In A Balcony
A poem by Robert Browning
First partConstance and Norbert
Norbert
Now.
Constance
Not now.
Norbert
Give me them again, those hands
Put them upon my forehead, how it throbs!
Press them before my eyes, the fire comes through.
You cruellest, you dearest in the world,
Let me! the Queen must grant whate’er I ask
How can I gain you and not ask the Queen?
There she stays waiting for me, here stand you.
Some time or other this was to be asked,
Now is the one time what I ask, I gain
Let me ask now, Love!
Constance
Do, and ruin us.
Norbert
Let it be now, Love! All my soul breaks forth.
How I do love you! give my love its way!
A man can have but one life and one death,
One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate
Grant me my heaven now. Let me know you mine,
Prove you mine, write my name upon your brow,
Hold you and have you, and then die away
If God please, with completion in my soul.
Constance
I am not yours then? how content this man?
I am not his, who change into himself,
Have passed into his heart and beat its beats,
Who give my hands to him, my eyes, my hair,
Give all that was of me away to him
So well, that now, my spirit turned his own,
Takes part with him against the woman here,
Bids him not stumble at so mere a straw
As caring that the world be cognisant
How he loves her and how she worships him .
You have this woman, not as yet that world.
Go on, I bid, nor stop to care for me
By saving what I cease to care about,
The courtly name and pride of circumstance
The name you’ll pick up and be cumbered with
Just for the poor parade’s sake, nothing more;
Just that the world may slip from under you
Just that the world may cry “So much for him
The man predestined to the heap of crowns!
There goes his chance of winning one, at least.”
Norbert
The world!
Constance
You love it. Love me quite as well,
And see if I shall pray for this in vain!
Why must you ponder what it knows or thinks?
Norbert
You pray for what, in vain?
Constance
Oh my heart’s heart,
How I do love you, Norbert! that is right!
But listen, or I take my hands away.
You say, “let it be now” you would go now
And tell the Queen, perhaps six steps from us,
You love me so you do, thank God!
Norbert
Thank God!
Constance
Yes, Norbert, but you fain would tell your love,
And, what succeeds the telling, ask of her
My hand. Now take this rose and look at it,
Listening to me. You are the minister,
The Queen’s first favourite, nor without a cause.
To-night completes your wonderful year’s-work
(This palace-feast is held to celebrate)
Made memorable by her life’s success,
That junction of two crowns on her sole head
Her house had only dreamed of anciently.
That this mere dream is grown a stable truth
To-night’s feast makes authentic. Whose the praise?
Whose genius, patience, energy, achieved
What turned the many heads and broke the hearts?
You are the fate your minute’s in the heaven.
Next comes the Queen’s turn. Name your own reward!
With leave to clench the past, chain the to-come,
Put out an arm and touch and take the sun
And fix it ever full-faced on your earth,
Possess yourself supremely of her life,
You choose the single thing she will not grant
The very declaration of which choice
Will turn the scale and neutralise your work.
At best she will forgive you, if she can.
You think I’ll let you choose her cousin’s hand?
Norbert
Wait. First, do you retain your old belief
The Queen is generous, nay, is just?
Constance
There, there!
So men make women love them, while they know
No more of women’s hearts than . . . look you here,
You that are just and generous beside,
Make it your own case. For example now,
I’ll say I let you kiss me and hold my hands
Why? do you know why? I’ll instruct you, then
The kiss, because you have a name at court,
This hand and this, that you may shut in each
A jewel, if you please to pick up such.
That’s horrible! Apply it to the Queen
Suppose, I am the Queen to whom you speak.
“I was a nameless man: you needed me:
Why did I proffer you my aid? there stood
A certain pretty Cousin by your side.
Why did I make such common cause with you?
Access to her had not been easy else.
You give my labours here abundant praise
’Faith, labour, while she overlooked, grew play.
How shall your gratitude discharge itself?
Give me her hand!”
Norbert
And still I urge the same.
Is the Queen just? just generous or no!
Constance
Yes, just. You love a rose no harm in that
But was it for the rose’s sake or mine
You put it in your bosom? mine, you said
Then mine you still must say or else be false.
You told the Queen you served her for herself
If so, to serve her was to serve yourself
She thinks, for all your unbelieving face!
I know her. In the hall, six steps from us,
One sees the twenty pictures there’s a life
Better than life and yet no life at all;
Conceive her born in such a magic dome,
Pictures all round her! why, she sees the world
Can recognise its given things and facts,
The fight of giants or the feast of gods,
Sages in senate, beauties at the bath,
Chaces and battles, the whole earth’s display,
Landscape and sea-piece, down to flowers and fruit
And who shall question that she knows them all
In better semblance than the things outside?
