Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PARLEYINGS WITH CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE: GERARD DE LAIRESSE, by ROBERT BROWNING Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Ah, but - because you were struck blind, could bless Last Line: Dance you, reds and whites and yellows! Subject(s): Lairesse, Gerard De (1641-1711); Paintings & Painters | ||||||||
I AH, but -- because you were struck blind, could bless Your sense no longer with the actual view Of man and woman, those fair forms you drew In happier days so duteously and true, -- Must I account my Gerard de Lairesse All sorrow-smitten? He was hindered too -- Was this no hardship? -- from producing, plain To us who still have eyes, the pageantry Which passed and passed before his busy brain And, captured on his canvas, showed our sky Traversed by flying shapes, earth stocked with brood Of monsters, -- centaurs bestial, satyrs lewd, -- Not without much Olympian glory, shapes Of god and goddess in their gay escapes From the severe serene: or haply paced The antique ways, god-counselled, nymph-em braced, Some early human kingly personage. Such wonders of the teeming poet's-age Were still to be: nay, these indeed began -- Are not the pictures extant? -- till the ban Of blindness struck both palette from his thumb And pencil from his finger. II Blind -- not dumb, Else, Gerard, were my inmost bowels stirred With pity beyond pity: no, the word Was left upon your unmolested lips: Your mouth unsealed, despite of eyes' eclipse, Talked all brain's yearning into birth. I lack Somehow the heart to wish your practice back Which boasted hand's achievement in a score Of veritable pictures, less or more, Still to be seen: myself have seen them, -- moved To pay due homage to the man I loved Because of that prodigious book he wrote On Artistry's Ideal, by taking note, Making acquaintance with his artist-work. So my youth's piety obtained success Of all too dubious sort: for, though it irk To tell the issue, few or none would guess From extant lines and colors, De Lairesse. Your faculty, although each deftly-grouped And aptly-ordered figure-piece was judged Worthy a prince's purchase in its day. Bearded experience bears not to be duped Like boyish fancy: 't was a boy that budged No foot's breath from your visioned steps away The while that memorable "Walk" he trudged In your companionship, -- the Book must say Where, when and whither, -- "Walk," come what come may, No measurer of steps on this our globe Shall ever match for marvels. Faustus' robe, And Fortunatus' cap were gifts of price: But -- oh, your piece of sober sound advice That artists should descry abundant worth In trivial commonplace, nor groan at dearth If fortune bade the painter's craft be plied In vulgar town and country! Why despond Because hemmed round by Dutch canals? Beyond The ugly actual, lo, on every side Imagination's limitless domain Displayed a wealth of wondrous sounds and sights Ripe to be realized by poet's brain Acting on painter's brush! "Ye doubt? Poor wights, What if I set example, go before, While you come after, and we both explore Holland turned Dreamland, taking care to note Objects whereto my pupils may devote Attention with advantage?" III So commenced That "Walk" amid true wonders -- none to you, But huge to us ignobly common-sensed, Purblind, while plain could proper optics view In that old sepulchre by lightning split, Whereof the lid bore carven, -- any dolt Imagines why, -- Jove's very thunderbolt: You who could straight perceive, by glance at it, This tomb must needs be Phaeton's! In a trice, Confirming that conjecture, close on hand, Behold, half out, half in the ploughed-up sand, A chariot-wheel explained its bolt-device: What other than the Chariot of the Sun Ever let drop the like? Consult the tome -- I bid inglorious tarriers-at-home -- For greater still surprise the while that "Walk" Went on and on, to end as it begun, Chokefull of chances, changes, every one No whit less wondrous. What was there to balk Us, who had eyes, from seeing? You with none Missed not a marvel: wherefore? Let us talk. IV Say am I right? Your sealed sense moved your mind, Free from obstruction, to compassionate Art's power left powerless, and supply the blind With fancies worth all facts denied by fate. Mind could invent things, add to -- take away, At pleasure, leave out trifles mean and base Which vex the sight that cannot say them nay But, where mind plays the master, have no place, And bent on banishing was mind, be sure, All except beauty from its mustered tribe Of objects apparitional which lure Painter to show and poet to describe -- That imagery of the antique song Truer than truth's self. Fancy's rainbow-birth Conceived 'mid clouds in Greece, could glance along Your passage o'er Dutch veritable earth, As with ourselves, who see, familiar throng About our pacings men and women worth Nowise a glance -- so poets apprehend -- Since naught avails portraying them in verse: While painters turn upon the heel, intend To spare their work the critic's ready curse Due to the daily and undignified. V I who myself contentedly abide Awake, nor want the wings of dream, -- who tramp Earth's common surface, rough, smooth, dry or damp, -- I understand alternatives, no less Conceive your soul's leap, Gerard de Lairesse! How were it could I mingle false with true, Boast, with the sights I see, your vision too? Advantage would it prove or detriment If I saw double? Could I gaze intent On Dryope plucking the blossoms red, As you, whereat her lote-tree writhed and bled, Yet lose no gain, no hard fast wide-awake Having and holding nature for the sake Of nature only -- nymph and lote-tree thus Gained by the loss of fruit not fabulous, Apple of English homesteads, where I see Nor seek more than crisp buds a struggling bee Uncrumples, caught by sweet he clambers through? Truly, a moot point: make it plain to me, Who, bee-like, sate sense with the simply true, Nor seek to heighten that sufficiency By help of feignings proper to the page -- Earth's surface-blank whereon the elder age Put color, poetizing -- poured rich life On what were else a dead ground -- nothingness -- Until the solitary world grew rife With Joves and Junos, nymphs and satyrs. Yes, The reason was, fancy composed the strife 'Twixt sense and soul: for sense, my De Lairesse, Cannot content itself with outward things, Mere beauty: soul must needs know whence there springs -- How, when and why -- what sense but loves nor lists To know at all. VI Not one of man's acquists Ought he resignedly to lose, methinks: So, point me out which was it of the links Snapt first, from out the chain which used to bind Our earth to heaven, and yet for you, since blind, Subsisted still efficient and intact? Oh, we can fancy too! but somehow fact Has got to -- say, not so much push aside Fancy, as to declare its place supplied By fact unseen but no less fact the same, Which mind bids sense accept. Is mind to blame, Or sense, -- does that usurp, this abdicate? First of all, as you "walked" -- were it too late For us to walk, if so we willed? Confess We have the sober feet still, De Lairesse! Why not the freakish brain too, that must needs Supplement nature -- not see flowers and weeds Simply as such, but link with each and all The ultimate perfection -- what we call Rightly enough the human shape divine? The rose? No rose unless it disentwine From Venus' wreath the while she bends to kiss Her deathly love? VII Plain retrogression, this! No, no: we poets go not back at all: What you did we could do -- from great to small Sinking assuredly: if this world last One moment longer when Man finds its Past Exceed its Present -- blame the Protoplast! If we no longer see as you of old, 'T is we see deeper. Progress for the bold! You saw the body, 't is the soul we see. Try now! Bear witness while you walk with me, I see as you: if we loose arms, stop pace, 'T is that you stand still, I conclude the race Without your company. Come, walk once more The "Walk:" if I to-day as you of yore See just like you the blind -- then sight shall cry -- The whole long day quite gone through -- victory! VIII Thunders on thunders, doubling and redoubling Doom o'er the mountain, while a sharp white fire Now shone, now sheared its rusty herbage, troubling Hardly the fir-boles, now discharged its ire Full where some pine-tree's solitary spire Crashed down, defiant to the last: till -- lo, The motive of the malice! -- all aglow, Circled with flame there yawned a sudden rift I' the rock-face, and I saw a form erect Front and defy the outrage, while -- as checked, Chidden, beside him dauntless in the drift -- Cowered a heaped creature, wing and wing outspread In deprecation o'er the crouching head Still hungry for the feast foregone awhile. O thou, of scorn's unconquerable smile, Was it when this -- Jove's feathered fury -- slipped Gore-glutted from the heart's core whence he ripped -- This eagle - hound -- neither reproach nor prayer -- Baffled, in one more flerce attempt to tear Fate's secret from thy safeguard, -- was it then That all these thunders rent earth, ruined air To reach thee, pay thy patronage of men? He thundered, -- to withdraw, as beast to lair, Before the triumph on thy pallid brow. Gather the night again about thee now, Hate on, love ever! Morn is breaking there -- The granite ridge pricks through the mist, turns gold As wrong turns right. O laughters manifold Of ocean's ripple at dull earth's despair! IX But morning's laugh sets all the crags alight Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, And every strangled branch resumes its right To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, Each grass-blade's glory-glitter. Had I known The torrent now turned river? -- masterful Making its rush o'er tumbled ravage -- stone And stub which barred the froths and foams: no bull Ever broke bounds in formidable sport