A Grammarian’s Funeral
Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe
by Robert Browning

   
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,  
          Singing together.  
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes            
          Each in its tether  
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,  
          Cared-for till cock-crow:  
Look out if yonder be not day again  
          Rimming the rock-row!  
’That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought,  
          Rarer, intenser, 10
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,  
          Chafes in the censer.  
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;  
          Seek we sepulture  
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,  
          Crowded with culture!  
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;  
          Clouds overcome it;  
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel’s  
          Circling its summit. 20
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:  
          Wait ye the warning?  
Our low life was the level’s and the night’s;  
          He’s for the morning.  
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,  
          ’Ware the beholders!  
This is our master, famous, calm and dead,  
          Borne on our shoulders.  
   
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,  
          Safe from the weather! 30
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,  
          Singing together,  
He was a man born with thy face and throat,  
          Lyric Apollo!  
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note  
          Winter would follow?  
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!  
          Cramped and diminished,  
Moaned he, “New measures, other feet anon!  
          My dance is finished”? 40
No, that’s the world’s way: (keep the mountain-side,  
          Make for the city!)  
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride  
          Over men’s pity;  
Left play for work, and grappled with the world  
          Bent on escaping:  
“What’s in the scroll,” quoth he, “thou keepest furled  
          Show me their shaping,  
Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage, —  
          Give!”— So, he gowned him, 50
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:  
           Learned, we found him.  
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,  
          Accents uncertain:  
“Time to taste life,” another would have said,  
           “Up with the curtain!”  
This man said rather, “Actual life comes next?  
          Patience a moment!  
Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text,  
          Still there’s the comment. 60
Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,  
          Painful or easy!  
Even to the crumbs I’d fain eat up the feast,  
          Ay, nor feel queasy.”  
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,  
          When he had learned it,  
When he had gathered all books had to give!  
          Sooner, he spurned it.  
Image the whole, then execute the parts —  
          Fancy the fabric 70
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,  
          Ere mortar dab brick!  
   
(Here's the town-gate reached: there’s the market-place  
          Gaping before us.)  
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace  
          (Hearten our chorus!)  
That before living he’d learn how to live —  
          No end to learning:  
Earn the means first — God surely will contrive  
          Use for our earning. 80
Others mistrust and say, “But time escapes:  
          Live now or never!”  
He said, “What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!  
          Man has Forever.”  
Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:  
          Calculus racked him:  
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:  
          Tussis attacked him.  
“Now, master, take a little rest!”— not he!  
          (Caution redoubled  90
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)  
          Not a whit troubled,  
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,  
          Fierce as a dragon  
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)  
          Sucked at the flagon.  
Oh, if we draw a circle premature,  
          Heedless of far gain,  
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure  
          Bad is our bargain! 100
Was it not great? did not he throw on God  
          (He loves the burthen) —  
God’s task to make the heavenly period,  
          Perfect the earthen?  
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear  
           Just what it all meant?  
He would not discount life, as fools do here,  
          Paid by instalment.  
He ventured neck or nothing — heaven’s success  
          Found, or earth’s failure: 110
“Wilt thou trust death or not?” He answered “Yes:  
          Hence with life’s pale lure!”  
That low man seeks a little thing to do,  
          Sees it and does it:  
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,  
          Dies ere he knows it.  
That low man goes on adding one to one,  
          His hundred’s soon hit:  
This high man, aiming at a million,  
          Misses an unit. 120
That, has the world here — should he need the next,  
          Let the world mind him!  
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed  
          Seeking shall find him.  
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,  
          Ground he at grammar;  
Still, thro’ the rattle, parts of speech were rife:  
          While he could stammer  
He settled Hoti’s business — let it be! —  
          Properly based Oun — 130
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,  
          Dead from the waist down.  
Well, here’s the platform, here's the proper place:  
          Hail to your purlieus,  
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,  
          Swallows and curlews!  
Here’s the top-peak; the multitude below  
          Live, for they can, there:  
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 lying,  
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects,  
          Living and dying.  

 
A Grammarian’s Funeral: Shortly after the Revival of Learning in Europe — The grammarian in this poem is not a specific historical person, but rather an example of a type. As with many of his poems, Browning sets it during the Renaissance in Italy, in this case the 14th century, which is early in the Renaissance. The grammarian is a man who has devoted his life to the recovery of classical learning through the study of Greek. Note that the speaker is one of his students and is leading the funeral procession, so he sometimes interrupts what he is saying in order to issue instructions to the other men carrying the coffin.
 
vulgar thorpes — vulgar in the sense of common; thorpes are small villages or hamlets.
 
censer — an incense burner
 
unlettered — illiterate or ignorant
 
sepulture — a burial place, not to be confused with sepulchre, which is an above-ground enclosed tomb made of stone or similar material
 
master — teacher or school-master
 
’Ware the beholders! — be aware of the people watching us
 
Apollo — the Greek god associated with music and poetry, among many other things
 
nameless — without fame
 
new measures, other feet — measures are divisions of line of music, while feet are divisions of a line of verse. Note that the meaning here is the the grammarian would not have said this.
 
he gowned him — became a scholar (scholars wore academic gowns, as they do today in graduation ceremonies)
 
“Up with the curtain!” — as in the lifting of the curtain at the beginning of a play
 
Still there’s the comment — in other words, even after the grammarian has figured out a difficult text, he is not done because now he has to read all the people who have commented on that text over the centuries
 
fabric — structure or composition of something
 
Man has Forever — man, having an immortal soul, literally has all of eternity to enjoy existence, while other living creatures do not
 
Calculus — not the mathematical subject, this word meaning the stone refers to kidney stones or gall-stones. Thus the grammarian’s health declined, probably at least partly due to his focus on his vocation.
 
Tussis — a cough due to congestion in the bronchial tubes or the lungs (it is where we get the name of the cough syrup Robitussin)
 
hydroptic — having an excessive thirst (but note the combination with soul)
 
Hence — in this usage, a command meaning away! Thus, the grammarian is dismissing life’s pale lure, presumably meaning all the usual joys and satisfactions life offers
 
Hoti —a Greek particle meaning that.
 
Oun — another Greek particle, this one meaning then.
 
the enclitic De — a Greek particle meaning toward, but this one also alters the way the syllables in the word to which it is attached are stressed
 
dead from the waist down — in a letter to the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Browning used this phrase to describe the grammarian and says he devoted himself to “the biggest of the littlenesses.”
 
purlieus — the places where one usually spends time, one’s usual haunts; note that the speaker is addressing the birds here