The Happy Marriage and Other Poems/The Lord Chancellor Prepares His Opinion
THE LORD CHANCELLOR PREPARES HIS OPINION
My Lords, this is a clear unmuddied case—
A clear unmuddied case! If ever stream
Of pure judicial reasoning bore down
More silt and wreckage of the heart's unease
Than this thin rill! But let the sarcasm stand;
It serves at least to thrust me on the cause
Full running, in a careless jogging start,
Ahead of fox and beagles, horn uplift,
Toot-tootling at full breath, as one who knows
Before the hunt's up where the brush will fall.
My Lords, this is a clear unmuddied case.
The plaintiff is a lady of the Court,
A maid of honor to Her Majesty and known
By beauty's rumor far as Tyne and Tweed.
By beauty's rumor—there I've found myself
With just the breath of satire; not one tone
Of all the tones her beauty struck in me,
Leaving me jangling like a belfry bell
Under a thrust of thunder.
She impleads
The courts of equity to have relief
Against defendant, in that he has made
A full heroic picture of herself,
Likest Diana, with the curved moon's arc
Crowning her head, and in her hand a spear;
No adjective beside to qualify
The fact of her—
Ah, there's another touch
To throw them off the scent. They'll nudge and say,
My lord is mellow: they will never dream
How that still beauty on the canvas caught,
Caught and held fast, as in the brain sometimes
A gesture of the soul is caught and held,—
How that still beauty stopped my mouth with awe,
And left my poor brain gaping. Like a tree,
A birch tree, shining in a windy place
Where blown and shattered leaves of sunlight fall,
And grasses ripple and the flooding blue
Seems to engulf the world; or like a wave
That tips with foam and flowering in the sea
Drives on before the wind, a curve of sound
And failing flame of water, such intents
This phrase of mine obscures:
No adjective
Beside to qualify the fact of her.
The paint once dried, defendant made demand
For sums, excess of reason, which, refused,
The painter had his shameless painting set
Within the windows of a coffee house,
That all who paid might see and all who saw,
Knowing her face,—it was a replica
Most exquisite exact, her counsel saith,—
Might stand and stare. To this so-stated bill
Defendant has demurred.
So stands the cause.
My Lords, here is no ground for equity.
It is established from the earliest days
That save a man be injured in his purse,
Or in his lands, or in his common right,
He may not plead the Chancellor for aid.
And here what right is injured? Are there fees
And rents and profits in a replica?
Is beauty such a thing as this grave court,
Accustomed to the solid weight of trade,
Apt to divide with cold appraising eye
The estates of merchants, and maintain the scales
Against the shrewd in barter, long enured
To holding lands and livings in its trusts—
Is beauty such a value as we know?
Shall we weigh symmetry in sterling's worth?
Shall equity protect a woman's throat
Against the painter's interest in his paint?
The bill should be dismissed.
Ah, that's well done,
That's very well. I see them nod and bow
And echo what I've said; I see—I see—
Nay, nothing but a beauty such as time
In all its ebb and flow against this earth
Has never yet tossed, like a tinted shell,
High on the echoing beaches that look out
Toward the faint lights of the voyaging stars.