More overwhelmingly, till lo, the spasm Sets him to dare that last mad leap: report Who may -- his fortunes in the deathly chasm That swallows him in silence! Rather turn Whither, upon the upland, pedestalled Into the broad day-splendor, whom discern These eyes but thee, supreme one, rightly called Moon-maid in heaven above and, here below, Earth's huntress-queen? I note the garb succinct Saving from smirch that purity of snow From breast to knee -- snow's self with just the tinct Of the apple-blossom's heart-blush. Ah, the bow Slack-strung her fingers grasp, where, ivory-linked Horn curving blends with horn, a moonlike pair Which mimic the brow's crescent sparkling so -- As if a star's live restless fragment winked Proud yet repugnant, captive in such hair! What hope along the hillside, what far bliss Lets the crisp hair-plaits fall so low they kiss Those lucid shoulders? Must a morn so blithe Needs have its sorrow when the twang and hiss Tell that from out thy sheaf one shaft makes writhe Its victim, thou unerring Artemis? Why did the chamois stand so fair a mark Arrested by the novel shape he dreamed Was bred of liquid marble in the dark Depths of the mountain's womb which ever teemed With novel births of wonder? Not one spark Of pity in that steel-gray glance which gleamed At the poor hoof's protesting as it stamped Idly the granite? Let me glide unseen From thy proud presence: well mayst thou be queen Of all those strange and sudden deaths which damped So oft Love's torch and Hymen's taper lit For happy marriage till the maidens paled And perished on the temple-step, assailed By -- what except to envy must man's wit Impute that sure implacable release Of life from warmth and joy? But death means peace. X Noon is the conqueror, -- not a spray, nor leaf, Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up Its morning dew: the valley seemed one cup Of cloud-smoke, but the vapor's reign was brief; Sun-smitten, see, it hangs -- the filmy haze -- Gray-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and wide Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze With fierce immitigable blue, no bird Ventures to spot by passage. E'en of peaks Which still presume there, plain each pale point speaks In wan transparency of waste incurred By over-daring: far from me be such! Deep in the hollow, rather, where combine Tree, shrub and brier to roof with shade and cool The remnant of some lily-strangled pool, Edged round with mossy fringing soft and fine. Smooth lie the bottom slabs, and overhead Watch elder, bramble, rose, and service-tree And one beneficent rich barberry Jewelled all over with fruit-pendants red. What have I seen! O Satyr, well I know How sad thy case, and what a world of woe Was hid by the brown visage furry-framed Only for mirth: who otherwise could think -- Marking thy mouth gape still on laughter's brink, Thine eyes a-swim with merriment unnamed But haply guessed at by their furtive wink? And all the while a heart was panting sick Behind that shaggy bulwark of thy breast -- Passion it was that made those breath-bursts thick I took for mirth subsiding into rest. So, it was Lyda -- she of all the train Of forest-thridding nymphs, -- 't was only she Turned from thy rustic homage in disdain, Saw but that poor uncouth outside of thee, And, from her circling sisters, mocked a pain Echo had pitied -- whom Pan loved in vain -- For she was wishful to partake thy glee, Mimic thy mirth -- who loved her not again, Savage for Lyda's sake. She crouches there -- Thy cruel beauty, slumberously laid Supine on heaped-up beast-skins, unaware Thy steps have traced her to the briery glade, Thy greedy hands disclose the cradling lair, Thy hot eyes reach and revel on the maid! XI Now, what should this be for? The sun's decline Seems as he lingered lest he lose some act Dread and decisive, some prodigious fact Like thunder from the safe sky's sapphirine About to alter earth's conditions, packed With fate for nature's self that waits, aware What mischief unsuspected in the air Menaces momently a cataract. Therefore it is that yonder space extends Untrenched upon by any vagrant tree, Shrub, weed well-nigh; they keep their bounds, leave free The platform for what actors? Foes or friends, Here come they trooping silent: heaven suspends Purpose the while they range themselves. I see! Bent on a battle, two vast powers agree This present and no after-contest ends One or the other's grasp at rule in reach Over the race of man -- host fronting host, As statue statue fronts -- wrath-molten each, Solidified by hate, -- earth halved almost, To close once more in chaos. Yet two shapes Show prominent, each from the universe Of minions round about him, that disperse Like cloud-obstruction when a bolt escapes. Who flames first? Macedonian, is it thou? Ay, and who fronts thee, King Darius, drapes His form with purple, fillet-folds his brow. XII What, then the long day dies at last? Abrupt The sun that seemed, in