Prometheus Bound (Browning, 1833)/The Tempest
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
THE TEMPEST.
A FRAGMENT.
"Mors erat ante oculos."
Lucan, lib. ix.
********
The forest made my home—the voiceful streams
My minstrel throng: the everlasting hills,—
Which marry with the firmament, and cry
Unto the brazen thunder, 'Come away,
Come from thy secret place, and try our strength,—'
Enwrapp'd me with their solemn arms. Here, light
Grew pale as darkness, scarëd by the shade
O' the forest Titans. Here, in piny state,
Reign'd Night, the Æthiopian queen, and crown'd
The charmed brow of Solitude, her spouse.
************************A sign was on creation. You beheld
All things encolour'd in a sulph'rous hue,
As day were sick with fear. The haggard clouds
O'erhung the utter lifelessness of air;
The top boughs of the forest all aghast
Stared in the face of Heav'n; the deep-mouth'd wind,
That hath a voice to bay the armed sea,
Fled with a low cry like a beaten hound;
And only that askance the shadows, flew
Some open-beaked birds in wilderment,
Naught stirr'd abroad. All dumb did Nature seem,
In expectation of the coming storm.
It came in power. You soon might hear afar
The footsteps of the martial thunder sound
Over the mountain battlements; the sky
Being deep-stain'd with hues fantastical,
Red like to blood, and yellow like to fire,
And black like plumes at funerals; overhead
You might behold the lightning faintly gleam
Amid the clouds which thrill and gape aside,
And straight again shut up their solemn jaws,
As if to interpose between Heaven's wrath
And Earth's despair. Interposition brief!
Darkness is gathering out her mighty pall
Above us, and the pent-up rain is loosed,
Down trampling in its fierce delirium.
Was not my spirit gladden'd, as with wine,
To hear the iron rain, and view the mark
Of battle on the banner of the clouds?
Did I not hearken for the battle-cry,
And rush along the bowing woods to meet
The riding Tempest—skyey cataracts
Hissing around him with rebellion vain?
Yea! and I lifted up my glorying voice
In an 'All hail;' when, wildly resonant,
As brazen chariots rushing from the war.
As passion'd waters gushing from the rock,
As thousand crashëd woods, the thunder cried:
And at his cry the forest tops were shook
As by the woodman's axe; and far and near
Stagger'd the mountains with a mutter'd dread.
All hail unto the lightning! hurriedly
His lurid arms are glaring through the air,
Making the face of heav'n to show like hell!
Let him go breathe his sulphur stench about,
And, pale with death's own mission, lord the storm!
Again the gleam—the glare: I turn'd to hail
Death's mission: at my feet there lay the dead!
The dead—the dead lay there! I could not view
(For Night espoused the storm, and made all dark)
Its features, but the lightning in his course
Shiver'd above a white and corpse-like heap,
Stretch'd in the path, as if to show his prey,
And have a triumph ere he pass'd. Then I
Crouch'd down upon the ground, and groped about
Until I touch'd that thing of flesh, rain-drench'd,
And chill, and soft. Nathless, I did refrain
My soul from natural horror! I did lift
The heavy head, half-bedded in the clay.
Unto my knee; and pass'd my fingers o'er
The wet face, touching every lineament,
Until I found the brow; and chafed its chill,
To know if life yet linger'd in its pulse.
And while I was so busied, there did leap
From out the entrails of the firmament,
The lightning, who his white unblenching breath
Blew in the dead man's face, discovering it
As by a staring day. I knew that face—
His, who did hate me—his, whom I did hate!
I shrunk not—spake not—sprang not from the ground!
But felt my lips shake without cry or breath,
And mine heart wrestle in my breast to still
The tossing of its pulses; and a cold,
Instead of living blood, o'ercreep my brow.
Albeit such darkness brooded all around,
I had dread knowledge that the open eyes
Of that dead man were glaring up to mine,
With their unwinking, unexpressive stare;
And mine I could not shut nor turn away.
The man was my familiar. I had borne
Those eyes to scowl on me their living hate,
Better than I could bear their deadliness:
I had endured the curses of those lips,
Far better than their silence. Oh constrain'd
And awful silence!—awful peace of death!
There is an answer to all questioning,
That one word—death. Our bitterness can throw
No look upon the face of death, and live.
The burning thoughts that erst my soul illumed,
Were quench'd at once; as tapers in a pit
Wherein the vapour-witches weirdly reign
In charge of darkness. Farewell all the past!
