Men and Women

[It is obvious that Browning uses the Halberstadt and not the Boehme method in presenting this embodiment of his subject. The supposition of certain commentators that Browning is here picturing his own artistic method as transcendental is a misconception of his characteristic theory of poetic art, as shown here and elsewhere.]

HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY

1855I only knew one poet in my life:And this, or something like it, was his way.You saw go up and down Valladolid,3A man of mark, to know next time you saw.His very serviceable suit of blackWas 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.He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane,Scenting theworld, 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 themselvesOn the main promenade just at the wrong time:You'd come upon his scrutinizing hatMaking a peaked shade blacker than itselfAgainst the single window spared some houseIntact yet with its mouldered Moorish work—Or else surprise the ferret of his stickTrying themortar's temper 'tween the chinksOf 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 boysThat 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.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 neighbor'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,The town's true master if the town but knewWe merely kept a governor for form,While this man walked about and took accountOf all thought, said and acted, then went home,And wrote it fully to our Lord the KingWho 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 easeAs back into your mind the man's look came.Stricken in years a little—such a browHis eyes had to live under!—clear as flintOn either side the formidable noseCurved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw,Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate?When altogether old B. disappearedAnd young C. got his mistress, was't our friend,His letter to the King, that did it all?What paid the Woodless man for so much pains?Our Lord the King has favorites manifold,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 streetsThe King's approval of those letters connedThe 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?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 lanesBeyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,You found he ate his supper in a roomBlazing with lights, four Titians4 on the wall,And twenty naked girls to change his plate!Poor man, he lived another kind of lifeIn that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,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 cheeseAnd 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;"'St—'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!"5I had been used to think that personageWas 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 happy been afraid,To have just looked, when this man came to die,And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sidesAnd stood about the neat low truckle-bed,With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,Doing the King's work all the dim day long,In his old coat and up to knees in mud,Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,And, now the day was won, relieved at once!No further show or need for that old coat,You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the whileHow sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!A second, and the angels alter that.Well, I could never write a verse—could you?Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.NOTES

"How it Strikes a Contemporary" is a portrait of the Poet as the unpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him. It is humorously colored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects without understanding either the greatness of the poet's spiritual personality and mission, or the nature of his life, which is withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted universal sympathies and kindly mediation between Humanity and its God.