stooping, sure to melt Our mountain-ridge, is mastered: black the belt Of westward crags, his gold could not corrupt, Barriers again the valley, lets the flow Of lavish glory waste itself away -- Whither? For new climes, fresh eyes breaks the day! Night was not to be baffled. If the glow Were all that's gone from us! Did clouds, afloat So filmily but now, discard no rose, Sombre throughout the fleeciness that grows A sullen uniformity. I note Rather displeasure, -- in the overspread Change from the swim of gold to one pale lead Oppressive to malevolence, -- than late Those amorous yearnings when the aggregate Of cloudlets pressed that each and all might sate Its passion and partake in relics red Of day's bequeathment: now, a frown instead Estranges, and affrights who needs must fare On and on till his journey ends: but where? Caucasus? Lost now in the night. Away And far enough lies that Arcadia. The human heroes tread the world's dark way No longer. Yet I dimly see almost -- Yes, for my last adventure! 'T is a ghost. So drops away the beauty! There he stands Voiceless, scarce strives with deprecating hands ... XIII Enough! Stop further fooling, De Lairesse! My fault, not yours! Some fitter way express Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed Is past, gives way before Life's best and last, The all-including Future! What were life Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife Through the ambiguous Present to the goal Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul, Nothing has been which shall not bettered be Hereafter, -- leave the root, by law's decree Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree! Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, climb -- Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower -- reach, rest sublime Where fruitage ripens in the blaze of day! O'erlook, despise, forget, throw flower away, Intent on progress? No whit more than stop Ascent therewith to dally, screen the top Sufficiency of yield by interposed Twistwork bold foot gets free from. Wherefore glozed The poets -- "Dream afresh old godlike shapes, Recapture ancient fable that escapes, Push back reality, repeople earth With vanished falseness, recognize no worth In fact new-born unless 't is rendered back Pallid by fancy, as the western rack Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam Of its gone glory!" XIV Let things be -- not seem, I counsel rather, -- do, and nowise dream! Earth's young significance is all to learn: The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth! What was the best Greece babbled of as truth? "A shade, a wretched nothing, -- sad, thin, drear, Cold, dark, it holds on to the lost loves here, If hand have haply sprinkled o'er the dead Three charitable dust-heaps, made mouth red One moment by the sip of sacrifice: Just so much comfort thaws the stubborn ice Slow-thickening upward till it choke at length The last faint flutter craving -- not for strength, Not beauty, not the riches and the rule O'er men that made life life indeed." Sad school Was Hades! Gladly, -- might the dead but slink To life back, -- to the dregs once more would drink Each interloper, drain the humblest cup Fate mixes for humanity. XV Cheer up, -- Be death with me, as with Achilles erst, Of man's calamities the last and worst: Take it so! By proved potency that still Makes perfect, be assured, come what come will, What once lives never dies -- what here attains To a beginning, has no end, still gains And never loses aught: when, where, and how -- Lies in Law's lap. What's death then? Even now With so much knowledge is it hard to bear Brief interposing ignorance? Is care For a creation found at fault just there -- There where the heart breaks bond and outruns time, To reach not follow what shall be? XVI Here's rhyme Such as one makes now, -- say, when Spring reaps That miracle the Greek Bard sadly greets: "Spring for the tree and herb -- no Spring for us!" Let Spring come: why, a man salutes her thus: Dance, yellows and whites and reds, -- Lead your gay orgy, leaves, stalks, heads Astir with the wind in the tulip-beds! There's sunshine; scarcely a wind at all Disturbs starved grass and daisies small On a certain mound by a churchyard wall. Daisies and grass be my heart's bedfellows On the mound wind spares and sunshine lows: Dance you, reds and whites and yellows! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...1801: AMONG THE PAPERS OF THE ENVOY TO CONSTANTINOPLE by RICHARD HOWARD VENETIAN INTERIOR, 1889 by RICHARD HOWARD THERE IS A GOLD LIGHT IN CERTAIN OLD PAINTINGS by DONALD JUSTICE DUTCH INTERIORS by JANE KENYON INVITATION TO A PAINTER: 3 by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM THE CHINA PAINTERS by TED KOOSER ELEGY FOR SOL LEWITT by ANN LAUTERBACH ON THE SEPARATION OF ADAM AND EVE by TIMOTHY LIU CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME' by ROBERT BROWNING |
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