Yet bring into the silent gallery
Some live thing to contrast in breath and blood,
Some lion, with the painted lion there
You think she’ll understand composedly?
Say, “that’s his fellow in the hunting-piece
Yonder, I’ve turned to praise a hundred times?”
Not so. Her knowledge of our actual earth,
Its hopes and fears, concerns and sympathies,
Must be too far, too mediate, too unreal.
The real exists for us outside, not her
How should it, with that life in these four walls,
That father and that mother, first to last
No father and no mother friends, a heap,
Lovers, no lack a husband in due time,
And everyone of them alike a lie!
Things painted by a Rubens out of nought
Into what kindness, friendship, love should be;
All better, all more grandiose than life,
Only no life; mere cloth and surface-paint
You feel while you admire. How should she feel?
And now that she has stood thus fifty years
The sole spectator in that gallery,
You think to bring this warm real struggling love
In to her of a sudden, and suppose
She’ll keep her state untroubled? Here’s the truth
She’ll apprehend its value at a glance,
Prefer it to the pictured loyalty!
You only have to say “so men are made,
For this they act, the thing has many names
But this the right one and now, Queen, be just!”
And life slips back you lose her at the word
You do not even for amends gain me.
He will not understand! oh, Norbert, Norbert,
Do you not understand?
Norbert
The Queen’s the Queen,
I am myself no picture, but alive
In every nerve and every muscle, here
At the palace-window or in the people’s street,
As she in the gallery where the pictures glow.
The good of life is precious to us both.
She cannot love what do I want with rule?
When first I saw your face a year ago
I knew my life’s good my soul heard one voice
“The woman yonder, there’s no use of life
But just to obtain her! heap earth’s woes in one
And bear them make a pile of all earth’s joys
And spurn them, as they help or help not here;
Only, obtain her!” How was it to be?
I found she was the cousin of the Queen;
I must then serve the Queen to get to her
No other way. Suppose there had been one,
And I by saying prayers to some white star
With promise of my body and my soul
Might gain you, should I pray the star or no?
Instead, there was the Queen to serve! I served,
And did what other servants failed to do.
Neither she sought nor I declared my end.
Her good is hers, my recompense be mine,
And let me name you as that recompense.
She dreamed that such a thing could never be?
Let her wake now. She thinks there was some cause
The love of power, of fame, pure loyalty?
Perhaps she fancies men wear out their lives
Chasing such shades. Then I’ve a fancy too.
I worked because I want you with my soul
I therefore ask your hand. Let it be now.
Constance
Had I not loved you from the very first,
Were I not yours, could we not steal out thus
So wickedly, so wildly, and so well,
You might be thus impatient. What’s conceived
Of us without here, by the folks within?
Where are you now? immersed in cares of state
Where am I now? intent on festal robes
We two, embracing under death’s spread hand!
What was this thought for, what this scruple of yours
Which broke the council up, to bring about
One minute’s meeting in the corridor?
And then the sudden sleights, long secresies,
The plots inscrutable, deep telegraphs,
Long-planned chance-meetings, hazards of a look,
“Does she know? does she not know? saved or lost?”
A year of this compression’s ecstasy
All goes for nothing? you would give this up
For the old way, the open way, the world’s,
His way who beats, and his who sells his wife?
What tempts you? their notorious happiness,
That you’re ashamed of ours? The best you’ll get
Will be, the Queen grants all that you require,
Concedes the cousin, and gets rid of you
And her at once, and gives us ample leave
To live as our five hundred happy friends.
The world will show us with officious hand
Our chamber-entry and stand sentinel,
When we so oft have stolen across her traps!
Get the world’s warrant, ring the falcon’s foot,
And make it duty to be bold and swift,
When long ago ’twas nature. Have it so!
He never hawked by rights till flung from fist?
Oh, the man’s thought! no woman’s such a fool.
Norbert
Yes, the man’s thought and my thought, which is more
One made to love you, let the world take note.
Have I done worthy work? be love’s the praise,
Though hampered by restrictions, barred against
By set forms, blinded by forced secresies.
Set free my love, and see what love will do
Shown in my life what work will spring from that!
The world is used to have its business done
On other grounds, find great effects produced
For power’s sake, fame’s sake, motives you have named.
So good. But let my low ground shame their high.
Truth is the strong thing. Let man’s life be true!
And love’s the truth of mine. Time prove the rest
I choose to have you stamped all over me,
Your name upon my forehead and my breast,
You, from the sword’s blade to the ribbon’s edge,
That men may see, all over, you in me
That pale loves may die out of their pretence
In face of mine, shames thrown on love fall off
Permit this, Constance! Love has been so long
Subdued in me, eating me through and through,
That now it’s all of me and must have way.
