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Three Songs From Paracelsus

by Robert Browning

I hear a voice, perchance I heard

Long ago, but all too low,

So that scarce a care it stirred

If the voice was real or no:

I heard it in my youth when first

The waters of my life outburst:

But now their stream ebbs faint, I hear

That voice, still low but fatal-clear

As if all Poets, God ever meant

Should save the world, and therefore lent

Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused

To do His work, or lightly used

Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,

So, mourn cast off by Him for ever,

As if these leaned in airy ring

To take me; this the song they sing.

'Lost, lost! yet come,

With our wan troop make thy home.

Come, come! for we

Will not breathe, so much as breathe

Reproach to thee!

Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.

So sank we in those old years,

We who bid thee, come! thou last

Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast,

And altogether we, thy peers,

Will pardon ask for thee, the last

Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast

With those who watch but work no more,

Who gaze on life but live no more.

Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak

The message which our lips, too weak,

Refused to utter, shouldst redeem

Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!

Yet we chose thee a birthplace

Where the richness ran to flowers;

Couldst not sing one song for grace?

Not make one blossom man's and ours?

Must one more recreant to his race

Die with unexerted powers,

And join us, leaving as he found

The world, he was to loosen, bound?

Anguish! ever and for ever;

Still beginning, ending never!

Yet, lost and last one, come!

How couldst understand, alas,

What our pale ghosts strove to say,

As their shades did glance and pass

Before thee, night and day?

Thou wast blind as we were dumb:

Once more, therefore, come, O come!

How shall we clothe, how arm the spirit

Who next shall thy post of life inherit

How guard him from thy speedy ruin?

Tell us of thy sad undoing

Here, where we sit, ever pursuing

Our weary task, ever renewing

Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave

Our powers, and man they could not save!'

Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,

Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes

From out her hair: such balsam falls

Down seaside mountain pedestals,

From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,

Spent with the vast and howling main,

To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old

Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud

Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;

Or shredded perfume, like a cloud

From closet long to quiet vowed,

With mothed and dropping arras hung,

Mouldering her lute and books among,

As when a queen, long dead, was young.

III

Over the sea our galleys went,

With cleaving prows in order brave,

To a speeding wind and a bounding wave,

A gallant armament:

Each bark built out of a forest-tree,

Left leafy and rough as first it grew,

And nailed all over the gaping sides,

Within and without, with black bull-hides,

Seethed in fat and suppled in flame,

To bear the playful billows' game:

So, each good ship was rude to see,

Rude and bare to the outward view,

But each upbore a stately tent

Where cedar-pales in scented row

Kept out the flakes of the dancing brine,

And an awning drooped the mast below,

In fold on fold of the purple fine,

That neither noontide nor star-shine

Nor moonlight cold which maketh mad,

Might pierce the regal tenement.

When the sun dawned, oh, gay and glad

We set the sail and plied the oar;

But when the night-wind blew like breath,

For joy of one day's voyage more,

We sang together on the wide sea,

Like men at peace on a peaceful shore;

Each sail was loosed to the wind so free,

Each helm made sure by the twilight star,

And in a sleep as calm as death,

We, the voyagers from afar,

Lay stretched along, each weary crew

In a circle round its wondrous tent

Whence gleamed soft light and curled rich scent,

And with light and perfume, music too:

So the stars wheeled round, and the darkness past,

And at morn we started beside the mast,

And still each ship was sailing fast!

Now, one morn, land appeared! a speck

Dim trembling betwixt sea and sky:

'Avoid it,' cried our pilot, 'check

The shout, restrain the eager eye!'

But the heaving sea was black behind

For many a night and many a day,

And land, though but a rock, drew nigh;

So, we broke the cedar pales away,

Let the purple awning flap in the wind,

And a statue bright was on every deck!

We shouted, every man of us,

And steered right into the harbour thus,

With pomp and paean glorious.

A hundred shapes of lucid stone!

All day we built its shrine for each,

A shrine of rock for every one,

Nor paused we till in the westering sun

We sat together on the beach

To sing because our task was done.

When lo! what shouts and merry songs!

What laughter all the distance stirs!

A loaded raft with happy throngs

Of gentle islanders!

'Our isles are just at hand,' they cried,

'Like cloudlets faint in even sleeping;

Our temple-gates are opened wide,

Our olive-groves thick shade are keeping

For these majestic forms' they cried.

Oh, then we awoke with sudden start

From our deep dream, and knew, too late,

How bare the rock, how desolate,

Which had received our precious freight:

Yet we called out 'Depart!

Our gifts, once given, must here abide.

Our work is done; we have no heart

To mar our work,' we cried.