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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE: CHRISTOPHER SMART, by ROBERT BROWNING Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: It seems as if - or did the actual chance Last Line: Not first learn and then live, is our concern. Subject(s): Smart, Christopher (1722-1771) | |||
I IT seems as if ... or did the actual chance Startle me and perplex? Let truth be said! How might this happen? Dreaming, blindfold led By visionary hand, did soul's advance Precede my body's, gain inheritance Of fact by fancy -- so that when I read At length with waking eyes your Song, instead Of mere be wilderment, with me first glance Was but full recognition that in trance Or merely thought's adventure some old day Of dim and done-with boyishness, or -- well, Why might it not have been, the miracle Broke on me as I took my sober way Through veritable regions of our earth And made discovery, many a wondrous one? II Anyhow, fact or fancy, such its birth: I was exploring some huge house, had gone Through room and room complacently, no dearth Anywhere of the signs of decent taste, Adequate culture: wealth had run to waste Nowise, nor penury was proved by stint: All showed the Golden Mean without a hint Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule. The master of the mansion was no fool Assuredly, no genius just as sure! Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure Of now too much and now too little cost, And satisfied me sight was never lost Of moderate design's accomplishment In calm completeness. On and on I went With no more hope than fear of what came next, Till lo, I push a door, sudden uplift A hanging, enter, chance upon a shift Indeed of scene! So -- thus it is thou deck'st High heaven, our low earth's brick-and-mortar work? III It was the Chapel. That a star, from murk Which hid, should flashingly emerge at last, Were small surprise: but from broad day I passed Into a presence that turned shine to shade. There fronted me the Rafael Mother-Maid, Never to whom knelt votarist in shrine By Nature's bounty helped, by Art's divine More varied -- beauty with magnificence -- Than this: from floor to roof one evidence Of how far earth may rival heaven. No niche Where glory was not prisoned to enrich Man's gaze with gold and gems, no space but glowed With color, gleamed with carving -- hues which owed Their outburst to a brush the painter fed With rainbow-substance -- rare shapes never wed To actual flesh and blood, which, brain-born once. Became the sculptor's dowry, Art's response To earth's despair. And all seemed old yet new: Youth, -- in the marble's curve, the canvas' hue, Apparent, -- wanted not the crowning thrill Of age the consecrator. Hands long still Had worked here -- could it be, what lent them skill Retained a power to supervise, protect, Enforce new lessons with the old, connect Our life with theirs? No merely modern touch Told me that here the artist, doing much, Elsewhere did more, perchance does better, lives -- So needs must learn. IV Well, these provocatives Having fulfilled their office, forth I went Big with anticipation -- well-nigh fear -- Of what next room and next for startled eyes Might have in store, surprise beyond surprise. Next room and next and next -- what followed here? Why, nothing! not one object to arrest My passage -- everywhere too manifest The previous decent null and void of best And worst, mere ordinary right and fit, Calm commonplace which neither missed, nor hit Inch-high, inch-low, the placid mark proposed. V Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed Your case, my Christopher? The man was sound And sane at starting: all at once the ground Gave way beneath his step, a certain smoke Curled up and caught him, or perhaps down broke A fireball wrapping flesh and spirit both In conflagration. Then -- as heaven were loth To linger -- let earth understand too well How heaven at need can operate -- off fell The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man Resumed sobriety, -- as he began, So did he end nor alter pace, not he! VI Now, what I fain would know is -- could it be That he -- whoe'er he was that furnished forth The Chapel, making thus, from South to North, Rafael touch Leighton, Michelagnolo Join Watts, was found but once combining so The elder and the younger, taking stand On Art's supreme, -- or that yourself who sang A Song where flute-breath silvers trumpet-clang, And stations you for once on either hand With Milton and with Keats, empowered to claim Affinity on just one point -- (or blame Or praise my judgment, thus it fronts you full) -- How came it you resume the void and null, Subside to insignificance, -- live, die -- Proved plainly two mere mortals who drew nigh One moment -- that, to Art's best hierarchy, This, to the superhuman poet-pair? What if, in one point only, then and there The otherwise all-unapproachable Allowed impingement? Does the sphere pretend To span the cube's breadth, cover end to end The plane with its embrace? No, surely! Still, Contact is contact, sphere's touch no whit less Than cube's superimposure. Such success Befell Smart only out of throngs between Milton and Keats that donned the singing-dress -- Smart, solely of such songmen, pierced the screen 'Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, -- Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal Live from the censer -- shapely or uncouth, Fire-suffused through and through, one blaze of truth Undeadened by a lie, -- (you have my mind) -- For, think! this blaze outleapt with black behind And blank before, when Hayley and the rest ... But let the dead successors worst and best Bury their dead: with life be my concern -- Yours with the fire-flame: what I fain would learn Is just -- (suppose me haply ignorant Down to the common knowledge, doctors vaunt) Just this -- why only once the fire-flame was: No matter if the marvel came to pass The way folk judged -- if power too long suppressed Broke loose and maddened, as the vulgar guessed Or simply brain-disorder (doctors said), A turmoil of the particles disturbed, Brain's workaday performance in your head, Spurred spirit to wild action health had curbed, And so verse issued in a cataract Whence prose, before and