Think of my work, that chaos of intrigues,
Those hopes and fears, surprises and delays,
That long endeavour, earnest, patient, slow,
Trembling at last to its assured result
Then think of this revulsion. I resume
Life, after death, (it is no less than life
After such long unlovely labouring days)
And liberate to beauty life’s great need
Of the beautiful, which, while it prompted work,
Supprest itself erewhile. This eve’s the time
This eve intense with yon first trembling star
We seem to pant and reach; scarce ought between
The earth that rises and the heaven that bends
All nature self-abandoned every tree
Flung as it will, pursuing its own thoughts
And fixed so, every flower and every weed,
No pride, no shame, no victory, no defeat:
All under God, each measured by itself
These statues round us, each abrupt, distinct,
The strong in strength, the weak in weakness fixed,
The Muse for ever wedded to her lyre,
The Nymph to her fawn, the Silence to her rose,
And God’s approval on his universe!
Let us do so aspire to live as these
In harmony with truth, ourselves being true.
Take the first way, and let the second come,
My first is to possess myself of you;
The music sets the march-step forward then!
And there’s the Queen, I go to claim you of,
The world to witness, wonder and applaud.
Our flower of life breaks open. No delay!
Constance
And so shall we be ruined, both of us.
Norbert, I know her to the skin and bone
You do not know her, were not born to it,
To feel what she can see or cannot see.
Love, she is generous, ay, despite your Smile,
Generous as you are. For, in that thin frame,
Pain-twisted, punctured through and through with cares,
There lived a lavish soul until it starved
Debarred all healthy food. Look to the soul
Pity that, stoop to that, ere you begin
(The true man’s way) on justice and your rights,
Exactions and acquittance of the past.
Begin so see what justice she will deal!
We women hate a debt as men a gift.
Suppose her some poor keeper of a school
Whose business is to sit thro’ summer-months
And dole out children’s leave to go and play,
Herself superior to such lightness she
In the arm-chair’s state and pædagogic pomp,
To the life, the laughter, sun and youth outside
We wonder such an one looks black on us?
I do not bid you wake her tenderness,
That were vain truly, none is left to wake,
But, let her think her justice is engaged
To take the shape of tenderness, and mark
If she’ll not coldly do its warmest deed!
Does she love me, I ask you? not a whit.
Yet, thinking that her justice was engaged
To help a kinswoman, she took me up,
Did more on that bare ground than other loves
Would do on greater argument. For me,
I have no equivalent of that cold kind
To pay her with; my love alone to give
If I give anything. I give her love.
I feel I ought to help her, and I will.
So for her sake, as yours, I tell you twice
That women hate a debt as men a gift.
If I were you, I could obtain this grace,
Would lay the whole I did to love’s account,
Nor yet be very false as courtiers go,
Declare that my success was recompense;
It would be so, in fact: what were it else?
And then, once loosed her generosity
As you will mark it, then, were I but you
To turn it, let it seem to move itself,
And make it give the thing I really take,
Accepting so, in the poor cousin’s hand,
All value as the next thing to the queen,
Since none loves her directly, none dares that!
A shadow of a thing, a name’s mere echo
Suffices those who miss the name and thing;
You pick up just a ribbon she has worn
To keep in proof how near her breath you came.
Say I’m so near I seem a piece of her,
Ask for me that way, (oh, you understand)
And find the same gift yielded with a grace,
Which if you make the least show to extort
You’ll see! and when you have ruined both of us,
Dis[s]ertate on the Queen’s ingratitude!
Norbert
Then, if I turn it that way, you consent?
’Tis not my way; I have more hope in truth.
Still if you won’t have truth, why, this indeed,
Is scarcely false, I’ll so express the sense.
Will you remain here?
Constance
O best heart of mine,
How I have loved you! then, you take my way?
Are mine as you have been her minister,
Work out my thought, give it effect for me,
Paint plain my poor conceit and make it serve?
I owe that withered woman everything,
Life, fortune, you, remember! Take my part,
Help me to pay her! Stand upon your rights?
You, with my rose, my hands, my heart on you?
Your rights are mine, you have no rights but mine.
Norbert
Remain here. How you know me!
Constance
Ah, but still--
[He breaks from her: she remains.
Dance music from within.
SECOND PART
Enter the Queen
Queen
Constance! She is here as he said. Speak! quick!
Is it so? is it true, or false? One word!
Constance
True.
Queen
Mercifullest Mother, thanks to thee!
Constance
Madam
Queen
I love you, Constance, from my soul.
Now say once more, with any words you will,
’Tis true, all true, as true as that I speak,
Constance
Why should you doubt it?
