Читать книгу Browning's England: A Study in English Influences in Browning - Helen Archibald Clarke - Страница 35

Ichabod, Ichabod,

The glory is departed!

Travels Waring East away?

Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,

Reports a man upstarted

Somewhere as a god,

Hordes grown European-hearted,

Millions of the wild made tame

On a sudden at his fame?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,

With the demurest of footfalls

Over the Kremlin's pavement bright

With serpentine and syenite,

Steps, with five other Generals

That simultaneously take snuff,

For each to have pretext enough

And kerchiefwise unfold his sash

Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff

To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,

And leave the grand white neck no gash?

Waring in Moscow, to those rough

24 Cold northern natures born perhaps,

Like the lambwhite maiden dear

From the circle of mute kings

Unable to repress the tear,

Each as his sceptre down he flings,

To Dian's fane at Taurica,

Where now a captive priestess, she alway

Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech

With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach

As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands

Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands

Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry

Amid their barbarous twitter!

In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!

Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain

That we and Waring meet again

Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane

Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid

All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid

Its stiff gold blazing pall

From some black coffin-lid.

Or, best of all,

I love to think

The leaving us was just a feint;

Back here to London did he slink,

And now works on without a wink

Of sleep, and we are on the brink

Of something great in fresco-paint:

Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,

Up and down and o'er and o'er

He splashes, as none splashed before

Since great Caldara Polidore.

Or Music means this land of ours

Some favor yet, to pity won

25 By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers—

"Give me my so-long promised son,

Let Waring end what I begun!"

Then down he creeps and out he steals

Only when the night conceals

His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time,

Or hops are picking: or at prime

Of March he wanders as, too happy,

Years ago when he was young,

Some mild eve when woods grew sappy

And the early moths had sprung

To life from many a trembling sheath

Woven the warm boughs beneath;

While small birds said to themselves

What should soon be actual song,

And young gnats, by tens and twelves,

Made as if they were the throng

That crowd around and carry aloft

The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,

Out of a myriad noises soft,

Into a tone that can endure

Amid the noise of a July noon

When all God's creatures crave their boon,

All at once and all in tune,

And get it, happy as Waring then,

Having first within his ken

What a man might do with men:

And far too glad, in the even-glow,

To mix with the world he meant to take

Into his hand, he told you, so—

And out of it his world to make,

To contract and to expand

As he shut or oped his hand.

Oh Waring, what's to really be?

26 A clear stage and a crowd to see!

Some Garrick, say, out shall not he

The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?

Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,

Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck

His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!

Some Chatterton shall have the luck

Of calling Rowley into life!

Some one shall somehow run a muck

With this old world for want of strife

Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive

To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?

Our men scarce seem in earnest now.

Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow,

As if they played at being names

Still more distinguished, like the games

Of children. Turn our sport to earnest

With a visage of the sternest!

Bring the real times back, confessed

Still better than our very best!