WARING
[Mr. Alfred Domett, C.M.G., author of
"Ranolf and Amohia," full of descriptions of
New Zealand scenery.]
I
What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London town?
II
Who'd have guessed it from his lip
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship
Or started landward?—little caring 10
For us, it seems, who supped together
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home thro' the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December.
I left his arm that night myself
For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet
Who wrote the book there, on the shelf—
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day? 20
Never looked he half so gay!
III
He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who's to blame 30
If your silence kept unbroken?
"True, but there were sundry jottings,
Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings,
Certain first steps were achieved
Already which (is that your meaning?)
Had well borne out whoe'er believed
In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims 40
O'er the day's distinguished names.
IV
Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I've lost him.
I who cared not if I moved him,
Who could so carelessly accost him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit
Of this and that distinguished spirit— 50
His cheeks' raised colour, soon to sink,
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman's latest piece of graphic.
Nay, my very wrist grows warm
With his dragging weight of arm.
E'en so, swimmingly appears,
Through one's after-supper musings, 60
Some lost lady of old years
With her beauteous vain endeavour
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings,
We, puppies that we were... Oh never
Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
Telling aught but honest truth to?
What a sin, had we centupled
Its possessor's grace and sweetness! 70
No! she heard in its completeness
Truth, for truth's a weighty matter,
And truth, at issue, we can't flatter!
Well, 'tis done with; she's exempt
From damning us thro' such a sally;
And so she glides, as down a valley,
Taking up with her contempt,
Past our reach; and in, the flowers
Shut her unregarded hours.
V
Oh, could I have him back once more, 80
This Waring, but one half-day more!
Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment
Like mine! I'd fool him to his bent.
Feed, should not he, to heart's content?
I'd say, "to only have conceived,
Planned your great works, apart from progress,
Surpasses little works achieved!"
I'd lie so, I should be believed.
I'd make such havoc of the claims 90
Of the day's distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!
Or as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours license, barely
Requiring that it lives.
VI
Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed! 100
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a god,
Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls 110
Over the Kremlin's pavement bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other Generals
That simultaneously take snuff,
For each to have pretext enough
And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
Which, softness' self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no gash?
Waring in Moscow, to those rough 120
Cold northern natures born perhaps,
Like the lamb-white maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian's fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall 140
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink,
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint:
Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o'er and o'er 150
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore.
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers—
"Give me my so-long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!"
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face; in Kent 'tis cherry-time, 160
Or hops are picking: or at prime
Of March he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves, 170
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon
When all God's creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken 180
What a man might do with men:
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with the world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh Waring, what's to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he 190
The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run a muck
With this old world for want of strife
Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? 200
Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!
II
I
"When I last saw Waring..."
(How all turned to him who spoke! 210
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel or sea-faring?)
II
"We were sailing by Triest
Where a day or two we harboured:
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel's side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And as a sea-duck flies and swims
At once, so came the light craft up, 220
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars? 230
A pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne'er so big,
They'll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.'
I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'
Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'
III
"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied, 240
With great grass hat and kerchief black,
Who looked up with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow 250
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rosy and golden half
O' the sky, to overtake the sun
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!"—You? Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar! 260
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
NOTES:
"Waring." In recounting the sudden disappearance from
among his friends of a man proud and sensitive, who with
fine powers of intellect yet incurred somewhat of disdain
because of his failure to accomplish anything permanent,
expression is given to the deep regret experienced by his
friends now that he has left them, his absence having
brought them to a truer realization of his worth. If only
Waring would come back, the speaker, at least, would
give him the sympathy and encouragement he craved
instead of playing with his sensibilities as he had done.
Conjectures are indulged in as to Waring's whereabouts.
The speaker prefers to think of him as back in London
preparing to astonish the world with some great masterpiece
in art, music, or literature. Another speaker surprises all
by telling how he had seen the "last of Waring" in a
momentary meeting at Trieste, but the first speaker is
certain that the star of Waring is destined to rise again
above their horizon.
1. Waring: Alfred Domett (born at Camberwell
Grove, Surrey, May 20, 1811), a friend of Browning's,
distinguished as a poet and as a Colonial statesman and
ruler. His first volume of poems was published in 1832.
Some verses of his in Blackwood's, 1837, attracted much
attention to him as a rising young poet. In 1841 he
was called to the bar, and in 1841 went out to New
Zealand among the earliest settlers. There he lived for
thirty years, filling several important official positions.
His unceremonious departure for New Zealand with no
leave-takings was the occasion of Browning's poem, which
is said by Mrs. Orr to give a lifelike sketch of Domett's
character. His "star" did, however, rise again for his
English friends, for he returned to London in 1871. The
year following saw the publication of his "Ranolf and
Amohia," a New Zealand poem, in the course of which
he characterizes Browning as "Subtlest Asserter of the
Soul in Song." He met Browning again in London, and
was one of the vice-presidents of the London Browning
Society. Died Nov.12, 1877.
15. I left his arm that night myself: George W. Cooke
points out that in his Living Authors of England
Thomas Powell describes this incident, the "young author"
mentioned being himself: "We have a vivid
recollection of the last time we saw him. It was at
an evening party, a few days before he sailed from
England; his intimate friend, Mr. Browning, was also
present. It happened that the latter was introduced that
evening for the first time to a young author who had just
then appeared in the literary world. This, consequently,
prevented the two friends from conversation, and they
parted from each other without the slightest idea on Mr.
Browning's part that he was seeing his old friend Domett
for the last time. Some days after, when he found that
Domett had sailed, he expressed in strong terms to the
writer of this sketch the self-reproach he felt at having
preferred the conversation of a stranger to that of his
old associate."
54. Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrend-ous: a slight transposition
of part of a line in Virgil describing Polyphemus,
"Monstrum horrendum informe ingens," a monster horrid,
misshapen, huge.
55. Demoniaco-seraphic: these two lines form a compound
of adjectives humorously used by Browning to express
the inferiority of the writers he praised to Waring.
99. Ichabod: "Ichabod, the glory is departed." I Samuel
IV. 21.
112. syenite: Egyptian granite
122. Lamb-white maiden: Iphigenia, who was borne
away to Taurus by Diana, when her father, Agamemnon,
was about to sacrifice her to obtain favorable winds for
his expedition to Troy.
152. Caldara Polidore: Surnamed da Caravaggio. He was
born in Milan in 1492, went to Rome and was employed by
Raphael to paint the friezes in the Vatican. He was murdered
by a servant in Messina, 1543.
155. Purcell: an eminent English musician, composer
of church music, operas, songs, and instrumental music.
(1658-1695).—Rosy Bowers: One of Purcell's most
celebrated songs. "'From Rosie Bowers' is said to
have been set in his last sickness, at which time he seems
to have realized the poetical fable of the Swan and to have
sung more sweetly as he approached nearer his dissolution,
for it seems to us as if no one of his productions was
so elevated, so pleasing, so expressive, and throughout so
perfect as this" (Rees's Cyclopaedia, 1819).
190. Garrick: David, an English actor, celebrated
especially for his Shakespearian parts (1716-1779).
193. Junius: the assumed name of a political writer
who in 1769 began to issue in London a series of famous
letters which opposed the ministry in power, and denounced
several eminent persons with severe invective and pungent
sarcasm.
195. Some Chatterton shall have the luck of calling
Rowley into life: the chief claim to celebrity of Thomas
Chatterton (1752-1770) is the real or pretended discovery
of poems said to have been written in the fifteenth century
by Thomas Rowley, a priest of Bristol, and found
in Radcliffe church, of which Chatterton's ancestors had
been sextons for many years. They are now generally
considered Chatterton's own.