Queen
Ah, why doubt? why doubt?
Dear, make me see it. Do you see it so?
None see themselves, another sees them best.
You say “why doubt it?” you see him and me.
It is because the Mother has such grace
That if we had but faith wherein we fail,
Whate’er we yearn for would be granted us;
Howbeit we let our whims prescribe despair,
Our very fancies thwart and cramp our will,
And so accepting life, abjure ourselves!
Constance, I had abjured the hope of love
And of being loved, as truly as yon palm
The hope of seeing Egypt from that turf.
Constance
Heaven!
Queen
But it was so, Constance, it was so.
Men say, or do men say it? fancies say,
“Stop here, your life is set, you are grown old;
Too late, no love for you, too late for love,
Leave love to girls. Be queen, let Constance love!”
One takes the hint, half meets it like a child,
Ashamed at any feelings that oppose.
“Oh, love, true, never think of love again
I am a queen, I rule, not love, indeed.”
So it goes on; so a face grows like this,
Hair like this hair, poor arms as lean as these,
Till, nay, it does not end so, I thank God! 433
Constance
I cannot understand--
Queen
The happier you!
Constance, I know not how it is with men.
For women, (I am a woman now like you)
There is no good of life but love, but love!
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,
Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me,
Never you cheat yourself one instant. Love,
Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!
O Constance, how I love you!
Constance
I love you.
Queen
I do believe that all is come through you.
I took you to my heart to keep it warm
When the last chance of love seemed dead in me;
I thought your fresh youth warmed my withered heart.
Oh, I am very old now, am I not?
Not so! it is true and it shall be true!
Constance
Tell it me! let me judge if true or false.
Queen
Ah, but I fear you, you will look at me
And say “she’s old, she’s grown unlovely quite
Who ne’er was beauteous! men want beauty still.”
Well, so I feared, the curse! so I felt sure.
Constance
Be calm. And now you feel not sure, you say?
Queen
Constance, he came, the coming was not strange,
Do not I stand and see men come and go?
I turned a half look from my pedestal
Where I grow marble, “one young man the more!
He will love some one, that is nought to me,
What would he with my marble stateliness?”
Yet this seemed somewhat worse than heretofore;
The man more gracious, youthful, like a god,
And I still older, with less flesh to change,
We two those dear extremes that long to touch.
It seemed still harder when he first began
Absorbed to labour at the state-affairs
The old way for the old end, interest.
Oh, to live with a thousand beating hearts
Around you, swift eyes, serviceable hands,
Professing they’ve no care but for your cause,
Thought but to help you, love but for yourself,
And you the marble statue all the time
They praise and point at as preferred to life,
Yet leave for the first breathing woman’s cheek,
First dancer’s, gypsy’s, or street baladine’s!
Why, how I have ground my teeth to hear men’s speech
Stifled for fear it should alarm my ear,
Their gait subdued lest step should startle me,
Their eyes declined, such queendom to respect,
Their hands alert, such treasure to preserve,
While not a man of these broke rank and spoke,
Or wrote me a vulgar letter all of love,
Or caught my hand and pressed it like a hand.
There have been moments, if the sentinel
Lowering his halbert to salute the queen,
Had flung it brutally and clasped my knees,
I would have stooped and kissed him, with my soul.
Constance
Who could have comprehended!
Queen
Ay, who, who?
Why, no one, Constance, but this one who did.
Not they, not you, not I. Even now perhaps
it comes too late, would you but tell the truth.
Constance
I wait to tell it.
Queen
Well, you see, he came,
Outfaced the others, did a work this year
Exceeds in value all was ever done
You know, it is not I who say it, all
Say it, And so (a second pang and worse)
I grew aware not only of what he did,
But why so wondrously. Oh, never work
Like his was done for work’s ignoble sake,
It must have finer aims to spur it on!
I felt, I saw he loved, loved somebody.
And Constance, my dear Constance, do you know,
I did believe this while ’twas you he loved.
Constance
Me, madam?
Queen
It did seem to me your face
Met him, where’er he looked: and whom but you
Was such a man to love? it seemed to me
You saw he loved you, and approved the love,
And that you both were in intelligence.
You could not loiter in the garden, step
Into this balcony, but I straight was stung
And forced to understand. It seemed so true,
So right, so beautiful, so like you both
That all this work should have been done by him,
Not for the vulgar hope of recompense,
But that at last, suppose some night like this,
Borne on to claim his due reward of me
He might say, “Give her hand and pay me so.”
And I (O Constance, you shall love me now)
I thought, surmounting all the bitterness,
“And he shall have it. I will make her blest,
My flower of youth, my woman’s self that was,
My happiest woman’s self that might have been!