ARTEMIS PROLOGIZES

1842I am a goddess of the ambrosia courts,And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassedBy none whose temples whiten this the world.Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along;I shed in hell o'er my pale people peace;On earth I, caring for the creatures, guardEach pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek,And every feathered mother's callow brood,And all that love green haunts and loneliness.Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crownsOf poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,Upon my image at Athenai here;And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,Was dearest to me. He, my buskined stepTo follow through the wild-wood leafy ways,And chase the panting stag, or swift with dartsStop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,Neglected homage to another god:Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smokeOf tapers lulled, in jealousy despatchedA noisome lust that, as the gad bee stings,Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himselfThe son of Theseus her great absent spouse.Hippolutos exclaiming in his rageAgainst the fury of the Queen, she judgedLife insupportable; and, pricked at heartAn Amazonian stranger's race should dareTo scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scrollThe fame of him her swerving made not swerve.And Theseus, read, returning, and believed,And exiled, in the blindness of his wrath,The man without a crime who, last as first,Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth,Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtainedThat of his wishes should be granted three,And one he imprecated straight—"AliveMay ne'er Hippolutos reach other lands!"Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the princeHad stepped into the fixed boots of the carThat give the feet a stay against the strengthOf the Henetian horses, and aroundHis body flung the rein, and urged their speedAlong the rocks and shingles at the shore,When from the gaping wave a monster flungHis obscene body in the coursers' path.These, mad with terror, as the sea-bull sprawledWallowing about their feet, lost care of himThat reared them; and the master-chariot-poleSnapping beneath their plunges like a reed,Hippolutos, whose feet were trammelled fast,Was yet dragged forward by the circling reinWhich either hand directed; nor they quenchedThe frenzy of their flight before each trace,Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woful car,Each boulder-stone, sharp stub and spiny shell,Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sandsOn that detested beach, was bright with bloodAnd morsels of his flesh; then fell the steedsHead foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts,Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.His people, who had witnessed all afar,Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,I, in a flood of glory visible,Stood o'er my dying votary and, deedBy deed, revealed, as all took place, the truth.Then Theseus lay the wofullest of men,And worthily; but ere the death-veils hidHis face, the murdered prince full pardon breathedTo his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.So I, who ne'er forsake my votaries,Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cakeShould tender, nor pour out the dog's hot life;Lest at my fane the priests disconsolateShould dress my image with some faded poorFew crowns, made favors of, nor dare objectSuch slackness to my worshippers who turnElsewhere the trusting heart and loaded hand,As they had climbed Olumpos to reportOf Artemis and nowhere found her throne—I interposed: and, this eventful night(While round the funeral pyre the populaceStood with fierce light on their black robes which boundEach sobbing head, while yet their hair they clippedO'er the dead body of their withered prince,And, in his palace, Theseus prostratedOn the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab'T was bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief—As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashedSending a crowd of sparkles through the night,And the gay fire, elate with mastery,Towered like a serpent o'er the clotted jarsOf wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,And splendid gums like gold) my potencyConveyed the perished man to my retreatIn the thrice-venerable forest here.And this white-bearded sage who squeezes nowThe berried plant, is Phoibos' son of fame,Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taughtThe doctrine of each herb and flower and root,To know their secret'st virtue and expressThe saving soul of all: who so has soothedWith layers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,And laid the strips and lagged ends of fleshEven once more, and slacked the sinew's knotOf every tortured limb—that now he liesAs if mere sleep possessed him underneathThese interwoven oaks and pines. Oh cheer,Divine presenter of the healing rod,Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,Ply, as the sage directs, these buds and leavesThat strew the turf around the twain! While IAwait, in fitting silence, the event.NOTES

"Artemis Prologizes" represents the goddess Artemis awaiting the revival of the youth Hippolytus, whom she has carried to her woods and given to Asclepios to heal. It is a fragment meant to introduce an unwritten work and carry on the story related by Euripides in "Hippolytus," which see.

