.

He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,

The man who slices lemons into drink,

The coffee-roaster’s brazier, and the boys

That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

He glanced o’er books on stalls with half an eye,

And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor’s string,

And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.

[30] He took such cognizance of men and things,

If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;

If any cursed a woman, he took note;

Yet stared at nobody, – you stared at him,

And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,

He seemed to know you and expect as much.

So, next time that a neighbour’s tongue was loosed,

It marked the shameful and notorious fact,

We had among us, not so much a spy,

As a recording chief-inquisitor,

[40] The town’s true master if the town but knew!

We merely kept a governor for form,

While this man walked about and took account

Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,

And wrote it fully to our Lord the King

Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,

And reads them in his bedroom of a night.

Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,

A tang of … well, it was not wholly ease

As back into your mind the man’s look came.

[50] Stricken in years a little, – such a brow

His eyes had to live under! – clear as flint

On either side the formidable nose

Curved, cut and coloured like an eagle’s claw.

Had he to do with A.’s surprising fate?

When altogether old B. disappeared

And young C. got his mistress, – was’t our friend,

His letter to the King, that did it all?

What paid the bloodless man for so much pains?

Our Lord the King has favourites manifold,

[60] And shifts his ministry some once a month;

Our city gets new governors at whiles, –

But never word or sign, that I could hear,

Notified to this man about the streets

The King’s approval of those letters conned

The last thing duly at the dead of night.

Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,

Exhorting when none heard – ‘Beseech me not!

Too far above my people, – beneath me!

I set the watch, – how should the people know?

[70] Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!’

Was some such understanding ’twixt the two?

I found no truth in one report at least –

That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes

Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,

You found he ate his supper in a room

Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,

And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

Poor man, he lived another kind of life

In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,

[80] Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise!

The whole street might o’erlook him as he sat,

Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog’s back,

Playing a decent cribbage with his maid

(Jacynth, you’re sure her name was) o’er the cheese

And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,

Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,

Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

My father, like the man of sense he was,

Would point him out to me a dozen times;

[90] ‘’St –’St,’ he’d whisper, ‘the Corregidor!’

I had been used to think that personage

Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,

And feathers like a forest in his hat,

Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,

Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,

And memorized the miracle in vogue!

He had a great observance from us boys;

We were in error; that was not the man.

I’d like now, yet had haply been afraid,

[100] To have just looked, when this man came to die,

And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides