  TO E. B. B. London, September, 1855. I. There they are, my fifty men and women Naming me the fifty poems finished! Take them, love, the book and me together: Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. II. Rafael made a century of sonnets, Made and wrote them in a certain volume Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil Else he only used to draw Madonnas: These, the world might view—but one, the volume. Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. Did she live and love it all her life-time? Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, Die and let it drop beside her pillow Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory, Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving— Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s, Rafael’s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s? III. You and I would rather read that volume, (Taken to his beating bosom by it) Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas— Her, that visits Florence in a vision, Her, that’s left with lilies in the Louvre— Seen by us and all the world in circle. IV. You and I will never read that volume. Guido Reni, like his own eye’s apple, Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. Guido Reni dying, all Bologna Cried, and the world cried too “Ours, the treasure!” Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. V. Dante once prepared to paint an angel: Whom to please? You whisper “Beatrice.” While he mused and traced it and retraced it, (Peradventure with a pen corroded Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, When, his left hand i’ the hair o’ the wicked, Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, Bit into the live man’s flesh for parchment, Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving, Dante standing, studying his angel,— In there broke the folk of his Inferno. Says he—“Certain people of importance” (Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) “Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.” Says the poet—“Then I stopped my painting.” You and I would rather see that angel, Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not?—than read a fresh Inferno. VII. You and I will never see that picture. While he mused on love and Beatrice, While he softened o’er his outlined angel, In they broke, those “people of importance:” We and Bice bear the loss for ever. VIII. What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture? This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not Once, and only once, and for one only, (Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language Fit and fair and simple and sufficient— Using nature that’s an art to others, Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature. Ay, of all the artists living, loving, None but would forego his proper dowry,— Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,— Does he write? he fain would paint a picture, Put to proof art alien to the artist’s, Once, and only once, and for one only. So to be the man and leave the artist, Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow. Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement. He who smites the rock and spreads the water, Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, Even he, the minute makes immortal, Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute. Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. While he smites, how can he but remember, So he smote before, in such a peril, When they stood and mocked—“Shall smiting help us?” When they drank and sneered—“A stroke is easy!” When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, Throwing him for thanks—“But drought was pleasant.” Thus old memories mar the actual triumph; Thus the doing savours of disrelish; Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat; O’er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, Carelessness or consciousness—the gesture. For he bears an ancient wrong about him, Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, Hears, yet one time more, the ’customed prelude— “How should’st thou, of all men, smite, and save us?” Guesses what is like to prove the sequel— “Egypt’s flesh-pots—nay, the drought was better.” X. Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant! Theirs, the Sinai-forehead’s cloven brilliance, Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat. Never dares the man put off the prophet. Did he love one face from out the thousands, (Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely, Were she but the Æthiopian bond-slave,) He would envy yon dumb patient camel, Keeping a reserve of scanty water Meant to save his own life in the desert; Ready in the desert to deliver (Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) Hoard and life together for his mistress. XII. I shall never, in the years remaining, Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, Make you music that should all-express me; So it seems: I stand on my attainment. This of verse alone, one life allows me; Verse and nothing else have I to give you. Other heights in other lives, God willing: All the gifts from all the heights, your own, love! XIII. Yet a semblance of resource avails us— Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it. Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time. He “Men and Women,” a collection of fifty poems, first published in 1855, is probably the best known of our author’s numerous volumes. Some of the very finest of his work is in it. To this collection “One Word More” Rafael, painter for the world, becomes for once a poet for his dearest. If only these wonderful sonnets could be found, how we should prize them; but the volume is hopelessly lost (stanzas 2-4). Dante, poet for the world, prepares for once to paint an angel for his dearest. But, alas! he is hindered by the breaking in of some “people of importance” of the city, the sort of people who served as character models for “the folk of his Inferno” (5-7). There would evidently be less of art and more of nature in such an outpouring of soul; and, therefore, the true artist would long to do it “once, and only once, and for one only.” “The man’s joy” would be found in the mere utterance of his soul to his dearest, without any thought of art, which, to the true artist, lifts so high an ideal that his shortcoming is always a “sorrow” (8). So is it with the prophet, the exercise of whose high calling can never be dissociated from its burdens and cares (9). If he dared, which he may not (10), how gladly for the one that he loved would he “put off the prophet” and provide water, not by the forth putting of power, but simply as the man, through the self-denial of love (11). Browning himself has only the one art, so cannot leave his poetry to paint, or carve, or “make music” (12); but as the nearest equivalent possible to him will write “once, and only once, and for one only,” a purely extemporaneous production (13), which shall not, like his other works, be dramatic in principle, but spoken in his own “true person” (14). Then follows the wonderful moon illustration, so marvellously wrought out, based upon the familiar astronomical fact that, through all her phases and movements she always presents exactly the same face to the earth (15), the other remaining entirely concealed (“unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman,” &c.), and therefore available as a new revelation (who knows of what grandeur?) for the loved and specially-favoured mortal (16). The application of the illustration in stanzas 17 and 18 is exquisitely beautiful, as is the gem-like quatrain with which the poem closes. |
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