Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha
By Robert Browning (18121889)H
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I ’ve put you so oft,—
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we ’re alone in the loft,
Hugues, the composer of note,—
Dead, though, and done with, this many a year,—
Let ’s have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!
Fast they extinguish the lights,—
Hallo, there, sacristan! five minutes’ grace!
Here ’s a crank pedal wants setting to rights,
Balks one of holding the base.
Hushing its hundreds at once,
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds
O, you may challenge them, not a response
Get the church saints on their rounds!
March, with the moon to admire,
Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about,
Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire,
Put rats and mice to the rout,—
Order things back to their place,
Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust,
Rub the church-plate, darn the sacrament lace,
Clear the desk velvet of dust.)
Played I not off-hand and runningly,
Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve?
Here ’s what should strike,—could one handle it cunningly.
Help the axe, give it a helve!
Every bar’s rest where one wipes
Sweat from one’s brow, I looked up and surveyed
O’er my three claviers, you forest of pipes
Whence you still peeped in the shade.
You, with brow ruled like a score,
Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek
Like two great breves as they wrote them of yore
Each side that bar, your straight beak!
Still, couldst thou take my intent,
Know what procured me our Company’s votes,—
Masters being lauded and sciolists shent,
Parted the sheep from the goats!”
Quick, ere my candle ’s a snuff,
Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch,—
I believe in you, but that ’s not enough.
Give my conviction a clinch!
Nothing propound, that I see,
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise,—
Answered no less, where no answer needs be;
Off start the Two on their ways!
Volunteer needlessly help,—
In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
So the cry ’s open, the kennel ’s a-yelp,
Argument ’s hot to the close!
Two must discept,—has distinguished!
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:
Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished,—
Back to One, goes the case bandied!
More of expounding, explaining!
All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance,—
Now there ’s a truce, all ’s subdued, self-restraining,—
Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant,—
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive,—
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant,—
Five … O Danaides, O Sieve!
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
On we drift. Where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota,—
Something is gained, if one caught but the import,—
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!
Holding, risposting, subjoining,
All ’s like … it ’s like … for an instance I ’m trying …
There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
Under those spider-webs lying!
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
Till one exclaims,—“But where ’s music, the dickens?
Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,
Blacked to the stoutest of tickens!”
Prove me such censure ’s unfounded!
Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous,—
Hopes ’t was for something his organ-pipes sounded,
Tiring three boys at the bellows?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife?
Still our life’s zigzags and dodges,
Ins and outs weaving a new legislature,—
God’s gold just shining its last where that lodges,
Palled beneath Man’s usurpature!
Cherub and trophy and garland.
Nothings grow something which quietly closes
Heaven’s earnest eye,—not a glimpse of the far land
Gets through our comments and glozes.
(Say we and make up a visage)
So many men with such various intentions
Down the past ages must know more than this age!
Leave the web all its dimensions!
Proved a mere mountain in labor?
Better submit,—try again,—what ’s the clef?
’Faith, it ’s no trifle for pipe and for tabor,—
Four flats,—the minor in F.
Learning it once, who would lose it?
Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,—
Truth ’s golden o’er us although we refuse it,—
Nature, through dust-clouds we fling her!
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the Full-Organ,
Blare out the mode Palestrina.
… Lo, you, the wick in the socket!
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket!
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor devil at end of his cares
At the foot of your rotten-planked rat-riddled stairs?
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?