The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

3. Bishop Gandolf shrewdly chose a prize spot in 9. Basket for holding olives. the southern corner of the church for his huriai 1. Valuable bright blue stone. place. The tomb that the speaker is ordering will 2. Perhaps a reference to the head of John the also be inside the church, as was common for Baptist, cut off at Salome's request (Matthew important people in this era. 14.6-11). 4. The Epistles of the New Testament are read 3. Suburb of Rome, used as a resort by wealthy from the right-hand side of the altar (as one faces Italians. it). 4. II Gesu, a Jesuit church in Rome. In a chapel 5. Dark-colored igneous rock. in this church the figure of an angel (rather than 6. Stone canopy or tentlike roof, presumably sup-God) holds a huge lump of lapis lazuli in his hands. ported by the "nine columns" under which the 5. Cf. Job 7.6. sculptured effigy of the bishop would lie on the 6. I.e., black marble. "slab of basalt." 7. Continuous band of sculpture. 7. A pulpy mash of fermented grapes from which 8. Sculpture in which the figures do not project a strong wine might be poured off. far from the background surface. 8. An inferior marble that peels in layers.

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TH E BISHO P ORDER S HI S TOM B / 126 1 Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, The Saviour at his sermon on the mount, 60 Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan Ready to twitch the Nymph's last garment off, And Moses with the tables9 . . . but I know Ye mark0 me not! What do they whisper thee, heed Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope 65 To revel down my villas while I gasp Bricked o'er with beggar's moldy travertine0 Italian limestone Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! Nay, boys, ye love me�all of jasper, then! 'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve 70 My bath must needs be left behind, alas! One block, pure green as a pistachio nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world� And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, 75 And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? �That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's1 every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line� Tully, my masters? Ulpian2 serves his need! so And then how I shall lie through centuries, And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long,3 And feel the steady candle flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! 85 For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,0 bishop's staff And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth,4 drop 90 Into great laps and folds of sculptor's-work: And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts Grow, with a certain humming in my ears, About the life before I lived this life, And this life too, popes, cardinals, and priests, 95 Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,5 Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes, And new-found agate urns as fresh as day, And marble's language, Latin pure, discreet

�Aha, ELUCESCEBAT6 quoth our friend?

9. The sculpture would consist of a mixture of ists of classical Latin prose. pagan and Christian iconography. "Tripod": seat 2. Late Latin author of legal commentaries (d. on which the Oracle of Delphi made prophecies. 228 C.E.) ; not a mode! of good style. "Thyrsus": a staff twined with ivy that was carried, 3. Reference to the doctrine of transubstantiation. according to Greek mythology, by Dionysus, god of 4. Rich cloth spread over a dead body or coffin. wine and fertility. "Glory": halo. "Tables": the stone 5. The bishop is confusing St. Praxed (a woman) tablets on which the Ten Commandments were with Jesus�an indication that his mind is wan- written. Such intermingling of pagan and Chris-dering. tian traditions, characteristic of the Renaissance, 6. He was illustrious (Latin); word from Gandolf's had been attacked in 1841 in Contrasts, a book on epitaph. The bishop considers the form of the verb architecture by A. W. Pugin, a Roman Catholic. to be in "gaudy" bad taste (line 78). If the epitaph 1 . I.e., Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-4 3 B.C.E.) , had been copied from Cicero instead of from orator and statesman who was one of the great styl-Ulpian, the word would have been elucebat.

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1262 / ROBERT BROWNING

100 No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!

Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.7

All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope

My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?

Ever your eyes were as a lizard's quick,

105 They glitter like your mother's for my soul, Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,

Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase

With grapes, and add a vizor and a Term,8

And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx9

i io That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,

To comfort me on my entablature1

Whereon I am to lie till I must ask

"Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there!

For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude