Pippa Passes: Part II: Noon

Scene. Over Orcana. The house of Jules, who crosses its threshold with Phene: she is silent, on which Jules begins

Do not die, Phene! I am yours now, you

Are mine now; let fate reach me how she likes,

If you'll not die: so, never die! Sit here

My work-room's single seat. I over-lean

This length of hair and lustrous front; they turn

Like an entire flower upward: eyes, lips, last

Your chin no, last your throat turns: 't is their scent

Pulls down my face upon you. Nay, look ever

This one way till I change, grow you I could

Change into you, beloved!

You by me,

And I by you; this is your hand in mine,

And side by side we sit: all's true. Thank God!

I have spoken: speak you!

O my life to come!

My Tydeus must be carved that's there in clay;

Yet how be carved, with you about the room?

Where must I place you? When I think that once

This room-full of rough block-work seemed my heaven

Without you! Shall I ever work again,

Get fairly into my old ways again,

Bid each conception stand while, trait by trait,

My hand transfers its lineaments to stone?

Will my mere fancies live near you, their truth

The live truth, passing and repassing me,

Sitting beside me?

Now speak!

Only first,

See, all your letters! Was't not well contrived?

Their hiding-place is Psyche's robe; she keeps

Your letters next her skin: which drops out foremost?

Ah, this that swam down like a first moonbeam

Into my world!

Again those eyes complete

Their melancholy survey, sweet and slow,

Of all my room holds; to return and rest

On me, with pity, yet some wonder too:

As if God bade some spirit plague a world,

And this were the one moment of surprise

And sorrow while she took her station, pausing

O'er what she sees, finds good, and must destroy!

What gaze you at? Those? Books, I told you of;

Let your first word to me rejoice them, too:

This minion, a Coluthus, writ in red

Bistre and azure by Bessarion's scribe

Read this line . . . no, shame Homer's be the Greek

First breathed me from the lips of my Greek girl!

This Odyssey in coarse black vivid type

With faded yellow blossoms 'twixt page and page,

To mark great places with due gratitude;

"He said, and on Antinous directed

"A bitter shaft" . . . a flower blots out the rest!

Again upon your search? My statues, then!

Ah, do not mind that better that will look

When cast in bronze an Almaign Kaiser, that,

Swart-green and gold, with truncheon based on hip.

This, rather, turn to! What, unrecognized?

I thought you would have seen that here you sit

As I imagined you, Hippolyta,

Naked upon her bright Numidian horse.

Recall you this then? "Carve in bold relief"

So you commanded "carve, against I come,

"A Greek, in Athens, as our fashion was,

"Feasting, bay-filleted and thunder-free,

"Who rises 'neath the lifted myrtle-branch.

"'Praise those who slew Hipparchus!' cry the guests,

"'While o'er thy head the singer's myrtle waves

"'As erst above our champion: stand up, all!'"

See, I have laboured to express your thought.

Quite round, a cluster of mere hands and arms,

(Thrust in all senses, all ways, from all sides,

Only consenting at the branch's end

They strain toward) serves for frame to a sole face,

The Praiser's, in the centre: who with eyes

Sightless, so bend they back to light inside

His brain where visionary forms throng up,

Sings, minding not that palpitating arch

Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine

From the drenched leaves o'erhead, nor crowns cast off,

Violet and parsley crowns to trample on

Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,

Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.

But you must say a "well" to that say "well!"

Because you gaze am I fantastic, sweet?

Gaze like my very life's-stuff, marble marbly

Even to the silence! Why, before I found

The real flesh Phene, I inured myself

To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff

For better nature's birth by means of art:

With me, each substance tended to one form

Of beauty to the human archetype.

On every side occurred suggestive germs

Of that the tree, the flower or take the fruit,

Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,

Curved beewise o'er its bough; as rosy limbs,

Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just

From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.

But of the stuffs one can be master of,

How I divined their capabilities!

From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk

That yields your outline to the air's embrace,

Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom;

Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure

To cut its one confided thought clean out

Of all the world. But marble! 'neath my tools

More pliable than jelly as it were

Some clear primordial creature dug from depths

In the earth's heart, where itself breeds itself,

And whence all baser substance may be worked;

Refine it off to air, you may, condense it

Down to the diamond; is not metal there,

When o'er the sudden speck my chisel trips?

Not flesh, as flake off flake I scale, approach,

Lay bare those bluish veins of blood asleep?

Lurks flame in no strange windings where, surprised

By the swift implement sent home at once,

Flushes and glowings radiate and hover

About its track?

Phene? what why is this?

That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!

Ah, you will die I knew that you would die!

Phene begins, on his having long remained silent.

Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must

Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak

Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind

One half of it, beside; and do not care

For old Natalia now, nor any of them.

Oh, you what are you? if I do not try

To say the words Natalia made me learn,

To please your friends, it is to keep myself

Where your voice lifted me, by letting that

Proceed: but can it? Even you, perhaps,

Cannot take up, now you have once let fall,

The music's life, and me along with that

No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are:

Above the world.

You creature with the eyes!

If I could look for ever up to them,

As now you let me, I believe, all sin,

All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,

Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth

Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay

Never to overtake the rest of me,

All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,

Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself,

Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink,

Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so,

Above the world!

But you sink, for your eyes

Are altering altered! Stay "I love you, love" . . .

I could prevent it if I understood:

More of your words to me: was't in the tone

Or the words, your power?

Or stay I will repeat

Their speech, if that contents you! Only change

No more, and I shall find it presently

Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up.

Natalia threatened me that harm should follow

Unless I spoke their lesson to the end,

But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you.

Your friends, Natalia said they were your friends

And meant you well, because, I doubted it,

Observing (what was very strange to see)

On every face, so different in all else,

The same smile girls like me are used to bear,

But never men, men cannot stoop so low;

Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile,

That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit

Which seems to take possession of the world

And make of God a tame confederate,

Purveyor to their appetites . . . you know!

But still Natalia said they were your friends,

And they assented though they smiled the more,

And all came round me, that thin Englishman

With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest;

He held a paper "What we want," said he,

Ending some explanation to his friends

"Is something slow, involved and mystical,

"To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste

"And lure him on until, at innermost

"Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find this!

" As in the apple's core, the noisome fly:

"For insects on the rind are seen at once,

"And brushed aside as soon, but this is found

"Only when on the lips or loathing tongue."

And so he read what I have got by heart:

I'll speak it, "Do not die, love! I am yours."

No is not that, or like that, part of words

Yourself began by speaking? Strange to lose

What cost such pains to learn! Is this more right?

I am a painter who cannot paint;

In my life, a devil rather than saint;

In my brain, as poor a creature too:

No end to all I cannot do!

Yet do one thing at least I can

Love a man or hate a man

Supremely: thus my lore began.

Through the Valley of Love I went,

In the lovingest spot to abide,

And just on the verge where I pitched my tent,

I found Hate dwelling beside.

(Let the Bridegroom ask what the painter meant,

Of his Bride, of the peerless Bride!)

And further, I traversed Hate's grove,

In the hatefullest nook to dwell;

But lo, where I flung myself prone, couched Love

Where the shadow threefold fell.

(The meaning those black bride's-eyes above,

Not a painter's lip should tell!)

"And here," said he, "Jules probably will ask,

"'You have black eyes, Love, you are, sure enough,

"'My peerless bride, then do you tell indeed

"'What needs some explanation! What means this?'"

And I am to go on, without a word

So, I grew wise in Love and Hate,

From simple that I was of late.

Once, when I loved, I would enlace

Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face

Of her I loved, in one embrace

As if by mere love I could love immensely!

Once, when I hated, I would plunge

My sword, and wipe with the first lunge

My foe's whole life out like a sponge

As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!

But now I am wiser, know better the fashion

How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:

And if I see cause to love more, hate more

Than ever man loved, ever hated before

And seek in the Valley of Love,

The nest, or the nook in Hate's Grove,

Where my soul may surely reach

The essence, nought less, of each,

The Hate of all Hates, the Love

Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove,

I find them the very warders

Each of the other's borders.

When I love most, Love is disguised

In Hate; and when Hate is surprised

In Love, then I hate most: ask

How Love smiles through Hate's iron casque,

Hate grins through Love's rose-braided mask,

And how, having hated thee,

I sought long and painfully

To reach thy heart, nor prick

The skin but pierce to the quick

Ask this, my Jules, and be answered straight

By thy bride how the painter Lutwyche can hate!

Jules interposes

Lutwyche! Who else? But all of them, no doubt,

Hated me: they at Venice presently

Their turn, however! You I shall not meet:

If I dreamed, saying this would wake me.

Keep

What's here, the gold we cannot meet again,

Consider! and the money was but meant

For two years' travel, which is over now,

All chance or hope or care or need of it.

This and what comes from selling these, my casts

And books and medals, except . . . let them go

Together, so the produce keeps you safe

Out of Natalia's clutches! If by chance

(For all's chance here) I should survive the gang

At Venice, root out all fifteen of them,

We might meet somewhere, since the world is wide.

[From without is heard the voice of Pippa, singing ]

Give her but a least excuse to love me!

When where

How can this arm establish her above me,

If fortune fixed her as my lady there,

There already, to eternally reprove me?

("Hist!" said Kate the Queen;

But "Oh!" cried the maiden, binding her tresses,

"'T is only a page that carols unseen,

"Crumbling your hounds their messes!")

Is she wronged? To the rescue of her honour,

My heart!

Is she poor? What costs it to be styled a donor?

Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part.

But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her!

("Nay, list!" bade Kate the Queen;

And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses,

"'T is only a page that carols unseen,

"Fitting your hawks their jesses!")

[Pippa passes]

Jules resumes

What name was that the little girl sang forth?

Kate? The Cornaro, doubtless, who renounced

The crown of Cyprus to be lady here

At Asolo, where still her memory stays,

And peasants sing how once a certain page

Pined for the grace of her so far above

His power of doing good to, "Kate the Queen

"She never could be wronged, be poor," he sighed,

"Need him to help her!"

Yes, a bitter thing

To see our lady above all need of us;

Yet so we look ere we will love; not I,

But the world looks so. If whoever loves

Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper,

The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,

Why should we always choose the page's part?

Here is a woman with utter need of me,

I find myself queen here, it seems!

How strange!

Look at the woman here with the new soul,

Like my own Psyche, fresh upon her lips

Alit, the visionary butterfly.

Waiting my word to enter and make bright,

Or flutter off and leave all blank as first.

This body had no soul before, but slept

Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free

From taint or foul with stain, as outward things

Fastened their image on its passiveness:

Now, it will wake, feel, live or die again!

Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff

Be Art and further, to evoke a soul

From form be nothing? This new soul is mine!

Now, to kill Lutwyche, what would that do? save

A wretched dauber, men will hoot to death

Without me, from their hooting. Oh, to hear

God's voice plain as I heard it first, before

They broke in with their laughter! I heard them

Henceforth, not God.

To Ancona Greece some isle!

I wanted silence only; there is clay

Everywhere. One may do whate'er one likes

In Art: the only thing is, to make sure

That one does like it which takes pains to know.

Scatter all this, my Phene this mad dream!

Who, what is Lutwyche, what Natalia's friends,

What the whole world except our love my own,

Own Phene? But I told you, did I not,

Ere night we travel for your land some isle

With the sea's silence on it? Stand aside

I do but break these paltry models up

To begin Art afresh. Meet Lutwyche, I

And save him from my statue meeting him?

Some unspected isle in the far seas!

Like a god going through his world, there stands

One mountain for a moment in the dusk,

Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow:

And you are ever by me while I gaze

Are in my arms as now as now as now!

Some unsuspected isle in the far seas!

Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!

