May 7 The Harvard Classics, fifteen minutes a day
A Bishop Bargains
A haughty aristocrat, who murdered his wife for enjoying life more than he, now bargaining for a new bride; a crafty bishop begging and bullying his heirs for a tomb richer than that of his rival; these are subjects of Browning’s pen.
- Robert Browning born May 7, 1812.
From the 1930 Reading Guide
Poems
Robert Browning
668 My Last Duchess
FERRARA
THAT’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I callThat piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s handsWorked busily a day, and there she stands.Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said“Frà Pandolf” by design, for never readStrangers like you that pictured countenance,The depth and passion of its earnest glance,But to myself they turned (since none puts byThe curtain I have drawn for you, but I)And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,How such a glance came there; so, not the firstAre you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas notHer husband’s presence only, called that spotOf joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhapsFrà Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle lapsOver my lady’s wrist too much,” or “PaintMust never hope to reproduce the faintHalf-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuffWas courtesy, she thought, and cause enoughFor calling up that spot of joy. She hadA heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad.Too easily impressed: she liked whate’erShe looked on, and her looks went everywhere.Sir, ’twas all one! My favor at her breast,The dropping of the daylight in the West,The bough of cherries some officious foolBroke in the orchard for her, the white muleShe rode with round the terrace—all and eachWould draw from her alike the approving speech,Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thankedSomehow—I know not how—as if she rankedMy gift of a nine-hundred-years-old nameWith anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blameThis sort of trifling? Even had you skillIn speech—(which I have not)—to make your willQuite clear to such an one, and say, “Just thisOr that in you disgusts me; here you miss,Or there exceed the mark”—and if she letHerself be lessoned so, nor plainly setHer wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,—E’en then would be some stooping; and I chooseNever to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,Whene’er I passed her; but who passed withoutMuch the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together. There she standsAs if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meetThe company below, then. I repeat,The Count your master’s known munificenceIs ample warrant that no just pretenceOf mine for dowry will be disallowed;Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowedAt starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll goTogether down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
669 The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church
Rome, 15—
VANITY, saith the preacher, vanity!Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?Nephews—sons mine … ah God, I know not! Well—She, men would have to be your mother once,Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!What’s done is done, and she is dead beside,Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,And as she died so must we die ourselves,And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.Life, how and what is it? As here I lieIn this state-chamber, dying by degrees,Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask“Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;And so, about this tomb of mine. I foughtWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:—Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;Shrewd was that snatch from out the corner SouthHe graced his carrion with, God curse the same!Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thenceOne sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side,And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,And up into the very dome where liveThe angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk:And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,And ’neath my tabernacle take my rest,With those nine columns round me, two and two,The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripeAs fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,Put me where I may look at him! True peach,Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!Draw close: that conflagration of my church—What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!My sons, ye would not be my death? Go digThe white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,Drop water gently till the surface sink,And if ye find … Ah God, I know not, I! …Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,And corded up in a tight olive-frail,Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,Big as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape,Blue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breastSons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,That brave Frascati villa with its bath,So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,Like God the Father’s globe on both his handsYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay,For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years:Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black—’Twas ever antique-black I meant! How elseShall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me.Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchanceSome tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,Saint Praxed in a glory, and one PanReady to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,And Moses with the tables … but I knowYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee,Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hopeTo revel down my villas while I gaspBricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertineWhich Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!’Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.My bath must needs be left behind, alas!One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world—And have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to prayHorses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?—That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word,No gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line—Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!And then how I shall lie through centuries,And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,And see God made and eaten all day long,And feel the steady candle-flame, and tasteGood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,Dying in state and by such slow degrees,I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, dropInto great laps and folds of sculptor’s work:And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughtsGrow, with a certain humming in my ears,About the life before I lived this life,And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,And marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,—Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the PopeMy villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?Ever your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,They glitter like your mother’s for my soul,Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,Piece out its starved design, and fill my vaseWith grapes, and add a visor and a Term,And to the tripod ye would tie a lynxThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,To comfort me on my entablatureWhereon I am to lie till I must ask“Do I live, am I dead?” There, leave me, there!For ye have stabbed me with ingratitudeTo death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweatAs if the corpse they keep were oozing through—And no more lapis to delight the world!Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,But in a row: and, going, turn your backs—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,And leave me in my church, the church for peace,That I may watch at leisure if he leers—Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone,As still he envied me, so fair she was!
The poem that begins at “670 Evelyn Hope” low on page 1078 runs on past the assigned pages; the reading stops before it.
Volume 42, pages 1074–1078 · See the scanned page on archive.org
This is the reading for May 7 in Fifteen Minutes a Day: The Reading Guide (1930 edition), page 49. There the assignment reads “Vol. 42, pp. 1074–1078.” Read it in the guide.