Robert Browning - The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition

Now, my friend, if you had so little religion

As to catch a hawk, some falcon-lanner,

And thrust her broad wings like a banner

Into a coop for a vulgar pigeon;

And if day by day and week by week

You cut her claws, and sealed her eyes,

And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,

Would it cause you any great surprise

If, when you decided to give her an airing,

You found she needed a little preparing?

— I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,

If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?

Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,

Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,

In what a pleasure she was to participate, —

And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,

Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,

As if pressed by fatigue even he could not dissipate,

And duly acknowledged the Duke’s forethought,

But spoke of her health, if her health were worth aught,

Of the weight by day and the watch by night,

And much wrong now that used to be right,

So, thanking him, declined the hunting, —

Was conduct ever more affronting?

With all the ceremony settled —

With the towel ready, and the sewer

Polishing up his oldest ewer,

And the jennet pitched upon, a piebald,

Black-barred, cream-coated and pink eyeballed, —

No wonder if the Duke was nettled

And when she persisted nevertheless, —

Well, I suppose here’s the time to confess

That there ran half round our lady’s chamber

A balcony none of the hardest to clamber;

And that Jacynth the tire-woman, ready in waiting,

Stayed in call outside, what need of relating?

And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent

Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant;

And if she had the habit to peep through the casement,

How could I keep at any vast distance?

And so, as I say, on the lady’s persistence,

The Duke, dumb-stricken with amazement,

Stood for a while in a sultry smother,

And then, with a smile that partook of the awful,

Turned her over to his yellow mother

To learn what was held decorous and lawful;

And the mother smelt blood with a catlike instinct,

As her cheek quick whitened thro’ all its quince-tinct —

Oh, but the lady heard the whole truth at once!

What meant she? — Who was she? — Her duty and station,

The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,

Its decent regard and its fitting relation —

In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free

And turn them out to carouse in a belfry

And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,

And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!

Well, somehow or other it ended at last

And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;

And after her, — making (he hoped) a face

Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,

Stalked the Duke’s self with the austere grace

Of ancient hero or modern paladin, —

From door to staircase — oh such a solemn

Unbending of the vertebral column!

XII.

However, at sunrise our company mustered;

And here was the huntsman bidding unkennel,

And there ‘neath his bonnet the pricker blustered,

With feather dank as a bough of wet fennel;

For the courtyard walls were filled with fog

You might have cut as an axe chops a log —

Like so much wool for colour and bulkiness;

And out rode the Duke in a perfect sulkiness,

Since, before breakfast, a man feels but queasily,

And a sinking at the lower abdomen

Begins the day with indifferent omen:

And lo, as he looked around uneasily,

The sun ploughed the fog up and drove it asunder

This way and that from the valley under;

And, looking through the courtyard arch,

Down in the valley, what should meet him

But a troop of Gipsies on their march?

No doubt with the annual gifts to greet him.

XIII.

Now, in your land, Gipsies reach you, only

After reaching all lands beside;

North they go, South they go, trooping or lonely,

And still, as they travel far and wide,

Catch they and keep now a trace here, trace there,

That puts you in mind of a place here, a place there.

But with us, I believe they rise out of the ground,

And nowhere else, I take it, are found

With the earth-tint yet so freshly embrowned:

Born, no doubt, like insects which breed on

The very fruit they are meant to feed on.

For the earth — not a use to which they don’t turn it,

The ore that grows in the mountain’s womb,

Or the sand in the pits like a honeycomb,

They sift and soften it, bake it and burn it —

Whether they weld you, for instance, a snaffle

With side-bars never a brute can baffle;

Or a lock that’s a puzzle of wards within wards;

Or, if your colt’s fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,

Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel

And won’t allow the hoof to shrivel.

Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle

That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;

But the sand — they pinch and pound it like otters;

Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!

Glasses they’ll blow you, crystal-clear,

Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,

As if in pure water you dropped and let die

A bruised black-blooded mulberry;

And that other sort, their crowning pride,

With long white threads distinct inside,

Like the lake-flower’s fibrous roots which dangle

Loose such a length and never tangle,

Where the bold sword-lily cuts the clear waters,

And the cup-lily couches with all the white daughters:

Such are the works they put their hand to,

The uses they turn and twist iron and sand to.

And these made the troop, which our Duke saw sally

Toward his castle from out of the valley,

Men and women, like new-hatched spiders,

Come out with the morning to greet our riders.

And up they wound till they reached the ditch,

Whereat all stopped save one, a witch

That I knew, as she hobbled from the group,

By her gait, directly, and her stoop,

I, whom Jacynth was used to importune

To let that same witch tell us our fortune.

The oldest Gipsy then above ground;

And, sure as the autumn season came round,

She paid us a visit for profit or pastime,

And every time, as she swore, for the last time.

And presently she was seen to sidle

Up to the Duke till she touched his bridle,

So that the horse of a sudden reared up

As under its nose the old witch peered up

With her worn-out eyes, or rather eye-holes

Of no use now but to gather brine,

And began a kind of level whine

Such as they used to sing to their viols

When their ditties they go grinding

Up and down with nobody minding:

And then, as of old, at the end of the humming

Her usual presents were forthcoming

— A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,

(Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)

Or a porcelain mouthpiece to screw on a pipe-end, —

And so she awaited her annual stipend.

But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe

A word in reply; and in vain she felt

With twitching fingers at her belt

For the purse of sleek pine-martin pelt,

Ready to put what he gave in her pouch safe, —

Till, either to quicken his apprehension,

Or possibly with an after-intention,

She was come, she said, to pay her duty

To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.

No sooner had she named his lady,

Than a shine lit up the face so shady,