Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 1/By the Fire-side
BY THE FIRE-SIDE.
1.How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come,And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life's November too!
2.I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!
3. Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip, "There he is at it, deep in Greek—Now or never, then, out we slip To cut from the hazels by the creekA mainmast for our ship!"
4.I shall be at it indeed, my friends! Greek puts already on either sideSuch a branch-work forth, as soon extends To a vista opening far and wide,And I pass out where it ends.
5.The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees— But the inside-archway narrows fast,And a rarer sort succeeds to these, And we slope to Italy at lastAnd youth, by green degrees.
6.I follow wherever I am led, Knowing so well the leader's hand—Oh, woman-country, wooed, not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,Laid to their hearts instead!
7.Look at the ruined chapel again Half way up in the Alpine gorge.Is that a tower, I point you plain, Or is it a mill or an iron forgeBreaks solitude in vain?
8.A turn, and we stand in the heart of things; The woods are round us, heaped and dim;From slab to slab how it slips and springs, The thread of water single and slim,Thro' the ravage some torrent brings!
9.Does it feed the little lake below? That speck of white just on its margeIs Pella; see, in the evening glow How sharp the silver spear-heads chargeWhen Alp meets Heaven in snow.
10.On our other side is the straight-up rock; And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and itBy boulder-stones where lichens mock The marks on a moth, and small ferns fitTheir teeth to the polished block.
11.Oh, the sense of the yellow mountain flowers, And the thorny balls, each three in one,The chestnuts throw on our path in showers, For the drop of the woodland fruit's begunThese early November hours—
12.That crimson the creeper's leaf across Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss, And lay it for show on the fairy-cuppedElf-needled mat of moss,
13.By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged Last evening—nay, in to-day's first dewYon sudden coral nipple bulged Where a freaked, fawn-coloured, flaky crewOf toad-stools peep indulged.
14.And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge That takes the turn to a range beyond,Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pondDanced over by the midge.
15.The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, Blackish grey and mostly wet;Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke. See here again, how the lichens fretAnd the roots of the ivy strike!
16.Poor little place, where its one priest comes On a festa-day, if he comes at all,To the dozen folk from their scattered homes, Gathered within that precinct smallBy the dozen ways one roams
17.To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts, Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed,Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts, Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spreadTheir gear on the rock's bare juts.
18.It has some pretension too, this front, With its bit of fresco half-moon-wiseSet over the porch, art's early wont— 'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,But has borne the weather's brunt—
19.Not from the fault of the builder, though, For a pent-house properly projectsWhere three carved beams make a certain show, Dating—good thought of our architect's—'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.
20.And all day long a bird sings there, And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times:The place is silent and aware; It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,But that is its own affair.
21.My perfect wife, my Leonor, Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,Whom else could I dare look backward for, With whom beside should I dare pursueThe path grey heads abhor?
22.For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them; Youth, flowery all the way, there stops—Not they; age threatens and they contemn, Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,One inch from our life's safe hem!
23.With me, youth led—I will speak now, No longer watch you as you sitReading by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping itMutely—my heart knows how—
24.When, if I think but deep enough, You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;And you, too, find without a rebuff The response your soul seeks many a timePiercing its fine flesh-stuff—
25.My own, confirm me! If I tread This path back, is it not in prideTo think how little I dreamed it led To an age so blest that by its sideYouth seems the waste instead!
26.My own, see where the years conduct! At first, 'twas something our two soulsShould mix as mists do: each is sucked In each now; on, the new stream rolls,Whatever rocks obstruct.
27.Think, when our one soul understands The great Word which makes all things new—When earth breaks up and Heaven expands— How will the change strike me and youIn the House not made with hands?
28.Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, Your heart anticipate my heart,You must be just before, in fine, See and make me see, for your part,New depths of the Divine!
29.But who could have expected this, When we two drew together firstJust for the obvious human bliss, To satisfy life's daily thirstWith a thing men seldom miss?
30.Come back with me to the first of all, Let us lean and love it over again—Let us now forget and then recall, Break the rosary in a pearly rain,And gather what we let fall!
31.What did I say?—that a small bird sings All day long, save when a brown pairOf hawks from the wood float with wide wings Strained to a bell: 'gainst the noon-day glareYou count the streaks and rings.
32.But at afternoon or almost eve 'Tis better; then the silence growsTo that degree, you half believe It must get rid of what it knows,Its bosom does so heave.
33.Hither we walked, then, side by side, Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,And still I questioned or replied, While my heart, convulsed to really speak,Lay choking in its pride.
34.Silent the crumbling bridge we cross, And pity and praise the chapel sweet,And care about the fresco's loss, And wish for our souls a like retreat,And wonder at the moss.
35.Stoop and kneel on the settle under— Look through the window's grated square:Nothing to see! for fear of plunder, The cross is down and the altar bare,As if thieves don't fear thunder.
36.We stoop and look in through the grate, See the little porch and rustic door,Read duly the dead builder's date, Then cross the bridge we crossed before,Take the path again—but wait!
37.Oh moment, one and infinite! The water slips o'er stock and stone;The West is tender, hardly bright: How grey at once is the evening grown—One star, its chrysolite!
38.We two stood there with never a third, But each by each, as each knew well.The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, The lights and the shades made up a spellTill the trouble grew and stirred.
39.Oh, the little more, and how much it is! And the little less, and what worlds away!How a sound shall quicken content to bliss, Or a breath suspend the blood's best play,And life be a proof of this!
40.Had she willed it, still had stood the screen So slight, so sure, 'twixt my love and her.I could fix her face with a guard between, And find her soul as when friends confer,Friends—lovers that might have been.
41.For my heart had a touch of the woodland time, Wanting to sleep now over its best.Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime, But bring to the last leaf no such test."Hold the last fast!" says the rhyme.
42.For a chance to make your little much, To gain a lover and lose a friend,Venture the tree and a myriad such, When nothing you mar but the year can mend!But a last leaf—fear to touch.
43.Yet should it unfasten itself and fall Eddying down till it find your faceAt some slight wind—(best chance of all!) Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-placeYou trembled to forestal!
44.Worth how well, those dark grey eyes, —That hair so dark and dear, how worthThat a man should strive and agonise, And taste a very hell on earthFor the hope of such a prize!
45.Oh, you might have turned and tried a man, Set him a space to weary and wear,And prove which suited more your plan, His best of hope or his worst despair,Yet end as he began.
46.But you spared me this, like the heart you are, And filled my empty heart at a word.If you join two lives, there is oft a scar, They are one and one, with a shadowy third;One near one is too far.
47.A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast.But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and life; we were mixed at lastIn spite of the mortal screen.
48.The forests had done it; there they stood— We caught for a second the powers at play:They had mingled us so, for once and for good, Their work was done—we might go or stay,They relapsed to their ancient mood.
49.How the world is made for each of us! How all we perceive and know in itTends to some moment's product thus, When a soul declares itself—to wit,By its fruit—the thing it does!
50.Be Hate that fruit or Love that fruit, It forwards the General Deed of Man,And each of the Many helps to recruit The life of the race by a general plan,Each living his own, to boot.
51.I am named and known by that hour's feat, There took my station and degree.So grew my own small life complete As nature obtained her best of me—One born to love you, sweet!
52.And to watch you sink by the fire-side now Back again, as you mutely sitMusing by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping itYonder, my heart knows how!
53.So the earth has gained by one man more, And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too,And the whole is well worth thinking o'er When the autumn comes: which I mean to doOne day, as I said before.