Talk by the way, while Pippa is passing from Orcana to the Turret. Two or three of the Austrian Police loitering with Bluphocks, an English vagabond, just in view of the Turret.

Bluphocks

So, that is your Pippa, the little girl who passed us singing? Well, your Bishop's Intendant's money shall be honestly earned: now, don't make me that sour face because I bring the Bishop's name into the business; we know he can have nothing to do with such horrors: we know that he is a saint and all that a bishop should be, who is a great man beside. Oh were but every worm a maggot, Every fly a grig, Every bough a Christmas faggot, Every tune a jig! In fact, I have abjured all religions; but the last I inclined to, was the Armenian: for I have travelled, do you see, and at Koenigsberg, Prussia Improper (so styled because there's a sort of bleak hungry sun there), you might remark over a venerable house-porch, a certain Chaldee inscription; and brief as it is, a mere glance at it used absolutely to change the mood of every bearded passenger. In they turned, one and all; the young and lightsome, with no irreverent pause, the aged and decrepit, with a sensible alacrity: 't was the Grand Rabbi's abode, in short. Struck with curiosity, I lost no time in learning Syriac    (these are vowels, you dogs, follow my stick's end in the mud Celarent, Darii, Ferio!) and one morning presented myself, spelling-book in hand, a, b, c, I picked it out letter by letter, and what was the purport of this miraculous posy? Some cherished legend of the past, you'll say "How Moses hocus-pocussed Egypt's land with fly and locust," or, "How to Jonah sounded harshish, Get thee up and go to Tarshish," or, "How the angel meeting Balaam, Straight his ass returned a salaam," In no wise! "Shackabrack Boach somebody or other    Isaach, Re-cei-ver, Pur-cha-ser and Ex-chan-ger of Stolen Goods! " So, talk to me of the religion of a bishop! I have renounced all bishops save Bishop Beveridge mean to live so and die As some Greek dog-sage, dead and merry, Hellward bound in Charon's wherry, With food for both worlds, under and upper, Lupine-seed and Hecate's supper, And never an obolus . . . (Though thanks to you, or this Intendant through you, or this Bishop through his Intendant I possess a burning pocketful of zwanzigers) . . . To pay the Stygian Ferry!

1st Policeman

There is the girl, then; go and deserve them the moment you have pointed out to us Signor Luigi and his mother. [To the rest.]

I have been noticing a house yonder, this long while: not a shutter unclosed since morning!

2nd Policeman

Old Luca Gaddi's, that owns the silkmills here: he dozes by the hour, wakes up, sighs deeply, says he should like to be Prince Metternich, and then dozes again, after having bidden young Sebald, the foreigner, set his wife to playing draughts. Never molest such a household, they mean well.

Bluphocks

Only, cannot you tell me something of this little Pippa, I must have to do with? One could make something of that name. Pippa that is, short for Felippa    rhyming to Panurge consults Hertrippa Believest thou, King Agrippa? Something might be done with that name.

2nd Policeman

Put into rhyme that your head and a ripe musk-melon would not be dear at half a zwanziger! Leave this fooling, and look out; the afternoon's over or nearly so.

3rd Policeman

Where in this passport of Signor Luigi does our Principal instruct you to watch him so narrowly? There? What's there beside a simple signature? (That English fool's busy watching.)

2nd Policeman

Flourish all round "Put all possible obstacles in his way;" oblong dot at the end "Detain him till further advices reach you;" scratch at bottom    "Send him back on pretence of some informality in the above;" ink-spirt on right-hand side (which is the case here) "Arrest him at once." Why and wherefore, I don't concern myself, but my instructions amount to this: if Signor Luigi leaves home to-night for Vienna    well and good, the passport deposed with us for our visa is really for his own use, they have misinformed the Office, and he means well; but let him stay over to-night there has been the pretence we suspect, the accounts of his corresponding and holding intelligence with the Carbonari are correct, we arrest him at once, to-morrow comes Venice, and presently Spielberg. Bluphocks makes the signal, sure enough! That is he, entering the turret with his mother, no doubt.