Dramatic Romances Part 19

Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate Who daily may ride and pa.s.s and look Where his lady watches behind the grate!

And she--she watched the square like a book Holding one picture and only one, Which daily to find she undertook:

When the picture was reached the book was done, And she turned from the picture at night to scheme Of tearing it out for herself next sun. 150

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam The glory dropped from their youth and love, And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

Which hovered as dreams do, still above: But who can take a dream for a truth?

Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

One day as the lady saw her youth Depart, and the silver thread that streaked Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked, 160 And wondered who the woman was, Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

Fronting her silent in the gla.s.s-- "Summon here," she suddenly said, "Before the rest of my old self pa.s.s,

"Him, the Carver, a hand to aid, Who fas.h.i.+ons the clay no love will change And fixes a beauty never to fade.

"Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange Arrest the remains of young and fair, 170 And rivet them while the seasons range.

"Make me a face on the window there, Waiting as ever, mute the while, My love to pa.s.s below in the square!

"And let me think that it may beguile Dreary days which the dead must spend Down in their darkness under the aisle,

"To say, 'What matters it at the end?

'I did no more while my heart was warm Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.' 180

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm, The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, And the blood that blues the inside arm--

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, The earthly gift to an end divine?

A lady of clay is as good, I trow."

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine, With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace, Was set where now is the empty shrine--

(And, leaning out of a bright blue s.p.a.ce, 190 As a ghost might lean from a c.h.i.n.k of sky, The pa.s.sionate pale lady's face--

Eyeing ever, with earnest eye And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch, Some one who ever is pa.s.sing by)

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch In Florence, "Youth--my dream escapes!

Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes-- "Can the soul, the will, die out of a man 200 Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

"John of Douay shall effect my plan, Set me on horseback here aloft, Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

"In the very square I have crossed so oft: That men may admire, when future suns Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze-- Admire and say, 'When he was alive How he would take his pleasure once!' 210

"And it shall go hard but I contrive To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb At idleness which aspires to strive."

So! While these wait the trump of doom, How do their spirits pa.s.s, I wonder, Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder What a gift life was, ages ago, Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Only they see not G.o.d, I know, 220 Nor all that chivalry of his, The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss-- Since, the end of life being manifest, He had burned his way thro' the world to this.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself 230 And prove its worth at a moment's view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf Where a b.u.t.ton goes, 'twere an epigram To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham: As well the counter as coin, I submit, When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit, Venture as warily, use the same skill, Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 240

If you choose to play!--is my principle.

Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin: And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is--the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

You of the virtue (we issue join) How strive you? De te, fabula! 250

NOTES: "The Statue and the Bust" creates the characters and the situation, and dramatically represents a story which is based on a Florentine tradition that Duke Ferdinand I placed his equestrian statue in the Piazza dell' Annunziata so that he might gaze forever towards the old Riccardi Palace, where a lady he loved was imprisoned by her jealous husband.

The bride and her ducal lover are seen exchanging their first looks, through which they perceive the genuineness of their love; and the temporizing of each is presented, through which, for the sake of petty conveniences, they submit to be thwarted by the wary husband, and to have the end they count supreme delayed until love and youth have gone, and the best left them is the artificial gaze interchanged by a bronze statue in the square and a clay face at the window. The closing stanzas point the moral against the palsy of the will, whose strenuous exercise is life's main gift.

I. There's a palace in Florence: refers to the old Riccardi Palace, now the Palazzo Antinori, in the square of the Annunziata, where the statue still stands.

22. encolure: neck and shoulder of a horse

33. The pile which the mighty shadow makes: refers to another palace in the Via Larga where the duke (not the lady) lived, and which is to-day known as the Riccardi Palace. Cooke's "Browning Guide Book" and Berdoe's "Browning Cyclopaedia" both confuse the two, attributing error to Browning in spite of his letter about it. This confusion was cleared up by Harriet Ford (Poet-lore, Dec.

1891, vol. iii. p. 648, "Browning right about the Riccardi Palace'').

36. Because of a crime, etc.: refers to the destroying of the liberties of the Florentine republic by Cosimo dei Medici and his grandson, Lorenzo, who lived in the then Medici (now Riccardi) Palace, whose darkening of the street with its bulk symbolizes the crime which took the light from Florence.

57. catafalk: the stage or scaffolding for a coffin whilst in the church

94. Arno bowers: the palace by the Arno, the river flowing through Florence.

95. Petraja: a Florentine suburb.

169. Robbia's craft: the Robbia family were skilled in shaping the bisque known as Della Robbia ware which was long one of the Florentine manufactures, and traces of which, when Browning wrote, still adorned the outer cornice of the palace.