Robert Browning

“ We are all agreed, all in a tale, observe, when Jules shall burst out on us in a fury by and by: I am spokesman—the verses that are to undeceive Jules bear my name of Lutwyche—but each professes himself alike insulted by this strutting stone-squarer, who came alone from Paris to Munich, and thence with a crowd of us to Venice and Possagno here, but proceeds in a day or two alone again—oh, alone indubitably!—to Rome and Florence. ”

“ Luigi. True, mother. Well for those who live through June!
Great noontides, thunder-storms, all glaring pomps
That triumph at the heels of June the god
Leading his revel through our leafy world.
Yes, Chiara will be here.
Yes, Chiara will be here.⁠Mother. In June: remember,
Yourself appointed that month for her coming.
Luigi. Was that low noise the echo?
Luigi. Was that low noise the echo?⁠Mother. The night-wind.
She must be grown—with her blue eyes upturned
As if life were one long and sweet surprise:
In June she comes.
In June she comes.⁠Luigi. ”

“ My glory springs from another source; or if from this, by contrast only,—for I, the bishop, am the brother of your employers, Ugo. I hope to repair some of their wrong, however; so far as my brother’s ill-gotten treasure reverts to me, I can stop the consequences of his crime: and not one soldo shall escape me. Maffeo, the sword we quiet men spurn away, you shrewd knaves pick up and commit murders with; what opportunities the virtuous forego, the villainous seize. ”

“ A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death
Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear
God’s voice plain as I heard it first, before
They broke in with their laughter! I heard them
Henceforth, not God.
Henceforth, not God. To Ancona—Greece—some isle!
I wanted silence only; there is clay
Everywhere. One may do whate’er one likes
In Art: the only thing is, to make sure
That 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? ”

“ From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing—
The year ’s at the spring
And day ’s at the morn;
Morning ’s at seven;
The hill-side ’s dew-pearled;
The lark ’s on the wing;
The snail ’s on the thorn:
God ’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fancy the thrice-sage, thrice-precautioned man
Arriving at the palace on my errand!
No, no! I have a handsome dress packed up—
White satin here, to set off my black hair;
In I shall march—for you may watch your life out
Behind thick walls, make friends there to betray you;
More than one man spoils everything. March straight—
Only, no clumsy knife to fumble for.
Take the great gate, and walk (not saunter) on
Thro’ guards and guards——I have rehearsed it all
Inside the turret here a hundred times. ”

“ Well, this Jules ... a wretched fribble—oh, I watched his disportings at Possagno, the other day! Canova’s gallery—you know: there he marches first resolvedly past great works by the dozen without vouchsafing an eye: all at once he stops full at the Psiche-fanciulla—cannot pass that old acquaintance without a nod of encouragement—“In your new place, beauty? Then behave yourself as well here as at Munich—I see you!” ”

“ Power shall fall short in or exceed!
And more of it, and more of it!—oh yes—
I will pass each, and see their happiness,
And envy none—being just as great, no doubt,
Useful to men, and dear to God, as they! ”

“ Nature or trick! I see what I have done,
Entirely now! Oh I am proud to feel
Such torments—let the world take credit thence—
I, having done my deed, pay too its price!
I hate, hate—curse you! God ’s in his heaven! ”

“ Do A. and B. not kill him themselves?⁠Luigi. They teach
Others to kill him—me—and, if I fail,
Others to succeed; now, if A. tried and failed,
I could not teach that: mine ’s the lesser task.
Mother, they visit night by night...
Mother, they visit night by night...⁠Mother.l —You, Luigi?
Ah, will you let me tell you what you are?
Luigi. Why not? Oh, the one thing you fear to hint,
You may assure yourself I say and say
Ever to myself! At times—nay, even as now
We sit—I think my mind is touched, suspect
All is not sound: but is not knowing that,
What constitutes one sane or otherwise? ”

“ As well affirm that your eye is no longer in your body, because its earliest favorite, whatever it may have first loved to look on, is dead and done with—as that any affection is lost to the soul when its first object, whatever happened first to satisfy it, is superseded in due course. Keep but ever looking, whether with the body’s eye or the mind’s, and you will soon find something to look on! Has a man done wondering at women?—there follow men, dead and alive, to wonder at. ”

“ Good-bye, therefore, to poor Canova—whose gallery no longer needs detain his successor Jules, the predestinated novel thinker in marble!
5th Student. Tell him about the women: go on to the women!
1st Student. Why, on that matter he could never be supercilious enough. How should we be other (he said) than the poor devils you see, with those debasing habits we cherish? He was not to wallow in that mire, at least: he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with the Psiche-fanciulla. ”

“ Luigi. And such grace have they, now that the world ends!
The Python at the city, on the throne,
And brave men, God would crown for slaying him,
Lurk in bye-corners lest they fall his prey.
Are crowns yet to be won in this late time,
Which weakness makes me hesitate to reach?
’T is God’s voice calls: how could I stay? Farewell!
Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from the Turret to the Bishop’s Brother's House, close to the Duomo S. Maria. Poor Girls sitting on the Steps.
1st Girl. There goes a swallow to Venice—the stout seafarer!
Seeing those birds fly, makes one wish for wings. ”

