by
Robert Browning

Dedicated to Mrs. Sutherland Orr

Miss A. Egerton-Smith was, at the time of her death, one of Browning’s oldest women friends. “He first met her,” says Mrs. Sutherland Orr, “as a young woman in Florence when she was visiting there; and the love for and proficiency in music soon asserted itself as a bond of sympathy between them. They did not, however, see much of each other till he had finally left Italy, and she also had made her home in London…. Mr. Browning was one of the very few persons whose society she cared to cultivate: and for many years the common musical interest took the practical, and for both of them convenient, form, of their going to concerts together.” Browning was at La Saisiaz, under the Salève, when Miss Egerton-Smith, who was also domiciled there, died suddenly in the autumn of 1877, and it was after the shock of her loss that he composed the poem to which he gave the title of their summer resort. The poem is dated November 9, 1877.

Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion,
Body, o’er thee!

Wander at will,
Day after day, —
Wander away,
Wandering still —
Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:
Body shall cumber
Soul-flight no more.

Waft of soul’s wing!
What lies above?
Sunshine and Love,
Skyblue and Spring!
Body hides — where?
Ferns of all feather,
Mosses and heather,
Yours be the care!

La Saisiaz

A. E. S. September 14, 1877.

Dared and done: at last I stand upon the summit, Dear and True!
Singly dared and done; the climbing both of us were bound to do.
Petty feat and yet prodigious: every side my glance was bent
O’er the grandeur and the beauty lavished through the whole ascent.
Ledge by ledge, out broke new marvels, now minute and now immense:
Earth’s most exquisite disclosure, heaven’s own God in evidence!
And no berry in its hiding, no blue space in its outspread,
Pleaded to escape my footstep, challenged my emerging head,
(As I climbed or paused from climbing, now o’erbranched by shrub and tree,
Now built round by rock and boulder, now at just a turn set free,
Stationed face to face with — Nature? rather with Infinitude,)
— No revealment of them all, as singly I my path pursued,
But a bitter touched its sweetness, for the thought stung “Even so
Both of us had loved and wondered just the same, five days ago!”
Five short days, sufficient hardly to entice, from out its den
Splintered in the slab, this pink perfection of the cyclamen;
Scarce enough to heal and coat with amber gum the sloe-tree’s gash,
Bronze the clustered wilding apple, redden ripe the mountain-ash:
Yet of might to place between us — Oh the barrier! Yon Profound
Shrinks beside it, proves a pin-point: barrier this, without a bound!
Boundless though it be, I reach you: somehow seem to have you here
— Who are there. Yes, there you dwell now, plain the four low walls appear;
Those are vineyards, they enclose from; and the little spire which points
— That’s Collonge, henceforth your dwelling. All the same, howe’er disjoints
Past from present, no less certain you are here, not there: have dared,
Done the feat of mountain-climbing;, — five days since, we both prepared
Daring, doing, arm in arm, if other help should haply fail.
For you asked, as forth we sallied to see sunset from the vale,
“Why not try for once the mountain, — take a foretaste, snatch by stealth
Sight and sound, some unconsidered fragment of the hoarded wealth?
Six weeks at its base, yet never once have we together won
Sight or sound by honest climbing: let us two have dared and done
Just so much of twilight journey as may prove to-morrow’s jaunt
Not the only mode of wayfare — wheeled to reach the eagle’s haunt!”
So, we turned from the low grass-path you were pleased to call “your own,”
Set our faces to the rose-bloom o’er the summit’s front of stone
Where Salève obtains, from Jura and the sunken sun she hides,
Due return of blushing “Good Night,” rosy as a borne-off bride’s,
For his masculine “Good Morrow” when, with sunrise still in hold,
Gay he hails her, and, magnific, thrilled her black length burns to gold.
Up and up we went, how careless — nay, how joyous! All was new,
All was strange. “Call progress toilsome? that were just insulting you!
How the trees must temper noontide! Ah, the thicket’s sudden break!
What will be the morning glory, when at dusk thus gleams the lake?
Light by light puts forth Geneva: what a land — and, of the land,
Can there be a lovelier station than this spot where now we stand?
Is it late, and wrong to linger? True, to-morrow makes amends.
Toilsome progress? child’s play, call it — specially when one descends!
There, the dread descent is over — hardly our adventure, though!
Take the vale where late we left it, pace the grass-path, ‘mine,’ you know!
Proud completion of achievement!” And we paced it, praising still
That soft tread on velvet verdure as it wound through hill and hill;
And at very end there met us, coming from Collonge, the pair
— All our people of the Chalet — two, enough and none to spare.
So, we made for home together, and we reached it as the stars
One by one came lamping — chiefly that prepotency of Mars —
And your last word was “I owe you this enjoyment!” — met with “Nay:
With yourself it rests to have a month of morrows like to-day!”
Then the meal, with talk and laughter, and the news of that rare nook
Yet untroubled by the tourist, touched on by no travel-book,
All the same — though latent — patent, hybrid birth of land and sea,
And (our travelled friend assured you) — if such miracle might be —
Comparable for completeness of both blessings — all around
Nature, and, inside her circle, safety from world’s sight and sound —
Comparable to our Saisiaz. “Hold it fast and guard it well!
Go and see and vouch for certain, then come back and never tell
Living soul but us; and haply, prove our sky from cloud as clear,
There may we four meet, praise fortune just as now, another year!”

