{"id":207,"date":"2014-06-17T21:50:04","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T21:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/?post_type=chapter&p=207"},"modified":"2014-09-26T18:43:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T18:43:49","slug":"the-bishop-orders-his-tomb-at-saint-praxeds-church","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/chapter\/the-bishop-orders-his-tomb-at-saint-praxeds-church\/","title":{"raw":"The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed\u2019s Church","rendered":"The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed\u2019s Church"},"content":{"raw":"Rome[footnote]The Basilica of Santa Prassede, commemorating a virgin saint who gave her wealth to the poor, is in Rome. It has no tomb such as that imagined by Browning\u2019s Bishop.[\/footnote]\u00a015\u2013\r\n\r\nVanity, saith the preacher, vanity![footnote]cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2: \u201cVanity of vanities, saith the Preacher...all is vanity.\u201d[\/footnote]\r\nDraw round my bed: is Anselm[footnote]One of the bishop\u2019s illegitimate sons, euphemistically referred to as \u201cnephews.\u201d[\/footnote]\u00a0keeping back?\r\nNephews \u2014 sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well \u2014\r\nShe, men would have to be your mother once,\r\nOld Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!\r\nWhat's done is done, and she is dead beside,\r\nDead long ago, and I am Bishop since,\r\nAnd as she died so must we die ourselves,\r\nAnd thence ye may perceive the world's a dream.\r\nLife, how and what is it? As here I lie 10\r\nIn this state-chamber, dying by degrees,\r\nHours and long hours in the dead night, I ask\r\n\"Do I live, am I dead?\" Peace, peace seems all.\r\nSaint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;\r\nAnd so, about this tomb of mine. I fought\r\nWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:\r\n\u2014 Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;\r\nShrewd was that snatch from out the corner South\r\nHe graced his carrion with. God curse the same!\r\nYet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20\r\nOne sees the pulpit o' the epistle-side[footnote]The people\u2019s right side of the altar from which the Epistle is read during Mass.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,\r\nAnd up into the aery dome where live\r\nThe angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk;\r\nAnd I shall fill my slab of basalt there,\r\nAnd 'neath my tabernacle[footnote]Canopy over a tomb.[\/footnote]\u00a0take my rest,\r\nWith those nine columns round me, two and two,\r\nThe odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:\r\nPeach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe\r\nAs fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30\r\n\u2014 Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone[footnote]Cheap marble.[\/footnote],\r\nPut me where I may look at him! True peach,\r\nRosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!\r\nDraw close: that conflagration of my church\r\n\u2014 What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!\r\nMy sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig\r\nThe white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,\r\nDrop water gently till the surface sink,\r\nAnd if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .\r\nBedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40\r\nAnd corded up in a tight olive-frail,\r\nSome lump, ah God, of , lapis lazuli<\/em>[footnote]Semi-precious blue stone.[\/footnote],\r\nBig as a Jew's head cut off at the nape,\r\nBlue as a vein o'er the Madonna's breast . . .\r\nSons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,\r\nThat brave Frascati[footnote]A resort town near Rome.[\/footnote]\u00a0villa with its bath,\r\nSo, let the blue lump poise between my knees,\r\nLike God the Father's globe on both his hands\r\nYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay,\r\nFor Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50\r\nSwift as a weaver's shuttle[footnote]cf. Job 7.9: \u201cMy days are swifter than a weaver\u2019s shuttle, and are spent without hope.\u201d[\/footnote]\u00a0fleet our years:\r\nMan goeth to the grave, and where is he?\r\nDid I say basalt[footnote]Greenish or brown-black rock often used for tombstones.[\/footnote]\u00a0for my slab, sons? Black \u2014\r\n'T was ever antique-black[footnote]Black stone, costlier than basalt.[\/footnote]\u00a0I meant! How else\r\nShall ye contrast my frieze[footnote]A band of painted or sculpted decoration.[\/footnote]\u00a0to come beneath?\r\nThe bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,\r\nThose Pans and Nymphs[footnote]Pan, Greek god of the forest, often associated with sexual license. Nymphs are beautiful maidens. Here the bishop confuses the worldly with the spiritual, the pagan with the Christian, in his ideas for the bas-relief sculptures.