“ And wasps—would I be such a fool!—Oh, here!
This is my way: I answer every one
Who asks me why I make so much of him—
(If you say, “you love him”—straight “he’ll not be gulled!”)
“He that seduced me when I was a girl
Thus high—had eyes like yours, or hair like yours,
Brown, red, white,”—as the case may be: that pleases!
See how that beetle burnishes in the path!
There sparkles he along the dust: and, there—
Your journey to that maize-tuft spoiled at least! ”

“ Nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world: look at a blossom—it drops presently, having done its service and lasted its time; but fruits succeed, and where would be the blossom’s place could it continue? ”

“ Yet since his hand could manage a chisel, he has practised expressing other men’s Ideals; and, in the very perfection he has attained to, he foresees an ultimate failure: his unconscious hand will pursue its prescribed course of old years, and will reproduce with a fatal expertness the ancient types, let the novel one appear never so palpably to his spirit. There is but one method of escape: confiding the virgin type to as chaste a hand, he will turn painter instead of sculptor, and paint, not carve, its characteristics,”—strike out, I dare say, a school like Correggio: how think you, Ugo? ”

“ Intendant. No, nor needs be: for when I murdered your brother’s friend, Pasquale, for him...
Monsignor. Ah, he employed you in that business, did he? Well, I must let you keep, as you say, this villa and that podere, for fear the world should find out my relations were of so indifferent a stamp? Maffeo, my family is the oldest in Messina, and century after century have my progenitors gone on polluting themselves with every wickedness under heaven: my own father ... rest his soul!—I have, I know, a chapel to support that it may rest: my dear two dead brothers were,—what you know tolerably well ”

“ With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.
Now wait!—even I already seem to share
In God’s love: what does New-year’s hymn declare?
What other meaning do these verses bear?
All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly he trod
Paradise, his presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work—God’s puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.
Say not “a small event!” Why “small”? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And the bride! Yes, sure enough, our Phene! Should you have known her in her clothes? How magnificently pale!
Gottlieb. She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?
1st Student. Oh, Natalia’s concern, that is! We settle with Natalia.
6th Student. She does not speak—has evidently let out no word. The only thing is, will she equally remember the rest of her lesson, and repeat correctly all those verses which are to break the secret to Jules?
Gottlieb. How he gazes on her! Pity—pity! ”

“ Has he done wondering at men?—there ’s God to wonder at: and the faculty of wonder may be, at the same time, old and tired enough with respect to its first object, and yet young and fresh sufficiently, so far as concerns its novel one. ”

“ What ’s death? You ’ll love me yet!
3rd Girl [to Pippa, who approaches] . Oh, you may come closer—we shall not eat you! Why, you seem the very person that the great rich handsome Englishman has fallen so violently in love with. ”

“ You have managed my late brother’s affairs since the death of our elder brother: fourteen years and a month, all but three days. On the Third of December, I find him...
Intendant. If you have so intimate an acquaintance with your brother’s affairs, you will be tender of turning so far back: they will hardly bear looking into, so far back. ”

“ That ’s the joke. But you should have joined us at the beginning: there’s no doubt he loves the girl—loves a model he might hire by the hour!
Gottlieb. See here! “He has been accustomed,” he writes, “to have Canova’s women about him, in stone, and the world’s women beside him, in flesh; these being as much below, as those above, his soul’s aspiration: but now he is to have the reality.” There you laugh again! I say, you wipe off the very dew of his youth.
1st Student. Schramm! (Take the pipe out of his mouth, somebody!) Will Jules lose the bloom of his youth? ”

“ Either the child smiles in his face; or, most likely, he is not fool enough to put himself in the employer’s power so thoroughly: the child is always ready to produce—as you say—howsoever, wheresoever, and whensoever. ”

“ Foreign Students of painting and sculpture, from Venice, assembled opposite the house of Jules, a young French statuary, at Possagno.
1st Student. Attention! My own post is beneath this window, but the pomegranate clump yonder will hide three or four of you with a little squeezing, and Schramm and his pipe must lie flat in the balcony. Four, five—who’s a defaulter? We want everybody, for Jules must not be suffered to hurt his bride when the jest ’s found-out. ”

“ 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;” ”

“ And therefore, till the shrub-house door uncloses,
I... what now?—give abundant cause for prate
About me—Ottima, I mean—of late,
Too bold, too confident she ’ll still face down
The spitefullest of talkers in our town.
How we talk in the little town below!
But love, love, love—there’s better love, I know!
This foolish love was only day’s first offer ”

“ 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!) ”

“ I have kept her out of harm’s way up to this present; for I always intended to make your life a plague to you with her. ’T is as well settled once and forever. Some women I have procured will pass Bluphocks, my handsome scoundrel, off for somebody ”