after, unperturbed Was wont to wend its way. Concede the fact That here a poet was who always could -- Never before did -- never after would -- Achieve the feat: how were such fact explained? VII Was it that when, by rarest chance, there fell Disguise front Nature, so that Truth remained Naked, and whoso saw for once could tell Us others of her majesty and might In large, her lovelinesses infinite In little, -- straight you used the power wherewith Sense penetrating as through rind to pith Each object, thoroughly revealed might view And comprehend the old things thus made new, So that while eye saw, soul to tongue could trust Thing which struck word out, and once more adjust Real vision to right language, till heaven's vault Pompous with sunset, storm-stirred sea's assault On the swilled rock-ridge, earth's embosomed brood Of tree and flower and weed, with all the life That flies or swims or crawls, in peace or strife, Above, below -- each had its note and name For Man to know by, -- Man who, now -- the same As erst in Eden, needs that all he sees Be named him ere he note by what degrees Of strength and beauty to its end Design Ever thus operates -- (your thought and mine, No matter for the many dissident) -- So did you sing your Song, so truth found vent In words for once with you? VIII Then -- back was furled The robe thus thrown aside, and straight the world Darkened into the old oft-catalogued Repository of things that sky, wave, land, Or show or hide, clear late, accretion-clogged Now, just as long ago, by tellings and Re-tellings to satiety, which strike Muffled upon the ear's drum. Very like None was so startled as yourself when friends Came, hailed your fast-returning wits: "Health mends Importantly, for -- to be plain with you -- This scribble on the wall was done -- in lieu Of pen and paper -- with -- ha, ha! -- your key Denting it on the wainscot! Do you see How wise our caution was? Thus much we stopped Of babble that had else grown print: and lopped From your trim bay-tree this unsightly bough -- Smart's who translated Horace! Write us now" ... Why, what Smart did write -- never afterward One line to show that he, who paced the sward, Had reached the zenith from his madhouse cell. IX Was it because you judged (I know full well You never had the fancy) -- judged -- as some -- That who makes poetry must reproduce Thus ever and thus only, as they come, Each strength, each beauty, everywhere diffuse Throughout creation, so that eye and ear. Seeing and hearing, straight shall recognize, At touch of just a trait, the strength appear, -- Suggested by a line's lapse see arise All evident the beauty, -- fresh surprise Startling at fresh achievement? "So, indeed Wallows the whale's bulk in the waste of brine. Nor otherwise its feather-tufts make fine Wild Virgin's Bower when stars faint off to seed!" (My prose -- your poetry I dare not give, Purpling too much my mere gray argument.) -- Was it because you judged -- when fugitive Was glory found, and wholly gone and spent Such power of startling up deaf ear, blind eye, At truth's appearance, -- that you humbly bent The head and, bidding vivid work good-by, Doffed lyric dress and trod the world once more A drab-clothed decent proseman as before? Strengths, beauties, by one word's flash thus laid bare -- That was effectual service: made aware Of strengths and beauties, Man but hears the text, Awaits your teaching. Nature? What comes next? Why all the strength and beauty? -- to be shown Thus in one word's flash, thenceforth let alone By Man who needs must deal with aught that's known Never so lately and so little? Friend, First give us knowledge, then appoint its use! Strength, beauty are the means: ignore their end? As well you stopped at proving how profuse Stones, sticks, nay stubble lie to left and right Ready to help the builder, -- careless quite If he should take, or leave the same to strew Earth idly, -- as by word's flash bring in view Strength, beauty, then bid who beholds the same Go on beholding. Why gains unemployed? Nature was made to be by Man enjoyed First; followed duly by enjoyment's fruit, Instruction -- haply leaving joy behind: And you, the instructor, would you slack pursuit Of the main prize, as poet help mankind Just to enjoy, there leave them? Play the fool, Abjuring a superior privilege? Please simply when your function is to rule -- By thought incite to deed? From edge to edge Of earth's round, strength and beauty everywhere Pullulate -- and must you particularize All, each and every apparition? Spare Yourself and us the trouble! Ears and eyes Want so much strength and beauty, and no less Nor more, to learn life's lesson by. Oh, yes -- The other method's favored in our day! The end ere the beginning: as you may Master the heavens before you study earth, Make you familiar with the meteor's birth Ere you descend to scrutinize the rose! I say, o'erstep no least one of the rows That lead man from the bottom where he plants Foot first of all, to life's last ladder-top: Arrived there, vain enough will seem the vaunts Of those who say -- "We scale the skies, then drop To earth -- to find, how all things there are loth To answer heavenly law: we understand The meteor's course, and lo, the rose's growth -- How other than should be by law's command!" Would not you tell such -- "Friends, beware lest fume Offuscate sense: learn earth first ere presume To teach heaven legislation. Law must be Active in earth or nowhere: earth you see, -- Or there or not at all, Will, Power and Love Admit discovery, -- as below, above Seek next law's confirmation! But reverse The order, where's the wonder things grow worse Than, by the law your fancy formulates, They should be? Cease from anger at the fates Which thwart themselves so madly. Live and learn, Not first learn and then live, is our concern. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A GARLAND FOR CHRISTOPHER SMART by MONA VAN DUYN CHRISTOPHER SMART by STANLEY SHAW JUBILATE MATTEO by GAVIN EWART CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME' by ROBERT BROWNING DE GUSTIBUS' by ROBERT BROWNING A DEATH IN THE DESERT by ROBERT BROWNING A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL by ROBERT BROWNING |
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