Thus you charged him on departure: not without the final charge,
“Mind to-morrow’s early meeting! We must leave our journey marge
Ample for the wayside wonders: there’s the stoppage at the inn
Three-parts up the mountain, where the hardships of the track begin;
There’s the convent worth a visit; but, the triumph crowning all —
There’s Saleve’s own platform facing glory which strikes greatness small,
— Blanc, supreme above his earth-brood, needles red and white and green,
Horns of silver, fangs of crystal set on edge in his demesne.
So, some three weeks since, we saw them: so, to-morrow we intend
You shall see them likewise; therefore Good Night till to-morrow, friend!”
Last, the nothings that extinguish embers of a vivid day:
“What might be the Marshal’s next move, what Gambetta’s counter-play?”
Till the landing on the staircase saw escape the latest spark:
“Sleep you well!” “Sleep but as well, you!” — lazy love quenched, all was dark.

Nothing dark next day at sundawn! Up I rose and forth I fared:
Took my plunge within the bath-pool, pacified the watch-dog scared,
Saw proceed the transmutation — Jura’s black to one gold glow,
Trod your level path that let me drink the morning deep and slow,
Reached the little quarry — ravage recompensed by shrub and fern —
Till the overflowing ardors told me time was for return.
So, return I did, and gayly. But, for once, from no far mound
Waved salute a tall white figure. “Has her sleep been so profound?
Foresight, rather, prudent saving strength for day’s expenditure!
Ay, the chamber-window’s open: out and on the terrace, sure!”

No, the terrace showed no figure, tall, white, leaning through the wreaths,
Tangle-twine of leaf and bloom that intercept the air one breathes,
Interpose between one’s love and Nature’s loving, hill and dale
Down to where the blue lake’s wrinkle marks the river’s inrush pale
— Mazy Arve: whereon no vessel but goes sliding white and plain,
Not a steamboat pants from harbor but one hears pulsate amain,
Past the city’s congregated peace of homes and pomp of spires
— Man’s mild protest that there’s something more than Nature, man requires,
And that, useful as is Nature to attract the tourist’s foot,
Quiet slow sure money-making proves the matter’s very root, —
Need for body, — while the spirit also needs a comfort reached
By no help of lake or mountain, but the texts whence Calvin preached.
“Here’s the veil withdrawn from landscape: up to Jura and beyond,
All awaits us ranged and ready; yet she violates the bond,
Neither leans nor looks nor listens: why is this?” A turn of eye
Took the whole sole answer, gave the undisputed reason “why”!

This dread way you had your summons! No premonitory touch,
As you talked and laughed (‘t is told me) scarce a minute ere the clutch
Captured you in cold forever. Cold? nay, warm you were as life
When I raised you, while the others used, in passionate poor strife,
All the means that seemed to promise any aid, and all in vain.
Gone you were, and I shall never see that earnest face again
Grow transparent, grow transfigured with the sudden light that leapt
At the first word’s provocation, from the heart-deeps where it slept.

Therefore, paying piteous duty, what seemed You have we consigned
Peacefully to — what I think were, of all earth-beds, to your mind
Most the choice for quiet, yonder: low walls stop the vines’ approach,
Lovingly Salève protects you; village-sports will ne’er encroach
On the stranger lady’s silence, whom friends bore so kind and well
Thither “just for love’s sake,” — such their own word was: and who can tell?
You supposed that few or none had known and loved you in the world:
Maybe! flower that’s full-blown tempts the butterfly, not flower that’s furled.
But more learned sense unlocked you, loosed the sheath and let expand
Bud to bell and outspread flower-shape at the least warm touch of hand
— Maybe, throb of heart, beneath which — quickening farther than it knew —
Treasure oft was disembosomed, scent all strange and unguessed hue.
Disembosomed, re-embosomed, — must one memory suffice,
Prove I knew an Alpine-rose which all beside named Edelweiss?

