My fact that proves palpable! Ay, Sirs, From the fiery and final assault would be I schemed I range them. Turn, Peter, the winch! See, it gripes - whence? By making as man might to truth restitution! Truth is God: trample lies and lies' father, God's foe! Fix fact fast: truths change by an hour's revolution: What deed's very doer, unaided, can show What's under! Let loose draw! In How 'twas done a year month week regular stripes -day-minute ago? At best, he relates it another reports it A third nay, a thousandth records it: ⚫ and still 4C 50 Hast formed him to yearningly follow On a region undreamed of does Printing Sole and single omniscience! Thanks for reaching I render help to Man's soul! Fust's gives a toss To the falcon, aloft once, spread pinions and fly, Beat air far and wide, up and down and across! My Press strains a-tremble: whose masterful eye Will be first, in new regions, new truth to descry? to Give chase, soul! Be sure each new capture consigned To my Types will go forth to the world, | like God's bread - Miraculous food not for body but mind, Truth's manna! How say you? Put case that, instead Of old leasing and lies, we superiorly fed These Heretics, Hussites . . . enable Truth's foe to effect! Printed leasing May speed to the world's farthest corner No less than pure fact to impede, neu- Abolish God's gift and Man's gain! of the Huss-School Prints answer forsooth! Stop invisible lungs? The barrel of blasphemy broached once, who bungs? SECOND FRIEND. Does my sermon, next Easter, meet fitting 40 acceptance? Each captious disputative boy has his quirk "An cuique credendum sit?" Well the Church kept "ans" In order till Fust set his engine at What trash will come flying from Jew, When, goosequill, thy reign o'er the world is abolished! Goose ominous name! With a goose woe began: Quoth Huss which means "goose" in his idiom unpolished "Ye burn now a Goose: there succeeds me a Swan Ye shall find quench your fire!" FUST. I foresee such a man.1 Martin Luther. ASOLANDO: FANCIES AND FACTS. 1889. (Published on December 12, the day on which Mr. Browning died at Venice. A copy of the volume had, however, been received by him before his death.) For an explanation of title, see the dedication to Mrs. Arthur Bronson. TO MRS. ARTHUR BRONSON. To whom but you, dear Friend, should I dedicate verses some few written, all of them supervised, in the comfort of your presence, and with yet another experience of the gracious hospitality now bestowed on me since so many a year, — adding a charm even to my residences at Venice, and leaving me little regret for the surprise and delight at my visits to Asolo in bygone days? I unite, you will see, the disconnected poems by a title-name popularly ascribed to the inventiveness of the ancient secretary of Queen Cornaro whose palace-tower still overlooks us: Asolare "to disport in the open air, amuse oneself at random." The objection that such a word nowhere occurs in the works of the Cardinal is hardly important Bembo was too thorough a purist to conserve in print a term which in talk he might possibly toy with: but the word is more likely derived from a Spanish source. I use it for love of the place, and in requital of your pleasant as surance that an early poem of mine first attracted you thither where and elsewhere, at La Mura as Cà Alvisi, may all happiness attend you! Simply themselves, uncinct by dower Friend, did you need an optic glass, In ruby, emerald, chrysopras, The naked very thing? so clear That, when you had the chance to gaze, You found its inmost self appear Through outer seeming -truth ablaze, Not falsehood's 's fancy-haze? How many a year, my Asolo, Since -one step just from sea to land I found you, loved yet feared you so -For natural objects seemed to stand Palpably fire-clothed! No No mastery of mine o'er these! Silence 'tis awe decrees. And now? The lambent flame is where? Lost from the naked world: earth, sky, Hill, vale, tree, flower, Italia's rare O'er-running beauty crowds the eyeBut flame? The Bush is bare. Hill, vale, trec, flower they stand distinct, Nature to know and name. What then? A Voice spoke thence which straight unlinked Fancy from fact: see, all's in ken: Has once my eyelid winked? 10 20 30 45 POETICS. OTHERS may need new life in Heaven Man, Nature, Art- made new, assume! Man with new mind old sense to leaven, Nature "So say the foolish!" Say the foolish so, Art that breaks bounds, gets soaring-room. 5c -new light to clear old gloom, Love? "Flower she is, my rose" or else Or perhaps "Yon maid-moon, blessing That art thou!" to them, belike: no 20 "Hush, rose, blush! no balm like breath," "Bend thy neck its best, swan, - hers Be the moon the moon: my Love I place What is she? Her human self, - SUMMUM BONUM. ALL the breath and the bloom of the year All the wonder and wealth of the mine in In the core of one pearl all the shade and them Truth, that's brighter than gem, Trust, that's purer than pearl, [White witchcraft was helpful and not harmful magic.] If you and I could change to beasts, what beast should either be? Shall you and I play Jove for once? Turn fox then, I decree! Shy wild sweet stealer of the grapes! Now And thus you think to spite your friend Leave but my crevice in the stone, a rep tile's fit abode ! Now say your worst, Canidia!! "He's loathsome, I allow: There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow: 30 Brightest truth, purest trust in the uni-But see his eyes that follow mine-love verse- - all were for me lasts there anyhow." In the kiss of one girl. Neapolitan sorceress. See Horace. |