Christmas Eve by Robert Browning

Author:Robert Browning [Browning, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xist Publishing
Published: 2016-03-22T07:00:00+00:00

XVIII

Can it be that he stays inside?

Is the vesture left me to commune with?

Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with

Even at this lecture, if she tried?

Oh, let me at lowest sympathize

With the lurking drop of blood that lies

In the desiccated brain's white roots

Without throb for Christ's attributes,

As the lecturer makes his special boast!

If love's dead there, it has left a ghost.

Admire we, how from heart to brain

(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb)

One instinct rises and falls again,

Restoring the equilibrium.

And how when the Critic had done his best,

And the pearl of price, at reason's test,

Lay dust and ashes levigable

On the Professor's lecture-table,—

When we looked for the inference and monition

That our faith, reduced to such condition,

Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole,—

He bids us, when we least expect it,

Take back our faith,—if it be not just whole,

Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it,

Which fact pays damage done rewardingly,

So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly!

"Go home and venerate the myth

"I thus have experimented with—

"This man, continue to adore him

"Rather than all who went before him,

"And all who ever followed after!"—

Surely for this I may praise you, my brother!

Will you take the praise in tears or laughter?

That's one point gained: can I compass another?

Unlearned love was safe from spurning—

Can't we respect your loveless learning?

Let us at least give learning honour!

What laurels had we showered upon her,

Girding her loins up to perturb

Our theory of the Middle Verb;

Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar

O'er anapasts in comic-trimeter;

Or curing the halt and maimed 'Iketides,'

[Footnote: "The Suppliants," a fragment of a play by Aeschylus.]

While we lounged on at our indebted ease:

Instead of which, a tricksy demon

Sets her at Titus or Philemon!

When ignorance wags his ears of leather

And hates God's word, 'tis altogether;

Nor leaves he his congenial thistles

To go and browse on Paul's Epistles.

—And you, the audience, who might ravage

The world wide, enviably savage,

Nor heed the cry of the retriever,

More than Herr Heine (before his fever),—

I do not tell a lie so arrant

As say my passion's wings are furled up,

And, without plainest heavenly warrant,

I were ready and glad to give the world up—

But still, when you rub brow meticulous,

And ponder the profit of turning holy

If not for God's, for your own sake solely,

—God forbid I should find you ridiculous!

Deduce from this lecture all that eases you,

Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you,

"Christians,"—abhor the deist's pravity,—

Go on, you shall no more move my gravity

Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse,

I find it in my heart to embarrass them

By hinting that their stick's a mock horse,

And they really carry what they say carries them.

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