[\/footnote]\u00a0ye wot of, and perchance\r\nSome tripod, thyrsus[footnote]Ornamented staff of Bacchus.[\/footnote], with a vase or so,\r\nThe Saviour at his sermon on the mount,\r\nSaint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60\r\nReady to twitch the Nymph's last garment off,\r\nAnd Moses with the tables . . . but I know\r\nYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee,\r\nChild of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope\r\nTo revel down my villas while I gasp\r\nBricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine[footnote]Limestone.[\/footnote]\r\nWhich Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!\r\nNay, boys, ye love me \u2014 all of jasper[footnote]Translucent green quartz.[\/footnote], then!\r\n'T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.\r\nMy bath must needs be left behind, alas! 70\r\nOne block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,\r\nThere's plenty jasper somewhere in the world \u2014\r\nAnd have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray\r\nHorses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,\r\nAnd mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?\r\n\u2014 That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,\r\nChoice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's[footnote]Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Great Roman philosopher, linguist, and orator.[\/footnote]\u00a0every word,\r\nNo gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line \u2014\r\nTully, my masters? Ulpian[footnote]Domitius Ulpianus (AD 170-228). A Roman jurist whose style was considered inferior to that of Cicero.[\/footnote]\u00a0serves his need!\r\nAnd then how I shall lie through centuries, 80\r\nAnd hear the blessed mutter of the mass,\r\nAnd see God made and eaten[footnote]Slurring allusion to the doctrine of transubstantiation.[\/footnote]\u00a0all day long,\r\nAnd feel the steady candle-flame, and taste\r\nGood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!\r\nFor as I lie here, hours of the dead night,\r\nDying in state and by such slow degrees,\r\nI fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,\r\nAnd stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point[footnote]The tomb would be surmounted by a recumbent effigy of the occupant.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop\r\nInto great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: 90\r\nAnd as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts\r\nGrow, with a certain humming in my ears,\r\nAbout the life before I lived this life,\r\nAnd this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,\r\nSaint Praxed at his sermon on the mount[footnote]The bishop confuses St. Praxed, a woman, with Christ, who gave the Sermon on the Mount.[\/footnote],\r\nYour tall pale mother with her talking eyes,\r\nAnd new-found agate urns as fresh as day,\r\nAnd marble's language, Latin pure, discreet,\r\n\u2014 Aha, ELUCESCEBAT[footnote]\u201cHe was illustrious,\u201d the Ulpian Latin chosen for Gandolf\u2019s tomb by the bishop. Ciceronian Latin would be \u201celucebat.\u201d[\/footnote]\u00a0quoth our friend?\r\nNo Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100\r\nEvil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.[footnote]cf. Genesis 47.9.[\/footnote]\r\nAll lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope\r\nMy villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?\r\nEver your eyes were as a lizard's quick,\r\nThey glitter like your mother's for my soul,\r\nOr ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,\r\nPiece out its starved design, and fill my vase\r\nWith grapes, and add a vizor and a Term[footnote]A vizor is the mask of a helmet; \u201cTerm\u201d refers to a bust on a pedestal, erected to honour Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries.[\/footnote],\r\nAnd to the tripod ye would tie a lynx\r\nThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110\r\nTo comfort me on my entablature[footnote]Platform.[\/footnote]\r\nWhereon I am to lie till I must ask\r\n\"Do I live, am I dead?\" There, leave me, there!\r\nFor ye have stabbed me with ingratitude\r\nTo death \u2014 ye wish it \u2014 God, ye wish it! Stone \u2014\r\nGritstone[footnote]Cheap sandstone.[\/footnote], a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat\r\nAs if the corpse they keep were oozing through \u2014\r\nAnd no more lapis to delight the world!\r\nWell go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,\r\nBut in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120\r\n\u2014 Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,\r\nAnd leave me in my church, the church for peace,\r\nThat I may watch at leisure if he leers \u2014\r\nOld Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,\r\nAs still he envied me, so fair she was!\r\n\r\n\u20141845\r\n
\r\n
\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

