Songs From Paracelsus

1835

(Aprile sings)

I hear a voice, perchance I heard Long ago, but all too low, So that scarce a care it stirred If the voice were real or no: I heard it in my youth when first The waters of my life outburst: But, now their stream ebbs faint, I hear That voice, still low, but fatal-clear-- As if all poets, God ever meant Should save the world, and therefore lent Great gifts to, but who, proud, refused To do his work, or lightly used Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour, So, mourn cast off by him for ever,-- As if these leaned in airy ring To take me; this the song they sing.

"Lost, lost! yet come, With our wan troop make thy home. Come, come! for we Will not breathe, so much as breathe Reproach to thee, Knowing what thou sink'st beneath. So sank we in those old years, We who bid thee, come! thou last Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast. And altogether we, thy peers, Will pardon crave for thee, the last Whose trial is done, whose lot is cast With those who watch but work no more, Who gaze on life but live no more. Yet we trusted thou shouldst speak The message which our lips, too weak, Refused to utter,--shouldst redeem Our fault: such trust, and all a dream! Yet we chose thee a birthplace Where the richness ran to flowers: Couldst not sing one song for grace? Not make one blossom man's and ours? Must one more recreant to his race Die with unexerted powers, And join us, leaving as he found The world, he was to loosen, bound? Anguish! ever and for ever; Still beginning, ending never. Yet, lost and last one, come! How couldst understand, alas, What our pale ghosts strove to say, As their shades did glance and pass Before thee night and day? Thou wast blind as we were dumb: Once more, therefore, come, O come! How should we clothe, how arm the spirit Shall next thy post of life inherit-- How guard him from thy speedy ruin? Tell us of thy sad undoing Here, where we sit, ever pursuing Our weary task, ever renewing Sharp sorrow, far from God who gave Our powers, and man they could not save!"

(Paracelsus sings) Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes From out her hair: such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long dead, was young.

(Song by Festus)

Thus the Mayne glideth Where my Love abideth. Sleep's no softer: it proceeds On through lawns, on through meads, On and on, whate'er befall, Meandering and musical, Though the niggard pasturage Bears not on its shaven ledge Aught but weeds and waving grasses To view the river as it passes, Save here and there a scanty patch Of primroses too faint to catch A weary bee. And scarce it pushes Its gentle way through strangling rushes Where the glossy kingfisher Flutters when noon-heats are near, Glad the shelving banks to shun, Red and steaming in the sun, Where the shrew-mouse with pale throat Burrows, and the speckled stoat; Where the quick sandpipers flit In and out the marl and grit That seems to breed them, brown as they: Nought disturbs its quiet way, Save some lazy stork that springs, Trailing it with legs and wings, Whom the shy fox from the hill Rouses, creep he ne'er so still.

The songs in Pippa Passes (1841) are ail exquisite works of art. The one on the King had been printed in the Monthly Repository in 1835; the others appeared for the first time in the published drama. All of them are vitally connected with the action of the plot, differing in this respect from the Elizabethan custom of simple interpolation. The song sung in the early morning by the girl in her chamber

All service ranks the same with God

contains the philosophy of the play--human lives are inextricably intertwined, and all are dependent on the will of God. No individual can separate himself either from other men and women, or can sever the connection between himself and his Father in Heaven. The first stanza repeats the teaching of Milton in the sonnet on his blindness: the second is more definitely connected with Pippa's professional work.

Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life,

refers to her daily duty as a girl in the silk-mill, for she naturally thinks of the complexity of life as a tangled skein.

All service ranks the same with God: If now, as formerly he trod Paradise, his presence fills Our earth, each only as God wills Can work--God's puppets, best and worst, Are we; there is no last nor first.

Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this, ye call A "great event," should come to pass, Than that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!