Rare thing, red or white, you rest now: two days slumbered through; and since
One day more will see me rid of this same scene whereat I wince,
Tetchy at all sights and sounds and pettish at each idle charm
Proffered me who pace now singly where we two went arm in arm, —
I have turned upon my weakness: asked, “And what, forsooth, prevents
That, this latest day allowed me, I fulfil of her intents
One she had the most at heart — that we should thus again survey
From Salève Mont Blanc together?” Therefore, — dared and done to-day
Climbing, — here I stand: but you — where?

If a spirit of the place
Broke the silence, bade me question, promised answer, — what disgrace
Did I stipulate “Provided answer suit my hopes, not fears!”
Would I shrink to learn my lifetime’s limit — days, weeks, months or years?
Would I shirk assurance on each point whereat I can but guess —
“Does the soul survive the body? Is there God’s self, no or yes?”
If I know my mood, ‘t were constant — come in whatsoe’er uncouth
Shape it should, nay, formidable — so the answer were but truth.

Well, and wherefore shall it daunt me, when ‘t is I myself am tasked,
When, by weakness weakness questioned, weakly answers — weakly asked?
Weakness never needs be falseness: truth is truth in each degree
— Thunder-pealed by God to Nature, whispered by my soul to me.
Nay, the weakness turns to strength and triumphs in a truth beyond:
“Mine is but man’s truest answer — how were it did God respond?”
I shall no more dare to mimic such response in futile speech,
Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach,
Than, — because it well may happen yonder, where the far snows blanch
Mute Mont Blanc, that who stands near them sees and hears an avalanche, —
I shall pick a clod and throw, — cry, “Such the sight and such the sound!
What though I nor see nor hear them? Others do, the proofs abound!”
Can I make my eye an eagle’s, sharpen ear to recognize
Sound o’er league and league of silence? Can I know, who but surmise?
If I dared no self-deception when, a week since, I and you
Walked and talked along the grass-path, passing lightly in review
What seemed hits and what seemed misses in a certain fence-play, — strife
Sundry minds of mark engaged in “On the Soul and Future Life,” —
If I ventured estimating what was come of parried thrust,
Subtle stroke, and, rightly, wrongly, estimating could be just
— Just, though life so seemed abundant in the form which moved by mine,
I might well have played at feigning, fooling, — laughed “What need opine
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure, else past pleasure turns to pain,
And this first life claims a second, else I count its good no gain?” —
Much less have I heart to palter when the matter to decide
Now becomes “Was ending ending once and always, when you died?”
Did the face, the form I lifted as it lay, reveal the loss
Not alone of life but soul? A tribute to yon flowers and moss,
What of you remains beside? A memory! Easy to attest
“Certainly from out the world that one believes who knew her best
Such was good in her, such fair, which fair and good were great perchance
Had but fortune favored, bidden each shy faculty advance;
After all — who knows another? Only as I know, I speak.”
So much of you lives within me while I live my year or week.
Then my fellow takes the tale up, not unwilling to aver
Duly in his turn, “I knew him best of all, as he knew her:
Such he was, and such he was not, and such other might have been
But that somehow every actor, somewhere in this earthly scene,
Fails.” And so both memories dwindle, yours and mine together linked,
Till there is but left for comfort, when the last spark proves extinct,
This — that somewhere new existence led by men and women new
Possibly attains perfection coveted by me and you;
While ourselves, the only witness to what work our life evolved,
Only to ourselves proposing problems proper to be solved
By ourselves alone, — who working ne’er shall know if work bear fruit
Others reap and garner, heedless how produced by stalk and root, —
We who, darkling, timed the day’s birth, — struggling, testified to peace, —
Earned, by dint of failure, triumph, — we, creative thought, must cease
In created word, thought’s echo, due to impulse long since sped!
Why repine? There’s ever some one lives although ourselves be dead!