It was out-blotted from my memory's eyes,
When clay's cold silence pleaded for its sin.
Farewell the elemental war! farewell
The clashing of the shielded clouds—the cry
Of scathed echoes! I no longer knew
Silence from sound, but wander'd far away
Into the deep Eleusis of mine heart,
To learn its secret things. When armëd foes
Meet on one deck with impulse violent,
The vessel quakes thro' all her oaken ribs,
And shivers in the sea; so with mine heart:
For there had battled in her solitudes,
Contrary spirits; sympathy with power,
And stooping unto power;—the energy
And passiveness,—the thunder and the death!
Within me was a nameless thought: it closed
The Janus of my soul on echoing hinge,
And said 'Peace!' with a voice like War's. I bow'd
And trembled at its voice; it gave a key,
Empower'd to open out all mysteries
Of soul and flesh; of man, who doth begin,
But endeth not; of life, and after life.
********Day came at last: her light show'd gray and sad,
As hatch'd by tempest, and could scarce prevail
Over the shaggy forest to imprint
Its outline on the sky—expressionless,
Almost sans shadow as sans radiance:
An idiocy of light. I waken'd from
My deep unslumb'ring dream, but utter'd naught.
My living I uncoupled from the dead,
And look'd out, 'mid the swart and sluggish air,
For place to make a grave. A mighty tree
Above me, his gigantic arms outstretch'd,
Poising the clouds. A thousand mutter'd spells
Of every ancient wind and thund'rous storm,
Had been off-shaken from his scathless bark.
He had heard distant years sweet concord yield,
And go to silence; having firmly kept
Majestical companionship with Time.
Anon his strength wax'd proud: his tusky roots
Forced for themselves a path on every side,
Riving the earth; and, in their savage scorn,
Casting it from them like a thing unclean,
Which might impede his naked clambering
Unto the heavens. Now blasted, peel'd, he stood,
By the gone night, whose lightning had come in
And rent him, even as it rent the man
Beneath his shade: and there the strong and weak
Communion join'd in deathly agony.
There, underneath, I lent my feverish strength,
To scoop a lodgment for the traveller's corse.
I gave it to the silence and the pit,
And strew'd the heavy earth on all: and then—
I—I, whose hands had form'd that silent house,—
I could not look thereon, but turn'd and wept!
****************Oh Death—oh crownëd Death—pale-steedëd Death
Whose name doth make our respiration brief.
Muffling the spirit's drum! Thou, whom men know
Alone by charnel-houses, and the dark
Sweeping of funeral feathers, and the scath
Of happy days,—love deem'd inviolate!—
Thou of the shrouded face, which to have seen
Is to be very awful, like thyself!—
Thou, whom all flesh shall see!—thou, who dost call,
And there is none to answer!—thou, whose call
Changeth all beauty into what we fear,
Changeth all glory into what we tread,
Genius to silence, wrath to nothingness,
And love—not love!—thou hast no change for love!
Thou, who art Life's betroth'd, and bear'st her forth
To scare her with sad sights,—who hast thy joy
Where'er the peopled towns are dumb with plague,—
Where'er the battle and the vulture meet,—
Where'er the deep sea writhes like Laocoon
Beneath the serpent winds, and vessels split
On secret rocks, and men go gurgling down,
Down, dowm, to lose their shriekings in the depth!
Oh universal thou! who comest aye
Among the minstrels, and their tongue is tied;—
Among the sophists, and their brain is still;—
Among the mourners, and their wail is done;—
Among the dancers, and their tinkling feet
No more make echoes on the tombing earth;—
Among the wassail rout, and all the lamps
Are quench'd; and wither'd the wine-pouring hands!
Mine heart is armëd not in panoply
Of the old Roman iron, nor assumes
The Stoic valour. 'Tis a human heart,
And so confesses, with a human fear;—
That only for the hope the cross inspires,
That only for the man who died and lives,
'Twould crouch beneath thy sceptre's royalty,
With faintness of the pulse, and backward cling
To life. But knowing what I soothly know,
High-seeming Death, I dare thee! and have hope,
In God's good time, of showing to thy face
An unsuccumbing spirit, which sublime
May cast away the low anxieties
That wait upon the flesh—the reptile moods;
And enter that eternity to come,
Where live the dead, and only Death shall die.