These two shall have their joy and leave me here.”
Yes, yes,
Constance
Thanks!
Queen
And the word was on my lips
When he burst in upon me. I looked to hear
A mere calm statement of his just desire
In payment of his labour. When, O Heaven,
How can I tell you? cloud was on my eyes
And thunder in my ears at that first word
Which told ’twas love of me, of me, did all,
He loved me, from the first step to the last,
Loved me!
Constance
You did not hear . . . you thought he spoke
Of love? what if you should mistake?
Queen
No, no,
No mistake! Ha, there shall be no mistake!
He had not dared to hint the love he felt,
You were my reflex, how I understood!
He said you were the ribbon I had worn,
He kissed my hand, he looked into my eyes,
And love, love was the end of every phrase.
Love is begun, this much is come to pass,
The rest is easy. Constance, I am yours,
I will learn, I will place my life on you,
But teach me how to keep what I have won.
Am I so old? this hair was early grey;
But joy ere now has brought hair brown again,
And joy will bring the cheek’s red back, I feel.
I could sing once too; that was in my youth.
Still, when men paint me, they declare me . . . yes,
Beautiful,for the last French Painter did!
I know they flatter somewhat;, you are frank,
I trust you. How I loved you from the first!
Some queens would hardly seek a cousin out
And set her by their side to take the eye
I must have felt that good would come from you.
I am not generous, like him, like you!
But he is not your lover after all,
It was not you he looked at. Saw you him?
You have not been mistaking words or looks?
He said you were the reflex of myself,
And yet he is not such a paragon
To you, to younger women who may choose
Among a thousand Norberts. Speak the truth!
You know you never named his name to me,
You know, I cannot give him up,all God,
Not up now, even to you!
Constance
Then calm yourself.
Queen
See, I am old, look here, you happy girl,
I will not play the fool, deceive myself;
’Tis all gone, put your cheek beside my cheek.
Ah, what a contrast does the moon behold!
But then I set my life upon one chance,
The last chance and the best, am I not left,
My soul, myself? All women love great men
If young or old, it is in all the tales,
Young beauties love old poets who can love,
Why thould not he the poems in my soul,
The love, the passionate faith, the sacrifice,
The constancy? I throw them at his feet.
Who cares to see the fountain’s very shape
And whether it be a Triton’s or a Nymph’s
That pours the foam, makes rainbows all around?
You could not praise indeed the empty conch;
But I’ll pour floods of love and hide myself.
How I will love him! cannot men love love?
Who was a queen and loved a poet once
Humpbacked, a dwarf? all, women can do that
Well, but men too! at least, they tell you so.
They love so many women in their youth,
And even in age they all love whom they please;
And yet the best of them confide to friends
That ’tis not beauty makes the lasting love,
They spend a day with such and tire the next;
They like soul,well then, they like phantasy,
Novelty even. Let us confess the truth
Horrible though it be, that prejudice,
Prescription . . . Curses! they will love a queen.
They will, they do. And will not, does not he?
Constance
How can he? You are wedded ’tis a name
We know, but still a bond. Your rank remains,
His rank remains. How can he, nobly souled
As you believe and I incline to think,
Aspire to be your favourite, shame and all?
Queen
Hear her! there, there now could she love like me?
What did I say of smooth-cheeked youth and grace
See all it does or could do I so, youth loves!
Oh, tell him, Constance, you could never do
What I will you, it was not born in! I
Will drive these difficulties far and fast
As yonder mists curdling before the moon.
I’ll use my light too, gloriously retrieve
My youth from its enforced calamity,
Dissolve that hateful marriage, and be his,
His own in the eyes alike of God and man.
Constance
You will do dare do Pause on what you say!
Queen
Hear her! I thank you, Sweet, for that surprise.
You have the fair face: for the soul, see mine!
I have the strong soul: let me teach you, here.
I think I have borne enough and long enough,
And patiently enough, the world remarks,
To have my own way now, unblamed by all.
It does so happen, I rejoice for it,
This most unhoped-for issue cuts the knot.
There’s not a better way of settling claims
Than this; God sends the accident express;
And were it for my subjects’ good, no more,
’Twere best thus ordered. I am thankful now,
Mute, passive, acquiescent. I receive,
And bless God simply, or should almost fear
To walk so smoothly to my ends at last.
Why, how I baffle obstacles, spurn fate!
How strong I am! could Norbert see me now!
Constance
Let me consider. It is all too strange.
Queen
You, Constance, learn of me; do you, like me.
You are young, beautiful: my own, best girl,
You will have many lovers, and love one
Light hair, not hair like Norbert’s, to suit yours,
And taller than he is, for you are tall.