Well, what signifies repugnance? Truth is truth howe’er it strike.
Fair or foul the lot apportioned life on earth, we bear alike.
Stalwart body idly yoked to stunted spirit, powers, that fain
Else would soar, condemned to grovel, groundlings through the fleshly chain, —
Help that hinders, hindrance proved but help disguised when all too late, —
Hindrance is the fact acknowledged, howsoe’er explained as Fate,
Fortune, Providence: we bear, own life a burden more or less.
Life thus owned unhappy, is there supplemental happiness
Possible and probable in life to come? or must we count
Life a curse and not a blessing, summed-up in its whole amount,
Help and hindrance, joy and sorrow?

Why should I want courage here?
I will ask and have an answer, — with no favor, with no fear, —
From myself. How much, how little, do I inwardly believe
True that controverted doctrine? Is it fact to which I cleave,
Is it fancy I but cherish, when I take upon my lips
Phrase the solemn Tuscan fashioned, and declare the soul’s eclipse
Not the soul’s extinction? take his “I believe and I declare —
Certain am I — from this life I pass into a better, there
Where that lady lives of whom enamored was my soul” — where this
Other lady, my companion dear and true, she also is?

I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer presuppose
Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers, — is, it knows;
As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself, — a force
Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course,
Unaffected by its end, — that this thing likewise needs must be;
Call this — God, then, call that — soul, and both — the only facts for me.
Prove them facts? that they o’erpass my power of proving, proves them such:
Fact it is I know I know not something which is fact as much.
What before caused all the causes, what effect of all effects
Haply follows, — these are fancy. Ask the rush if it suspects
Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how
Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except that now
Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain than itself,
Is the everyway external stream that now through shoal and shelf
Floats it onward, leaves it — maybe — wrecked at last, or lands on shore
There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore.
— Maybe! mere surmise not knowledge: much conjecture styled belief,
What the rush conceives the stream means through the voyage blind and brief.
Why, because I doubtless am, shall I as doubtless be? “Because
God seems good and wise.” Yet under this our life’s apparent laws
Reigns a wrong which, righted once, would give quite other laws to life.
“He seems potent.” Potent here, then: why are right and wrong at strife?
Has in life the wrong the better? Happily life ends so soon!
Right predominates in life? Then why two lives and double boon?
“Anyhow, we want it: wherefore want?” Because, without the want,
Life, now human, would be brutish: just that hope, however scant,
Makes the actual life worth leading; take the hope therein away,
All we have to do is surely not endure another day.
This life has its hopes for this life, hopes that promise joy: life done —
Out of all the hopes, how many had complete fulfilment? None.
“But the soul is not the body:” and the breath is not the flute;
Both together make the music: either marred and all is mute.
Truce to such old sad contention whence, according as we shape
Most of hope or most of fear, we issue in a half-escape:
“We believe” is sighed. I take the cup of comfort proffered thus,
Taste and try each soft ingredient, sweet infusion, and discuss
What their blending may accomplish for the cure of doubt, till — slow,
Sorrowful, but how decided! needs must I o’erturn it — so!
Cause before, effect behind me — blanks! The midway point I am,
Caused, itself — itself efficient: in that narrow space must cram
All experience — out of which there crowds conjecture manifold,
But, as knowledge, this comes only — things may be as I behold,
Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;
I myself am what I know not — ignorance which proves no bar
To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize
What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest — surmise.
If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what pain, —
Mere surmise: my own experience — that is knowledge, once again!

I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
This — there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
If — (to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)
If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil’s place,
And life, time — with all their chances, changes — just probation-space,
Mine, for me. But those apparent other mortals — theirs, for them?
Knowledge stands on my experience: all outside its narrow hem,
Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect mankind
Just as they affect myself? Why, here’s my neighbor color-blind,
Eyes like mine to all appearance: “green as grass” do I affirm?
“Red as grass” he contradicts me; — which employs the proper term?
Were we two the earth’s sole tenants, with no third for referee,
How should I distinguish? Just so, God must judge ‘twixt man and me.
To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green;
Still, without what seems such mortal’s pleasure, pain, my life were lost
— Life, my whole sole chance to prove — although at man’s apparent cost —
What is beauteous and what ugly, right to strive for, right to shun,
Fit to help and fit to hinder,—prove my forces every one,
Good and evil, — learn life’s lesson, hate of evil, love of good,
As ‘t is set me, understand so much as may be understood —
Solve the problem: “From thine apprehended scheme of things, deduce
Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
In each good or evil issue! nor miscalculate alike
Counting one the other in the final balance, which to strike,
Soul was born and life allotted: ay, the show of things unfurled
For thy summing-up and judgment, — thine, no other mortal’s world!”

