He walked and tapped the pavement with his cane, Scenting the world, looking it full in face.... He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognizance of men and things, If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note.
This is an exact description of the way Robert Browning walked the streets of Florence. Only a few years after this poem was printed, he was glancing o'er the books on stalls in the square of San Lorenzo, and found the old yellow volume which he turned into an epic of humanity. The true poet "scents" the world, smells it out, as a dog locates game. A still stronger expression is used in _Christmas-Eve_, where the poets "pried" at life, turned up its surface in order to disclose all its hidden treasures of meaning.
"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"
Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak? 'Tis you speak, that's your error. Song's our art: Whereas you please to speak these naked thoughts Instead of draping them in sights and sounds. --True thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up! But why such long prolusion and display, Such turning and adjustment of the harp, And taking it upon your breast, at length, Only to speak dry words across its strings? Stark-naked thought is in request enough: Speak prose and hollo it till Europe hears! The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark, Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp-- Exchange our harp for that,--who hinders you?
But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think; Thought's what they mean by verse, and seek in verse. Boys seek for images and melody, Men must have reason--so, you aim at men. Quite otherwise! Objects throng our youth, 'tis true; We see and hear and do not wonder much: If you could tell us what they mean, indeed! As German Boehme never cared for plants Until it happed, a-walking in the fields, He noticed all at once that plants could speak, Nay, turned with loosened tongue to talk with him. That day the daisy had an eye indeed-- Colloquized with the cowslip on such themes! We find them extant yet in Jacob's prose. But by the time youth slips a stage or two While reading prose in that tough book he wrote (Collating and emendating the same And settling on the sense most to our mind), We shut the clasps and find life's summer past. Then, who helps more, pray, to repair our loss-- Another Boehme with a tougher book And subtler meanings of what roses say,-- Or some stout Mage like him of Halberstadt, John, who made things Boehme wrote thoughts about? He with a "look you!" vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, Over us, under, round us every side, Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all,-- Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.