Love him like me! give all away to him;
Think never of yourself; throw by your pride,
Hope, fear, your own good as you saw it once,
And love him simply for his very self.
Remember, I (and what am I to you?)
Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life,
Do all but just unlove him! he loves me.
Constance
He shall.
Queen
You, step inside my inmost heart.
Give me your own heart let us have one heart
I’ll come to you for counsel; “This he says,
This he does, what should this amount to, pray?
Beseech you, change it into current coin.
Is that worth kisses? shall I please him there?”
And then we’ll speak in turn of you what else?
Your love (according to your beauty’s worth)
For you shall have some noble love, all gold
Whom choose you? we will get him at your choice.
Constance, I leave you. Just a minute since
I felt as I must die or be alone
Breathing my soul into an ear like yours.
Now, I would face the world with my new life,
With my new crown. I’ll walk around the rooms,
And then come back and tell you how it feels.
How soon a smile of God can change the world!
How we are all made for happiness how work
Grows play, adversity a winning fight!
True, I have lost so many years. What then?
Many remain God has been very good.
You, stay here. ’Tis as different from dreams,
From the mind’s cold calm estimate of bliss,
As these stone statues from the flesh and blood.
The comfort thou hast caused mankind, God’s moon!
[She goes out. Dance-music from within.
PART THIRD
Norbert enters
Norbert
Well! we have but one minute and one word
Constance
I am yours, Norbert!
Norbert
Yes, mine.
Constance
Not till now!
You were mine. Now I give myself to you.
Norbert
Constance!
Constance
Your own! I know the thriftier way
Of giving haply, ’tis the wiser way.
Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole
Coin after coin out (each, as that were all,
With a new largess still at each despair)
And force you keep in sight the deed, reserve
Exhaustless till the end my part and yours,
My giving and your taking, both our joys
Dying together. Is it the wiser way?
I choose the simpler; I give all at once.
Know what you have to trust to, trade upon.
Use it, abuse it, anything but say
Hereafter, “Had I known she loved me so,
And what my means, I might have thriven with it.”
This is your means. I give you all myself.
Norbert
I take you and thank God.
Constance
Look on through years!
We cannot kiss a second day like this,
Else were this earth, no earth.
Norbert
With this day’s heat
We shall go on through years of cold.
Constance
So best.
I try to see those years I think I see.
You walk quick and new warmth comes; you look back
And lay all to the first glow not sit down
For ever brooding on a day like this
While seeing the embers whiten and love die.
Yes, love lives best in its effect; and mine,
Full in its own life, yearns to live in yours.
Norbert
Just so. I take and know you all at once.
Your soul is disengaged so easily,
Your face is there, I know you; give me time,
Let me be proud and think you shall know me.
My soul is slower: in a life I roll
The minute out in which you condense yours
The whole slow circle round you I must move,
To be just you. I look to a long life
To decompose this minute, prove its worth.
’Tis the sparks’ long succession one by one
Shall show you in the end what fire was crammed
In that mere stone you struck: you could not know,
If it lay ever unproved in your sight,
As now my heart lies? your own warmth would hide
Its coldness, were it cold.
Constance
But how prove, how?
Norbert
Prove in my life, you ask?
Constance
Quick, Norbert how?
Norbert
That’s easy told. I count life just a stuff
To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.
Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve.
As with the body he who hurls a lance
Or heaps up stone on stone, shows strength alike,
So I will seize and use all means to prove
And show this soul of mine you crown as yours,
And justify us both.
Constance
Could you write books,
Paint pictures! one sits down in poverty
And writes or paints, with pity for the rich.
Norbert
And loves one’s painting and one’s writing too,
And not one’s mistress! All is best, believe,
And we best as no other than we are.
We live, and they experiment on life
Those poets, painters, all who stand aloof
To overlook the farther. Let us be
The thing they look at! I might take that face
And write of it and paint it to what end?
For whom? what pale dictatress in the air
Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghost-like form
With earth’s real blood and breath, the beauteous life
She makes despised for ever? You are mine,
Made for me, not for others in the world,
Nor yet for that which I should call my art,
That cold calm power to see how fair you look.
I come to you I leave you not, to write
Or paint. You are, I am. Let Rubens there
Paint us.
Constance
So best!
Norbert
I understand your soul.
You live, and rightly sympathise with life,
With action, power, success: this way is straight.
And days were short beside, to let me change
The craft my childhood learnt; my craft shall serve.
Men set me here to subjugate, enclose,
Manure their barren lives and force the fruit
First for themselves, and afterward for me
In the due tithe; the task of some one man,
By ways of work appointed by themselves.
I am not bid create, they see no star
Transfiguring my brow to warrant that
But bind in one and carry out their wills.