What though fancy scarce may grapple with the complex and immense
— “His own world for every mortal?” Postulate omnipotence!
Limit power, and simple grows the complex: shrunk to atom size,
That which loomed immense to fancy low before my reason lies, —
I survey it and pronounce it work like other work: success
Here and there, the workman’s glory, — here and there, his shame no less,
Failure as conspicuous. Taunt not “Human work ape work divine?”
As the power, expect performance! God’s be God’s as mine is mine!
God whose power made man and made man’s wants, and made, to meet those wants,
Heaven and earth which, through the body, prove the spirit’s ministrants,
Excellently all, — did he lack power or was the will in fault
When he let blue heaven be shrouded o’er by vapors of the vault,
Gay earth drop her garlands shrivelled at the first infecting breath
Of the serpent pains which herald, swarming in, the dragon death?
What, no way but this that man may learn and lay to heart how rife
Life were with delights would only death allow their taste to life?
Must the rose sigh “Pluck — I perish!” must the eve weep “Gaze — I fade!”
— Every sweet warn “‘Ware my bitter!” every shine bid “Wait my shade”?
Can we love but on condition, that the thing we love must die?
Needs there groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy —
Multitudinously wretched that we, wretched too, may guess
What a preferable state were universal happiness?
Hardly do I so conceive the outcome of that power which went
To the making of the worm there in yon clod its tenement,
Any more than I distinguish aught of that which, wise and good,
Framed the leaf, its plain of pasture, dropped the dew, its fineless food.
Nay, were fancy fact, were earth and all it holds illusion mere,
Only a machine for teaching love and hate and hope and fear
To myself, the sole existence, single truth ‘mid falsehood, — well!
If the harsh throes of the prelude die not off into the swell
Of that perfect piece they sting me to become a-strain for, — if
Roughness of the long rock-clamber lead not to the last of cliff,
First of level country where is sward my pilgrim-foot can prize, —
Plainlier! if this life’s conception new life fail to realize, —
Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge
Reflex of the devil’s doings — God’s work by no subterfuge —
(So death’s kindly touch informed me as it broke the glamour, gave
Soul and body both release from life’s long nightmare in the grave) —
Still, — with no more Nature, no more Man as riddle to be read,
Only my own joys and sorrows now to reckon real instead, —
I must say — or choke in silence — “Howsoever came my fate,
Sorrow did and joy did nowise — life well weighed — preponderate.”
By necessity ordained thus? I shall bear as best I can;
By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent? No, as I am man!
Such were God: and was it goodness that the good within my range
Or had evil in admixture or grew evil’s self by change?
Wisdom — that becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance
From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance?
Power! ‘t is just the main assumption reason most revolts at! power
Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour,
Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim,
So much passion, — no defect there, no excess, but still the same, —
As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief
For yon worm, man’s fellow-creature, on yon happier world — its leaf!
No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute:
Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!

But, O world outspread beneath me! only for myself I speak,
Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak,
Full and empty, wise and foolish, good and bad, in every age,
Every clime, I turn my eyes from, as in one or other stage
Of a torture writhe they, Job-like couched on dung and crazed with blains
— Wherefore? whereto? ask the whirlwind what the dread voice thence explains!
I shall “vindicate no way of God’s to man,” nor stand apart,
“Laugh, be candid,” while I watch it traversing the human heart!
Traversed heart must tell its story uncommented on: no less
Mine results in, “Only grant a second life; I acquiesce
In this present life as failure, count misfortune’s worst assaults
Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts
Gain about to be. For at what moment did I so advance
Near to knowledge as when frustrate of escape from ignorance?
Did not beauty prove most precious when its opposite obtained
Rule, and truth seem more than ever potent because falsehood reigned?
While for love — Oh how but, losing love, does whoso loves succeed
By the death-pang to the birth-throe — learning what is love indeed?
Only grant my soul may carry high through death her cup unspilled,
Brimming though it be with knowledge, life’s loss drop by drop distilled,
I shall boast it mine — the balsam, bless each kindly wrench that wrung
From life’s tree its inmost virtue, tapped the root whence pleasure sprung,
Barked the bole, and broke the bough, and bruised the berry, left all grace
Ashes in death’s stern alembic, loosed elixir in its place!”