AN EPISTLE CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN

1855Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,The not-incurious in God's handiwork(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made,Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,To coop up and keep down on earth a spaceThat puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul)—To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracksBefall the flesh through too much stress and strain,Whereby the wily vapor fain would slipBack and rejoin its source before the term—And aptest in contrivance (under God)To baffle it by deftly stopping such—The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at homeSends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace)Three samples of true snakestone6—rarer still,One of the other sort, the melon-shaped,(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs)And writeth now the twenty-second time.My journeyings were brought to Jericho:Thus I resume. Who studious in our artShall count a little labor un-repaid?I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and boneOn many a flinty furlong of this land.Also, the country-side is all on fireWith rumors of a marching hitherward:Some say Vespasian7 comes, some, his son.A black lynx8 snarled and pricked a tufted ear;Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,And once a town declared me for a spy;But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,Since this poor covert where I pass the night,This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thenceA man with plague-sores at the third degreeRuns till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,To void the stuffing of my travel-scripAnd share with thee whatever Jewry yields.A viscid choler is observableIn tertians,9 I was nearly bold to say;And falling-sickness10 hath a happier cureThan our school wots of: there's a spider here11Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind,The Syrian runagate I trust this to?His service payeth me a sublimateBlown up his nose to help the ailing eye.Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn,There set in order my experiences,12Gather what most deserves, and give thee all—Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragacanthScales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-diseaseConfounds me, crossing so with leprosy—Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar13—But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,Protesteth his devotion is my price—Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,What set me off a-writing first of all,An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!For, be it this town's barrenness—or elseThe Man had something in the look of him—His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.So, pardon if—(lest presently I loseIn the great press of novelty at handThe care and pains this somehow stole from me)I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,Almost in sight—for, wilt thou have the truth?The very man is gone from me but now,Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.Thus then, and let thy better wit help all!'Tis but a case of mania—subinducedBy epilepsy, at the turning-pointOf trance prolonged unduly some three days:When, by the exhibition of some drugOr spell, exorcisation, stroke of artUnknown to me and which 't were well to know,The evil thing out-breaking all at onceLeft the man whole and sound of body indeed,But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide,Making a clear house of it too suddenly,The first conceit that entered might inscribeWhatever it was minded on the wallSo plainly at that vantage, as it were,(First come, first served) that nothing subsequentAttaineth to erase those fancy-scrawlsThe just-returned and new-established soulHath gotten now so thoroughly by heartThat henceforth she will read or these or none.And first—the man's own firm conviction restsThat he was dead (in fact they buried him)—That he was dead and then restored to lifeBy a Nazarene physician of his tribe:—'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he did rise."Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.Not so this figment!—not, that such a fume,Instead of giving way to time and health,Should eat itself into the life of life,As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!For see, how he takes up the after-life.The man—it is one Lazarus14 a Jew,Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,The body's habit wholly laudable,As much, indeed, beyond the common healthAs he were made and put aside to show.Think, could we penetrate by any drugAnd bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?This grown man eyes the world now like a child.Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,Now sharply, now with sorrow, told the case,He listened not except I spoke to him,But folded his two hands and let them talk,Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.And that's a sample how his years must go.Look, if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,Should find a treasure, can he use the sameWith straitened habits and with tastes starved small,And take at once to his impoverished brainThe sudden element that changes things,That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his handAnd puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?Is he not such an one as moves to mirth—Warily parsimonious, when no need,Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?All prudent counsel as to what befitsThe golden mean, is lost on such an one:The man's fantastic will is the man's law.So here—we call the treasure knowledge, say,Increased beyond the fleshly faculty—Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven:The man is witless of the size, the sum,The value in proportion of all things,Or whether it be little or be much.Discourse to him of prodigious armamentsAssembled to besiege his city now,And of the passing of a mule with gourds—'T is one! Then take it on the other side,Speak of some trifling fact, he will gaze raptWith stupor at its very littleness,(Far as I see) as if in that indeedHe caught prodigious import, whole results;And so will turn to us the bystandersIn ever the same stupor (note this point)That we too see not with his opened eyes.Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,Preposterously, at cross purposes.Should his child sicken unto death, why, lookFor scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,Or pretermission of the daily craft!While a word, gesture, glance from that same childAt play or in the school or laid asleep,Will startle him to an agony of fear,Exasperation, just as like. DemandThe reason why—"'t is but a word," object—"A gesture"—he regards thee as our lordWho lived there in the pyramid alone,Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, being young,We both would unadvisedly reciteSome charm's beginning, from that book of his,Able to bid the sun throb wide and burstAll into stars, as suns grown old are wont.Thou and the child have each a veil alikeThrown o'er your heads, from under which ye bothStretch your blind hands and trifle with a matchOver a mine of Greek fire15, did ye know!He holds on firmly to some thread of life—(It is the life to lead perforcedly)Which runs across some vast distracting orbOf glory on either side that meagre thread,Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet—The spiritual life around the earthly life:The law of that is known to him as this,His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.So is the man perplext with impulsesSudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,Proclaiming what is right and wrong across,And not along, this black thread through the blaze—"It should be" balked by "here it cannot be."And oft the man's soul springs into his faceAs if he saw again and heard againHis sage that bade him "Rise" and he did rise.Something, a word, a tick o' the blood withinAdmonishes: then back he sinks at onceTo ashes, who was very fire before,In sedulous recurrence to his tradeWhereby he earneth him the daily bread;And studiously the humbler for that pride,Professedly the faultier that he knowsGod's secret, while he holds the thread of life.Indeed the especial marking of the manIs prone submission to the heavenly will—Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the lastFor that same death which must restore his beingTo equilibrium, body loosening soulDivorced even now by premature full growth:He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to liveSo long as God please, and just how God please.He even seeketh not to please God more(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.Hence, I perceive not he affects to preachThe doctrine of his sect whate'er it be,Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do:How can he give his neighbor the real ground,His own conviction? Ardent as he is—Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old"Be it as God please" reassureth him.I probed the sore as thy disciple should:"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessnessSufficeth thee, when Rome is on her marchTo stamp out like a little spark thy town,Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"He merely looked with his large eyes on me.The man is apathetic, you deduce?Contrariwise, he loves both old and young,Able and weak, affects the very brutesAnd birds—how say I? flowers of the field—As a wise workman recognizes toolsIn a master's workshop, loving what they make.Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:Only impatient, let him do his best,At ignorance and carelessness and sin—An indignation which is promptly curbed:As when in certain travel I have feignedTo be an ignoramus in our artAccording to some preconceived design,And happed to hear the land's practitionersSteeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,Prattle fantastically on disease,Its cause and cure—and I must hold my peace!Thou wilt object—Why have I not ere thisSought out the sage himself, the NazareneWho wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,Conferring with the frankness that befits?Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leechPerished in a tumult many years ago,Accused—our learning's fate—of wizardry,Rebellion, to the setting up a ruleAnd creed prodigious as described to me.His death, which happened when the earthquake fell(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the lossTo occult learning in our lord the sageWho lived there in the pyramid alone)Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont!On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,To his tried virtue, for miraculous help—How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!The other imputations must be lies;But take one, though I loathe to give it thee,In mere respect for any good man's fame.(And after all, our patient LazarusIs stark mad; should we count on what he says?Perhaps not: though in writing to a leech'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.)This man so cured regards the curer, then,As—God forgive me! who but God himself,Creator and sustainer of the world,That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!—'Sayeth that such an one was born and lived,Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house;Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat,And must have so avouched himself, in fact,In hearing of this very LazarusWho saith—but why all this of what he saith?Why write of trivial matters, things of priceCalling at every moment for remark?I noticed on the margin of a poolBlue-flowering16 borage, the Aleppo sort,Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,Which, now that I review it, needs must seemUnduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!Nor I myself discern in what is writGood cause for the peculiar interestAnd awe indeed this man has touched me with.Perhaps the journey's end, the wearinessHad wrought upon me first. I met him thus:I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hillsLike an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there cameA moon made like a face with certain spotsMultiform, manifold and menacing:Then a wind rose behind me. So we metIn this old sleepy town at unaware,The man and I. I send thee what is writ.Regard it as a chance, a matter riskedTo this ambiguous Syrian—he may lose,Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.Jerusalem's repose shall make amendsFor time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?

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1

Boehme: Jacob, an "inspired" German shoemaker (1575-1624), who wrote "Aurora," "The Three Principles," etc., mystical commentaries on Biblical events. When twenty-five years old, says Hotham in "Mysterium Magnum," 1653, "he was surrounded by a divine Light and replenished with heavenly Knowledge . . . going abroad into the Fieldes to a Greene before Neys-Gate at Gorlitz and viewing the Herbes and Grass of the Fielde, in his inward light he saw into their Essences . . . and from that Fountain of Revelation wrote ," on the signatures of things, the "tough book" to which Browning refers.

2

Halberstadt: Johann Semeca, called Teutonicus, a canon of Halberstadt in Germany, who was interested in the unchurchly study of mediaeval science and reputed to be a magician, possessing the vegetable stone supposed to make plants grow at will, having the same power over organic life that the philosopher's stone of the alchemists had over minerals, so that, like Albertus Magnus, another such mage of the Middle Ages, he could cause flowers to spring up in the midst of winter.