So I began: to-night sees how I end.
What if it see, too, my first outbreak here
Amid the warmth, surprise and sympathy,
The instincts of the heart that teach the head?
What if the people have discerned in me
The dawn of the next nature, the new man
Whose will they venture in the place of theirs,
And whom they trust to find them out new ways
To the new heights which yet he only sees?
I felt it when you kissed me. See this Queen,
This people in our phrase, this mass of men
See how the mass lies passive to my hand
And how my hand is plastic, and you by
To make the muscles iron! Oh, an end
Shall crown this issue as this crowns the first.
My will be on this people! then, the strain,
The grappling of the potter with his clay,
The long uncertain struggle, the success
In that uprising of the spirit-work,
The vase shaped to the curl of the god’s lip,
While rounded fair for lower men to see
The Graces in a dance they recognise
With turbulent applause and laughs of heart!
So triumph ever shall renew itself;
Ever to end in efforts higher yet,
Ever begun
Constance
I ever helping?
Norbert
Thus!
[As he embraces her, enter the Queen.
Constance
Hist, madam so I have performed my part.
You see your gratitude’s true decency,
Norbert? a little slow in seeing it!
Begun to end the sooner. What’s a kiss?
Norbert
Constance!
Constance
Why, must I teach it you again?
You want a witness to your dullness, sir?
What was I saying these ten minutes long?
Then I repeat when some young handsome man
Like you has acted out a part like yours,
Is pleased to fall in love with one beyond,
So very far beyond him, as he says
So hopelessly in love, that but to speak
Would prove him mad, he thinks judiciously,
And makes some insignificant good soul
Like me, his friend, adviser, confidant
And very stalking-horse to cover him
In following after what he dares not face
When his end’s gained (sir, do you understand?)
When she, he dares not face, has loved him first,
May I not say so, madam? tops his hope,
And overpasses so his wildest dream,
With glad consent of all, and most of her
The confidant who brought the same about
Why, in the moment when such joy explodes,
I do say that the merest gentleman
Will not start rudely from the stalking-horse,
Dismiss it with a “There, enough of you!”
Forget it, show his back unmannerly;
But like a liberal heart will rather turn
And say, “A tingling time of hope was ours
Betwixt the fears and falterings we two lived
A chanceful time in waiting for the prize.
The confidant, the Constance, served not ill;
And though I shall forget her in due time,
Her use being answered now, as reason bids,
Nay as herself bids from her heart of hearts,
Still, she has rights, the first thanks go to her,
The first good praise goes to the prosperous tool,
And the first which is the last thankful kiss.”
Norbert
Constance? it is a dream ah see you smile!
Constance
So, now his part being properly performed,
Madam, I turn to you and finish mine
As duly I do justice in my turn.
Yes, madam, he has loved you long and well
He could not hope to tell you so ’twas I
Who served to prove your soul accessible.
I led his thoughts on, drew them to their place,
When oft they had wandered out into despair,
And kept love constant toward its natural aim.
Enough my part is played; you stoop half-way
And meet us royally and spare our fears
’Tis like yourself he thanks you, so do I.
Take him with my full heart! my work is praised
By what comes of it. Be you happy, both!
Yourself the only one on earth who can
Do all for him, much more than a mere heart
Which though warm is not useful in its warmth
As the silk vesture of a queen! fold that
Around him gently, tenderly. For him
For him, he knows his own part.
Norbert
Have you done?
I take the jest at last. Should I speak now?
Was yours the wager, Constance, foolish child,
Or did you but accept it? Well at least,
You lose by it.
Constance
Now madam, ’tis your turn.
Restrain him still from speech a little more
And make him happier and more confident
Pity him, madam, he is timid yet.
Mark, Norbert! do not shrink now! Here I yield
My whole right in you to the Queen, observe!
With her go put in practice the great schemes
You teem with, follow the career else closed
Be all you cannot be except by her!
Behold her. Madam, say for pity’s sake
Anything frankly say you love him. Else
He’ll not believe it: there’s more earnest in
His fear than you conceive I know the man.
Norbert
I know the woman somewhat, and confess
I thought she had jested better she begins
To overcharge her part. I gravely wait
Your pleasure, madam: where is my reward?
Queen
Norbert, this wild girl (whom I recognise
Scarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit,
Eccentric speech and variable mirth,
Not very wise perhaps and somewhat bold
Yet suitable, the whole night’s work being strange)
May still be right: I may do well to speak
And make authentic what appears a dream
To even myself. For, what she says, is true
Yes, Norbert what you spoke but now of love,
Devotion, stirred no novel sense in me,
But justified a warmth felt long before.