Witness, Dear and True, how little I was ‘ware of — not your worth
— That I knew, my heart assures me — but of what a shade on earth
Would the passage from my presence of the tall white figure throw
O’er the ways we walked together! Somewhat narrow, somewhat slow,
Used to seem the ways, the walking: narrow ways are well to tread
When there’s moss beneath the footstep, honeysuckle overhead:
Walking slow to beating bosom surest solace soonest gives,
Liberates the brain o’erloaded — best of all restoratives.
Nay, do I forget the open vast where soon or late converged
Ways though winding? — world-wide heaven-high sea where music slept or surged
As the angel had ascendant, and Beethoven’s Titan mace
Smote the immense to storm, Mozart would by a finger’s lifting chase?
Yes, I knew — but not with knowledge such as thrills me while I view
Yonder precinct which henceforward holds and hides the Dear and True.
Grant me (once again) assurance we shall each meet each some day,
Walk — but with how bold a footstep! on a way — but what a way!
— Worst were best, defeat were triumph, utter loss were utmost gain.
Can it be, and must, and will it?

Silence! Out of fact’s domain,
Just surmise prepared to mutter hope, and also fear — dispute
Fact’s inexorable ruling, “Outside fact, surmise be mute!”
Well!

Ay, well and best, if fact’s self I may force the answer from!
‘T is surmise I stop the mouth of! Not above in yonder dome
All a rapture with its rose-glow, — not around, where pile and peak
Strainingly await the sun’s fall, — not beneath, where crickets creak,
Birds assemble for their bedtime, soft the treetop swell subsides, —
No, nor yet within my deepest sentient self the knowledge hides.
Aspiration, reminiscence, plausibilities of trust
— Now the ready “Man were wronged else,” now the rash “and God unjust” —
None of these I need. Take thou, my soul, thy solitary stand,
Umpire to the champions Fancy, Reason, as on either hand
Amicable war they wage and play the foe in thy behoof!
Fancy thrust and Reason parry! Thine the prize who stand aloof!

FANCY

I concede the thing refused: henceforth no certainty more plain
Than this mere surmise that after body dies soul lives again.
Two, the only facts acknowledged late, are now increased to three —
God is, and the soul is, and, as certain, after death shall be.
Put this third to use in life, the time for using fact!

REASON

I do:
Find it promises advantage, coupled with the other two.
Life to come will be improvement on the life that’s now; destroy
Body’s thwartings, there’s no longer screen betwixt soul and soul’s joy.
Why should we expect new hindrance, novel tether? In this first
Life, I see the good of evil, why our world began at worst:
Since time means amelioration, tardily enough displayed,
Yet a mainly onward moving, never wholly retrograde.
We know more though we know little, we grow stronger though still weak,
Partly see though all too purblind, stammer though we cannot speak.
There is no such grudge in God as scared the ancient Greek, no fresh
Substitute of trap for drag-net, once a breakage in the mesh.
Dragons were, and serpents are, and blindworms will be: ne’er emerged
Any new-created python for man’s plague since earth was purged.
Failing proof, then, of invented trouble to replace the old,
O’er this life the next presents advantage much and manifold:
Which advantage — in the absence of a fourth and farther fact
Now conceivably surmised, of harm to follow from the act —
I pronounce for man’s obtaining at this moment. Why delay?
Is he happy? happiness will change: anticipate the day!
Is he sad? there’s ready refuge: of all sadness death’s prompt cure!
Is he both, in mingled measure? cease a burden to endure!
Pains with sorry compensations, pleasures stinted in the dole,
Power that sinks and pettiness that soars, all halved and nothing whole,
Idle hopes that lure man onward, forced back by as idle fears —
What a load he stumbles under through his glad sad seventy years,
When a touch sets right the turmoil, lifts his spirit where, flesh-freed,
Knowledge shall be rightly named so, all that seems be truth indeed!
Grant his forces no accession, nay, no faculty’s increase,
Only let what now exists continue, let him prove in peace
Power whereof the interrupted unperfected play enticed
Man through darkness, which to lighten any spark of hope sufficed, —
What shall then deter his dying out of darkness into light?
Death itself perchance, brief pain that’s pang, condensed and infinite?
But at worst, he needs must brave it one day, while, at best, he laughs —
Drops a drop within his chalice, sleep not death his science quaffs!
Any moment claims more courage, when, by crossing cold and gloom,
Manfully man quits discomfort, makes for the provided room
Where the old friends want their fellow, where the new acquaintance wait,
Probably for talk assembled, possibly to sup in state!
I affirm and reaffirm it therefore: only make as plain
As that man now lives, that, after dying, man will live again, —
Make as plain the absence, also, of a law to contravene
Voluntary passage from this life to that by change of scene, —
And I bid him — at suspicion of first cloud athwart his sky,
Flower’s departure, frost’s arrival — never hesitate, but die!

