Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question Ive put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, were alone in the loft,
I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead through, and done with, this many a year:
Lets have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up its ear!
See, the church empties apace:
Fast they extinguish the lights.
Hallo there, sacristan! Five minutes grace!
Heres a crank pedal wants setting to rights,
Baulks one of holding the base.
See, our huge house of the sounds,
Hushing its hundreds at once,
Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds!
O you may challenge them, not a response
Get the church-saints on their rounds!
(Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt?
March, with the moon to admire,
Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about,
Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire,
Put rats and mice to the rout
Aloys and Jurien and Just
Order things back to their place,
Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust,
Rub the church-plate, darn the sacrament-lace,
Clear the desk-velvet of dust.)
Heres you book, younger folks shelve!
Played I not off-hand and runningly,
Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve?
Heres what should strike, could one handle it cunningly:
Help the axe, give it a helve!
Page after page as I played,
Every bars rest, where one wipes
Sweat from ones brow, I looked up and surveyed,
Oer my three claviers, yon forest of pipes
Whence you still peeped in the shade.
Sure you were wishful to speak,
You, with brow ruled like a score,
Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek,
Like two great breves, as they wrote them of yore,
Each side that bar, your straight beak!
Sure you said Good, the mere notes!
Still, couldst thou take my intent,
Know what procured me our Companys votes
A master were lauded and sciolists shent,
Parted the sheep from the goats!
Well then, speak up, never flinch!
Quick, ere my candles a snuff
Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch
I believe in you, but thats not enough:
Give my conviction a clinch!
First you deliver your phrase
Nothing propound, that I see,
Fit in itself for much blame or much praise
Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
Off start the Two on their ways.
Straight must a Third interpose,
Volunteer needlessly help;
In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
So the crys open, the kennels a-yelp,
Arguments hot to the close.
One dissertates, he is candid;
Two must discept, has distinguished;
Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;
Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished:
Back to One, goes the case bandied.
One says his say with a difference;
More of expounding, explaining!
All now is wrangle, abuse and vociferance;
Now theres a truce, alls subdued, self-restraining;
Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.
One is incisive, corrosive;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:
Five. . . O Danaides, O Sieve!
Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobars
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the two-bars?
Est fuga, volitur rota.
One we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!
What with affirming, denying,
Holding, risposting, subjoining,
Alls like. . . its like. . . for an instant Im trying. . .
There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
Under those spider-webs lying!
So your fugue broadens and thickens,
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
Till we exclaim But wheres the music, the dickens?
Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens
Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?
I for mans effort am zealous:
Prove me such censure unfounded!
Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous -
Hopes t was for something, his organ-pipes sounded,
Tiring three boys at the bellows?
Is it your moral of life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we in earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife?
Over our heads truth and nature
Still our lifes zigzags and dodges,
Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature
Gods gold just shining its last where that lodges,
Palled beneath mans usurpature.
So we oershroud stars and roses,
Cherub and trophy and garland;
Nothings grow something which quietly closes
Heavens earnest eye: not a glimpse of the far land
Gets through our comments and glozes.
Ah but traditions, inventions,
(Say we and make up a visage)
So many men with such various intentions,
Down the past ages, must know more than this age!
Leave we the web its dimensions!
Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,
Proved a mere mountain in labour?
Better submit; try again; whats the clef?
Faith, t is no trifle for pipe and for tabor
Four flats, the minor in F.
Friend, your fugue taxes the finger:
Learning it once, who would lose it?
Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,
Truths golden oer us although we refuse it
Nature, thro cobwebs we string her.
Hugues! I advise meâ poenâ
(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)
Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,
Blare out the mode Palestrina.
While in the roof, if Im right there,
. . . Lo you, the wick in the socket!
Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket.
What, you want, do you, to come unawares,
Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor devil has ended his cares
At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?
Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha
Robert Browning
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