Prometheus Bound (Browning, 1833)/A Sea Side Meditation
A SEA-SIDE MEDITATION.
"Ut per aquas quæ nunc rerum simulacra videmus."
Go, travel 'mid the hills! The summer's hand
Hath shaken pleasant freshness o'er them all.
Go, travel 'mid the hills! There, tuneful streams
Are touching myriad stops, invisible;
And winds, and leaves, and birds, and your own thoughts,
(Not the least glad) in wordless chorus, crowd
Around the thymele[1] of Nature.
Go,
And travel onward. Soon shall leaf and bird,
Wind, stream, no longer sound. Thou shalt behold
Only the pathless sky, and houseless sward;
O'er which anon are spied innumerous sails
Of fisher vessels like the wings o' the hill,
And white as gulls above them, and as fast.—
But sink they—sink they out of sight. And now
The wind is springing upward in your face;
And, with its fresh-toned gushings, you may hear
Continuous sound which is not of the wind,
Nor of the thunder, nor o' the cataract's
Deep passion, nor o' the earthquake's wilder pulse;
But which rolls on in stern tranquillity,
As memories of evil o'er the soul;—
Boweth the bare broad Heav'n.— What view you sea—and sea!
The sea—the glorious sea! from side to side.
Swinging the grandeur of his foamy strength,
And undersweeping the horizon,—on—
On—with his life and voice inscrutable.
Pause: sit you down in silence! I have read
Of that Athenian, who, when ocean raged,
Unchain'd the prison'd music of his lips,
By shouting to the billows, sound for sound.
I marvel how his mind would let his tongue
Affront thereby the ocean's solemness.
Are we not mute, or speak restrainedly.
When overhead the trampling tempests go,
Dashing their lightning from their hoofs? and when
We stand beside the bier? and when we see
The strong bow down to weep—and stray among
Places which dust or mind hath sanctified?
Yea! for such sights and acts do tear apart
The close and subtle clasping of a chain.
Form'd not of gold, but of corroded brass,
Whose links are furnish'd from the common mine
Of every day's event, and want, and wish;
From work-times, diet-times, and sleeping-times:
And thence constructed, mean and heavy links
Within the pandemonic walls of sense,
Enchain our deathless part, constrain our strength,
And waste the goodly stature of our soul.
Howbeit, we love this bondage; we do cleave
Onto the sordid and unholy thing,
Fearing the sudden wrench required to break
Those clasped links. Behold! all sights and sounds
In air, and sea, and earth, and under earth,
All flesh, all life, all ends, are mysteries;
And all that is mysterious dreadful seems,
And all we cannot understand we fear.
Ourselves do scare ourselves: we hide our sight
In artificial nature from the true,
And throw sensation's veil associative
On God's creation, man's intelligence;
Bowing our high imaginings to eat
Dust, like the serpent, once erect as they;
Binding conspicuous on our reason's brow
Phylacteries of shame; learning to feel
By rote, and act by rule, (man's rule, not God's!)
Until our words grow echoes, and our thoughts
A mechanism of spirit.
Can this last?
No! not for aye. We cannot subject aye
The heav'n-born spirit to the earth-born flesh.
Tame lions will scent blood, and appetite
Carnivorous glare from out their restless eyes.
Passions, emotions, sudden changes, throw
Our nature back upon us, till we burn.
What warm'd Cyrene's fount? As poets sing,
The change from light to dark, from dark to light.
All that doth force this nature back on us,
All that doth force the mind to view the mind,
Engend'reth what is named by men, sublime.
Thus when, our wonted valley left, we gain
The mountain's horrent brow, and mark from thence
The sweep of lands extending with the sky;
Or view the spanless plain; or turn our sight
Upon yon deep's immensity;—we breathe
As if our breath were marble: to and fro
Do reel our pulses, and our words are mute.
We cannot mete by parts, but grapple all:
We cannot measure with our eye, but soul;
And fear is on us. The extent unused,
Our spirit, sends, to spirit's element,
To seize upon abstractions: first on space,
The which eternity in place I deem;
And then upon eternity; till thought
Hath form'd a mirror from their secret sense,
Wherein we view ourselves, and back recoil
At our own awful likeness; ne'ertheless,
Cling to that likeness with a wonder wild,
And while we tremble, glory—proud in fear.
So ends the prose of life: and so shall be
Unlock'd her poetry's magnific store.
And so, thou pathless and perpetual sea,
So, o'er thy deeps, I brooded and must brood,
Whether I view thee in thy dreadful peace,
Like a spent warrior hanging in the sun
His glittering arms, and meditating death;
Or whether thy wild visage gath'reth shades,
What time thou marshall'st forth thy waves who hold
A covenant of storms, then roar and wind
Under the racking rocks; as martyrs lie
Wheel-bound; and, dying, utter lofty words!
Whether the strength of day is young and high,
Or whether, weary of the watch, he sits
Pale on thy wave, and weeps himself to death;—
In storm and calm, at morn and eventide,
Still have I stood beside thee, and out-thrown
My spirit onward on thine element,—
Beyond thine element,—to tremble low
Before those feet which trod thee as they trod
Earth,—to the holy, happy, peopled place,
Where there is no more sea. Yea, and my soul,
Having put on thy vast similitude,
Hath wildly moaned at her proper depth,
Echoed her proper musings, veil'd in shade
Her secrets of decay, and exercised
An elemental strength, in casting up
Rare gems and things of death on fancy's shore,
Till Nature said, 'Enough.'
Who longest dreams,
Dreams not for ever; seeing day and night
And corporal feebleness divide his dreams,
And, on his elevate creations weigh
With hunger, cold, heat, darkness, weariness:
Else should we be like gods; else would the course
Of thought's free wheels, increased in speed and might
By an eterne volution, oversweep
The heights of wisdom, and invade her depths:
So, knowing all things, should we have all power;
For is not knowledge power? But mighty spells
Our operation sear: the Babel must,
Or ere it touch the sky, fall down to earth:
The web, half form'd, must tumble from our hands,
And, ere they can resume it, lie decay'd.
Mind struggles vainly from the flesh. E'en so,
Hell's angel (saith a scroll apocryphal)
Shall, when the latter days of earth have shrunk
Before the blast of God, affect his heav'n;
Lift his scarr'd brow, confirm his rebel heart,
Shoot his strong wings, and darken pole and pole,—
Till day be blotted into night; and shake
The fever'd clouds, as if a thousand storms
Throbb'd into life! Vain hope—vain strength—vain flight!
God's arm shall meet God's foe, and hurl him back!
- ↑ The central point of the choral movements in the Greek theatre.