This man decided not to Live but Know-- Bury this man there? 140 Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, Peace let the dew send! Lofty designs must close in like effects: Loftily Iying, Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, Living and dying.
NOTES: "A Grammarian's Funeral" is an elegy of a typical pioneer scholar of the Renaissance period, sung by the leader of the chorus of disciples, and interspersed with parenthetical directions to them, while they all bear the body of their master to its appropriate burial-place on the highest mountain-peak. A humorous sense of disproportion in the labors of devoted scholarship to its results heightens their exaltation of the dead humanist's indomitable trust in the supremacy of the immaterial.
129. Hoti: Greek particle, conjunction, that.
130. Oun: Greek particle, then, now then.
131. Enclitic De: Greek, concerning which Browning wrote to the Editor of The News, London, Nov. 21, 1874: "In a clever article you speak of 'the doctrine of the enclitic De--which, with all deference to Mr. Browning, in point of fact, does not exist.' No, not to Mr. Browning, but pray defer to Herr Buttmann, whose fifth list of 'enclitics' ends with the inseparable De,'-- or to Curtius, whose fifth list ends also with De (meaning 'towards' and as a demonstrative appendage). That this is not to be confounded with the accentuated 'De, meaning but,' was the 'Doctrine' which the Grammarian bequeathed to those capable of receiving it."
ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS. A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT, CANON-REGULAR OF SAINT JODOCUS-BY- THE-BAR, YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, Virgilius. AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALS. GAVISUS ERAM, Jessides.
(It would seem to be a glimpse from the burning of Jacques du Bourg-Molay, at Paris, A.D. 1314, as distorted by the refraction from Flemish brain to brain, during the course of a couple of centuries.)
[Molay was Grand Master of the Templars when that order was suppressed in 1312.]
The Lord, we look to once for all, Is the Lord we should look at, all at once: He knows not to vary, saith Saint Paul, Nor the shadow of turning, for the nonce. See him no other than as he is! Give both the infinitudes their due-- Infinite mercy, but, I wis, As infinite a justice too.