FANCY

Then I double my concession: grant, along with new life sure
This same law found lacking now: ordain that, whether rich or poor
Present life is judged in aught man counts advantage — be it hope,
Be it fear that brightens, blackens most or least his horoscope, —
He, by absolute compulsion such as made him live at all,
Go on living to the fated end of life whate’er befall.
What though, as on earth he darkling grovels, man descry the sphere,
Next life’s — call it, heaven of freedom, close above and crystal-clear?
He shall find — say, hell to punish who in aught curtails the term,
Fain would act the butterfly before he has played out the worm!
God, soul, earth, heaven, hell, — five facts now: what is to desiderate?

REASON

Nothing! Henceforth man’s existence bows to the monition “Wait!
Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither with extreme concern!
Living here means nescience simply: ‘t is next life that helps to learn.
Shut those eyes, next life will open, — stop those ears, next life will teach
Hearing’s office, — close those lips, next life will give the power of speech!
Or, if action more amuse thee than the passive attitude,
Bravely bustle through thy being, busy thee for ill or good,
Reap this life’s success or failure! Soon shall things be unperplexed
And the right and wrong, now tangled, lie unravelled in the next.”

FANCY

Not so fast! Still more concession! not alone do I declare
Life must needs be borne, — I also will that man become aware
Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends
So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends.
Good, done here, be there rewarded, — evil, worked here, there amerced!
Six facts now, and all established, plain to man the last as first.

REASON

There was good and evil, then, defined to man by this decree?
Was — for at its promulgation both alike have ceased to be.
Prior to this last announcement, “Certainly as God exists,
As He made man’s soul, as soul is quenchless by the deathly mists,
Yet is, all the same, forbidden premature escape from time
To eternity’s provided purer air and brighter clime, —
Just so certainly depends it on the use to which man turns
Earth, the good or evil done there, whether after death he earns
Life eternal, — heaven, the phrase be, or eternal death, — say, hell.
As his deeds, so proves his portion, doing ill or doing well!”
— Prior to this last announcement, earth was man’s probation-place:
Liberty of doing evil gave his doing good a grace;
Once lay down the law, with Nature’s simple “Such effects succeed
Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man’s earthly deed
Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line
On his making point meet point or with or else without incline,” —
Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must.
Lay but down that law as stringent “Wouldst thou live again, be just!”
As this other “Wouldst thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!
For, suspend the operation, straight law’s breach results in death” —
And (provided always, man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane)
Prompt and absolute obedience, never doubt, will law obtain!
Tell not me “Look round us! nothing each side but acknowledged law,
Now styled God’s — now, Nature’s edict!” Where’s obedience without flaw
Paid to either? What’s the adage rife in man’s mouth? Why, “The best
I both see and praise, the worst I follow” — which, despite professed
Seeing, praising, all the same he follows, since he disbelieves
In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives.
There’s evading and persuading and much making law amends
Somehow, there’s the nice distinction ‘twixt fast foes and faulty friends,
— Any consequence except inevitable death when, “Die,
Whoso breaks our law!” they publish, God and Nature equally.
Law that’s kept or broken — subject to man’s will and pleasure! Whence?
How comes law to bear eluding? Not because of impotence:
Certain laws exist already which to hear means to obey;
Therefore not without a purpose these man must, while those man may
Keep and, for the keeping, haply gain approval and reward.
Break through this last superstructure, all is empty air — no sward
Firm like my first fact to stand on, “God there is, and soul there is,”
And soul’s earthly life-allotment: wherein, by hypothesis,
Soul is bound to pass probation, prove its powers, and exercise
Sense and thought on fact, and then, from fact educing fit surmise,
Ask itself, and of itself have solely answer, “Does the scope
Earth affords of fact to judge by warrant future fear or hope?”