Rome[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a015\u2013<\/p>\n

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity![2]<\/sup><\/a>
\nDraw round my bed: is Anselm[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0keeping back?
\nNephews \u2014 sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well \u2014
\nShe, men would have to be your mother once,
\nOld Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
\nWhat’s done is done, and she is dead beside,
\nDead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
\nAnd as she died so must we die ourselves,
\nAnd thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
\nLife, how and what is it? As here I lie 10
\nIn this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
\nHours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
\n“Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
\nSaint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;
\nAnd so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
\nWith tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
\n\u2014 Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
\nShrewd was that snatch from out the corner South
\nHe graced his carrion with. God curse the same!
\nYet still my niche is not so cramped but thence 20
\nOne sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side[4]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nAnd somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
\nAnd up into the aery dome where live
\nThe angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk;
\nAnd I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
\nAnd ‘neath my tabernacle[5]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0take my rest,
\nWith those nine columns round me, two and two,
\nThe odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
\nPeach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
\nAs fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 30
\n\u2014 Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone[6]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nPut me where I may look at him! True peach,
\nRosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
\nDraw close: that conflagration of my church
\n\u2014 What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
\nMy sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
\nThe white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
\nDrop water gently till the surface sink,
\nAnd if ye find . . . Ah God, I know not, I! . . .
\nBedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft, 40
\nAnd corded up in a tight olive-frail,
\nSome lump, ah God, of , lapis lazuli<\/em>[7]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nBig as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape,
\nBlue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast . . .
\nSons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
\nThat brave Frascati[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0villa with its bath,
\nSo, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
\nLike God the Father’s globe on both his hands
\nYe worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
\nFor Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst! 50
\nSwift as a weaver’s shuttle[9]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0fleet our years:
\nMan goeth to the grave, and where is he?
\nDid I say basalt[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0for my slab, sons? Black \u2014
\n‘T was ever antique-black[11]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0I meant! How else
\nShall ye contrast my frieze[12]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to come beneath?
\nThe bas-relief in bronze ye promised me,
\nThose Pans and Nymphs[13]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0ye wot of, and perchance
\nSome tripod, thyrsus[14]<\/sup><\/a>, with a vase or so,
\nThe Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
\nSaint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan 60
\nReady to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
\nAnd Moses with the tables . . . but I know
\nYe mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
\nChild of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
\nTo revel down my villas while I gasp
\nBricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine[15]<\/sup><\/a>
\nWhich Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
\nNay, boys, ye love me \u2014 all of jasper[16]<\/sup><\/a>, then!
\n‘T is jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
\nMy bath must needs be left behind, alas! 70
\nOne block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
\nThere’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world \u2014
\nAnd have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray
\nHorses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
\nAnd mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
\n\u2014 That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,
\nChoice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s[17]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0every word,
\nNo gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line \u2014
\nTully, my masters? Ulpian[18]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0serves his need!
\nAnd then how I shall lie through centuries, 80
\nAnd hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
\nAnd see God made and eaten[19]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0all day long,
\nAnd feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
\nGood strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
\nFor as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
\nDying in state and by such slow degrees,
\nI fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
\nAnd stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point[20]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nAnd let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
\nInto great laps and folds of sculptor’s-work: 90
\nAnd as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
\nGrow, with a certain humming in my ears,
\nAbout the life before I lived this life,
\nAnd this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
\nSaint Praxed at his sermon on the mount[21]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nYour tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
\nAnd new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
\nAnd marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,
\n\u2014 Aha, ELUCESCEBAT[22]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0quoth our friend?
\nNo Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best! 100
\nEvil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.[23]<\/sup><\/a>
\nAll lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
\nMy villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
\nEver your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,
\nThey glitter like your mother’s for my soul,
\nOr ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
\nPiece out its starved design, and fill my vase
\nWith grapes, and add a vizor and a Term[24]<\/sup><\/a>,
\nAnd to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
\nThat in his struggle throws the thyrsus down, 110
\nTo comfort me on my entablature[25]<\/sup><\/a>
\nWhereon I am to lie till I must ask
\n“Do I live, am I dead?” There, leave me, there!
\nFor ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
\nTo death \u2014 ye wish it \u2014 God, ye wish it! Stone \u2014
\nGritstone[26]<\/sup><\/a>, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
\nAs if the corpse they keep were oozing through \u2014
\nAnd no more lapis to delight the world!
\nWell go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
\nBut in a row: and, going, turn your backs 120
\n\u2014 Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
\nAnd leave me in my church, the church for peace,
\nThat I may watch at leisure if he leers \u2014
\nOld Gandolf, at me, from his onion-stone,
\nAs still he envied me, so fair she was!<\/p>\n

\u20141845<\/p>\n

\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

  1. The Basilica of Santa Prassede, commemorating a virgin saint who gave her wealth to the poor, is in Rome. It has no tomb such as that imagined by Browning\u2019s Bishop. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  2. cf. Ecclesiastes 1.2: \u201cVanity of vanities, saith the Preacher...all is vanity.\u201d ↵<\/a><\/li>
  3. One of the bishop\u2019s illegitimate sons, euphemistically referred to as \u201cnephews.\u201d ↵<\/a><\/li>
  4. The people\u2019s right side of the altar from which the Epistle is read during Mass. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  5. Canopy over a tomb. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  6. Cheap marble. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  7. Semi-precious blue stone. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  8. A resort town near Rome. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  9. cf. Job 7.9: \u201cMy days are swifter than a weaver\u2019s shuttle, and are spent without hope.\u201d ↵<\/a><\/li>
  10. Greenish or brown-black rock often used for tombstones. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  11. Black stone, costlier than basalt. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  12. A band of painted or sculpted decoration. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  13. Pan, Greek god of the forest, often associated with sexual license. Nymphs are beautiful maidens. Here the bishop confuses the worldly with the spiritual, the pagan with the Christian, in his ideas for the bas-relief sculptures. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  14. Ornamented staff of Bacchus. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  15. Limestone. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  16. Translucent green quartz. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  17. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Great Roman philosopher, linguist, and orator. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  18. Domitius Ulpianus (AD 170-228). A Roman jurist whose style was considered inferior to that of Cicero. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  19. Slurring allusion to the doctrine of transubstantiation. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  20. The tomb would be surmounted by a recumbent effigy of the occupant. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  21. The bishop confuses St. Praxed, a woman, with Christ, who gave the Sermon on the Mount. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  22. \u201cHe was illustrious,\u201d the Ulpian Latin chosen for Gandolf\u2019s tomb by the bishop. Ciceronian Latin would be \u201celucebat.\u201d ↵<\/a><\/li>
  23. cf. Genesis 47.9. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  24. A vizor is the mask of a helmet; \u201cTerm\u201d refers to a bust on a pedestal, erected to honour Terminus, the Roman god of boundaries. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  25. Platform. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  26. Cheap sandstone. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"menu_order":4,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["robert-browning"],"pb_section_license":"public-domain"},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[57],"license":[78],"class_list":["post-207","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-robert-browning","license-public-domain"],"part":200,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/207\/revisions\/1818"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/200"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/207\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}