Yes, from the first I loved you, I shall say,
Strange! but I do grow stronger, now ’tis said,
Your courage helps mine: you did well to speak
To-night, the night that crowns your twelvemonths’ toil
But still I had not waited to discern
Your heart so long, believe me! From the first
The source of so much zeal was almost plain,
In absence even of your own words just now
Which opened out the truth. ’Tis very strange,
But takes a happy ending in your love
Which mine meets: be it so as you choose me,
So I choose you.
Norbert
And worthily you choose!
I will not be unworthy your esteem,
No, madam. I do love you; I will meet
Your nature, now I know it; this was well,
I see, you dare and you are justified:
But none had ventured such experiment,
Less versed than you in nobleness of heart,
Less confident of finding it in me.
I like that thus you test me ere you grant
The dearest, richest, beauteousest and best
Of women to my arms! ’Tis like yourself!
So back again into my part’s set words
Devotion to the uttermost is yours,
But no, you cannot, madam, even you,
Create in me the love our Constance does.
Or something truer to the tragic phrase
Not yon magnolia-bell superb with scent
Invites a certain insect that’s myself
But the small eye-flower nearer to the ground
I take this lady!
Constance
Stay not hers, the trap
Stay, Norbert that mistake were worst of all.
(He is too cunning, madam!) it was I,
I, Norbert, who . . .
Norbert
You, was it, Constance? Then,
But for the grace of this divinest hour
Which gives me you, I should not pardon here.
I am the Queen’s: she only knows my brain
She may experiment therefore on my heart
And I instruct her too by the result;
But you, sweet, you who know me, who so long
Have told my heart-beats over, held my life
In those white hands of yours, it is not well!
Constance
Tush! I have said it, did I not say it all?
The life, for her the heart-beats, for her sake!
Norbert
Enough! my cheek grows red, I think. Your test
There’s not the meanest woman in the world,
Not she I least could love in all the world,
Whom, did she love me, did love prove itself,
I dared insult as you insult me now.
Constance, I could say, if it must be said,
“Take back the soul you offer I keep mine”
But “Take the soul still quivering on your hand,
The soul so offered, which I cannot use,
And, please you, give it to some friend of mine,
For what’s the trifle he requites me with?”
I, tempt a woman, to amuse a man,
That two may mock her heart if it succumb?
No! fearing God and standing ’neath his heaven,
I would not dare insult a woman so,
Were she the meanest woman in the world,
And he, I cared to please, ten emperors!
Constance
Norbert!
Norbert
I love once as I live but once.
What case is this to think or talk about?
I love you. Would it mend the case at all
Should such a step as this kill love in me?
Your part were done: account to God for it.
But mine could murdered love get up again,
And kneel to whom you pleased to designate
And make you mirth? It is too horrible.
You did not know this, Constance? now you know
That body and soul have each one life, but one
And here’s my love, here, living, at your feet.
Constance
See the Queen! Norbert this one more last word
If thus you have taken jest for earnest thus
Loved me in earnest . . .
Norbert
Ah, no jest holds here!
Where is the laughter in which jests break up?
And what this horror that grows palpable?
Madam why grasp you thus the balcony?
Have I done ill? Have I not spoken the truth?
How could I other? Was it not your test,
To try me, and what my love for Constance meant?
Madam, your royal soul itself approves,
The first, that I should choose thus! so one takes
A beggar asks him what would buy his child,
And then approves the expected laugh of scorn
Returned as something noble from the rags.
Speak, Constance, I’m the beggar! Ha, what’s this?
You two glare each at each like panthers now.
Constance the world fades; only you stand there!
You did not in to-night’s wild whirl of things
Sell me your soul of souls for any price?
No no ’tis easy to believe in you.
Was it your love’s mad trial to o’ertop
Mine by this vain self-sacrifice? well, still
Though I should curse, I love you. I am love
And cannot change! love’s self is at your feet.
[Queen goes out.
Constance
Feel my heart; let it die against your own.
Norbert
Against my own! explain not; let this be.
This is life’s height.
Constance
Yours! Yours! Yours!
Norbert
You and I
Why care by what meanders we are here
In the centre of the labyrinth? men have died
Trying to find this place out, which we have found.
Constance
Found, found!
Norbert
Sweet, never fear what she can do
We are past harm now.
Constance
On the breast of God.
I thought of men as if you were a man.
Tempting him with a crown! 452
Norbert
This must end here
It is too perfect!
Constance
There’s the music stopped.
What measured heavy tread? it is one blaze
About me and within me.
Norbert
Oh, some death
Will run its sudden finger round this spark,
And sever us from the rest
Constance
And so do well.
Now the doors open
Norbert
’Tis the guard comes.
Constance
Kiss!