Thus have we come back full circle: fancy’s footsteps one by one
Go their round conducting reason to the point where they begun,
Left where we were left so lately, Dear and True! When, half a week
Since, we walked and talked and thus I told you, how suffused a cheek
You had turned me had I sudden brought the blush into the smile
By some word like “Idly argued! you know better all the while!”
Now, from me — Oh not a blush, but, how much more, a joyous glow,
Laugh triumphant, would it strike did your “Yes, better I do know”
Break, my warrant for assurance! which assurance may not be
If, supplanting hope, assurance needs must change this life to me.
So, I hope — no more than hope, but hope — no less than hope, because
I can fathom, by no plumb-line sunk in life’s apparent laws,
How I may in any instance fix where change should meetly fall
Nor involve, by one revisal, abrogation of them all:
— Which again involves as utter change in life thus law-released,
Whence the good of goodness vanished when the ill of evil ceased.
Whereas, life and laws apparent reinstated, — all we know,
All we know not, — o’er our heaven again cloud closes, until, lo, —
Hope the arrowy, just as constant, comes to pierce its gloom, compelled
By a power and by a purpose which, if no one else beheld,
I behold in life, so — hope!

Sad summing-up of all to say!
Athanasius contra mundum, why should he hope more than they?
So are men made notwithstanding, such magnetic virtue darts
From each head their fancy haloes to their unresisting hearts!
Here I stand, methinks a stone’s throw from yon village I this morn
Traversed for the sake of looking one last look at its forlorn
Tenement’s ignoble fortune: through a crevice, plain its floor
Piled with provender for cattle, while a dungheap blocked the door.
In that squalid Bossex, under that obscene red roof, arose,
Like a fiery flying serpent from its egg, a soul — Rousseau’s.
Turn thence! Is it Diodati joins the glimmer of the lake?
There I plucked a leaf, one week since, — ivy, plucked for Byron’s sake.
Famed unfortunates! And yet, because of that phosphoric fame
Swathing blackness’ self with brightness till putridity looked flame,
All the world was witched: and wherefore? what could lie beneath, allure
Heart of man to let corruption serve man’s head as cynosure?
Was the magic in the dictum “All that’s good is gone and past;
Bad and worse still grows the present, and the worst of all comes last:
Which believe — for I believe it”? So preached one his gospel-news;
While melodious moaned the other, “dying day with dolphin-hues!
Storm, for loveliness and darkness like a woman’s eye! Ye mounts
Where I climb to ‘scape my fellow, and thou sea wherein he counts
Not one inch of vile dominion! What were your especial-worth
Failed ye to enforce the maxim ‘Of all objects found on earth
Man is meanest, much too honored when compared with — what by odds
Beats him — any dog: so, let him go a-howling to his gods!’
Which believe — for I believe it!” Such the comfort man received
Sadly since perforce he must: for why? the famous bard believed!

Fame! Then, give me fame, a moment! As I gather at a glance
Human glory after glory vivifying yon expanse,
Let me grasp them altogether, hold on high and brandish well
Beacon-like above the rapt world ready, whether heaven or hell
Send the dazzling summons earthward, to submit itself the same,
Take on trust the hope or else despair flashed full on face by — Fame!
Thanks, thou pine-tree of Makistos, wide thy giant torch I wave!
Know ye whence I plucked the pillar, late with sky for architrave?
This the trunk, the central solid Knowledge, kindled core, began
Tugging earth-deeps, trying heaven-heights, rooted yonder at Lausanne.
This which flits and spits, the aspic, — sparkles in and out the boughs
Now, and now condensed, the python, coiling round and round allows
Scarce the bole its due effulgence, dulled by flake on flake of Wit —
Laughter so bejewels Learning, — what but Ferney nourished it?
Nay, nor fear — since every resin feeds the flame — that I dispense
With yon Bossex terebinth-tree’s all-explosive Eloquence:
No, be sure! nor, any more than thy resplendency, Jean-Jacques,
Dare I want thine, Diodati! What though monkeys and macaques
Gibber “Byron”? Byron’s ivy rears a branch beyond the crew,
Green forever, no deciduous trash macaques and monkeys chew!
As Rousseau, then, eloquent, as Byron prime in poet’s power, —
Detonations, fulgurations, smiles — the rainbow, tears — the shower, —
Lo, I lift the coruscating marvel — Fame! and, famed, declare
— Learned for the nonce as Gibbon, witty as wit’s self Voltaire …
Oh, the sorriest of conclusions to whatever man of sense
‘Mid the millions stands the unit, takes no flare for evidence!
Yet the millions have their portion, live their calm or troublous day,
Find significance in fireworks: so, by help of mine, they may
Confidently lay to heart and lock in head their life long — this:
“He there with the brand flamboyant, broad o’er night’s forlorn abyss,
Crowned by prose and verse; and wielding, with Wit’s bauble, Learning’s rod” …
Well? Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God!