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

And its smirk returned with a novel meaning —

For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;

If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,

She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;

And who so fit a teacher of trouble

As this sordid crone bent wellnigh double?

So, glancing at her wolfskin vesture,

(If such it was, for they grow so hirsute

That their own fleece serves for natural fur-suit)

He was contrasting, ’twas plain from his gesture,

The life of the lady so flower-like and delicate

With the loathsome squalor of this helicat.

I, in brief, was the man the Duke beckoned

From out of the throng, and while I drew near

He told the crone — as I since have reckoned

By the way he bent and spoke into her ear

With circumspection and mystery,

The main of the Lady’s history,

Her frowardness and ingratitude:

And for all the crone’s submissive attitude

I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,

And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,

As though she engaged with hearty goodwill

Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,

And promised the lady a thorough frightening.

And so, just giving her a glimpse

Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps

The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,

He bade me take the Gipsy mother

And set her telling some story or other

Of hill or dale, oak-wood or fernshaw,

To wile away a weary hour

For the lady left alone in her bower,

Whose mind and body craved exertion

And yet shrank from all better diversion.

XIV.

Then clapping heel to his horse, the mere curvetter,

Out rode the Duke, and after his hollo

Horses and hounds swept, huntsman and servitor,

And back I turned and bade the crone follow.

And what makes me confident what’s to be told you

Had all along been of this crone’s devising,

Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,

There was a novelty quick as surprising:

For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,

And her step kept pace with mine nor faultered,

As if age had foregone its usurpature,

And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,

And the face looked quite of another nature,

And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,

Her shaggy wolfskin cloak’s arrangement:

For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,

Gold coins were glittering on the edges,

Like the band-roll strung with tomans

Which proves the veil a Persian woman’s:

And under her brow, like a snail’s horns newly

Come out as after the rain he paces,

Two unmistakeable eye-points duly

Live and aware looked out of their places.

So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry

Of the lady’s chamber standing sentry;

I told the command and produced my companion,

And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,

For since last night, by the same token,

Not a single word had the lady spoken:

They went in both to the presence together,

While I in the balcony watched the weather.

XV.

And now, what took place at the very first of all,

I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:

Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall

On that little head of hers and burn it,

If she knew how she came to drop so soundly

Asleep of a sudden and there continue

The whole time sleeping as profoundly

As one of the boars my father would pin you

‘Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,

— Jacynth forgive me the comparison!

But where I begin my own narration

Is a little after I took my station

To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,

And, having in those days a falcon eye,

To follow the hunt thro’ the open country,

From where the bushes thinlier crested

The hillocks, to a plain where’s not one tree.

When, in a moment, my ear was arrested

By — was it singing, or was it saying,

Or a strange musical instrument playing

In the chamber? — and to be certain

I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,

And there lay Jacynth asleep,

Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,

In a rosy sleep along the floor

With her head against the door;

While in the midst, on the seat of state,

Was a queen — the Gipsy woman late,

With head and face downbent

On the Lady’s head and face intent:

For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,

The lady sate between her knees

And o’er them the Lady’s clasped hands met,

And on those hands her chin was set,

And her upturned face met the face of the crone

Wherein the eyes had grown and grown

As if she could double and quadruple

At pleasure the play of either pupil

— Very like, by her hands’ slow fanning,

As up and down like a gor-crow’s flappers

They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.

I said Is it blessing, is it banning,

Do they applaud you or burlesque you?

Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?

But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,

At once I was stopped by the lady’s expression:

For it was life her eyes were drinking

From the crone’s wide pair above unwinking,

Life’s pure fire received without shrinking,

Into the heart and breast whose heaving

Told you no single drop they were leaving, —

Life, that filling her, passed redundant

Into her very hair, back swerving

Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,

As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;

And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,

Moving to the mystic measure,

Bounding as the bosom bounded.

I stopped short, more and more confounded,

As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,

As she listened and she listened, —

When all at once a hand detained me,

The selfsame contagion gained me,

And I kept time to the wondrous chime,

Making out words and prose and rhyme,

Till it seemed that the music furled

Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped

From under the words it first had propped,

And left them midway in the world,

Word took word as hand takes hand,

I could hear at last, and understand,

And when I held the unbroken thread,

The Gipsy said: —

“And so at last we find my tribe.

“And so I set thee in the midst,

“And to one and all of them describe

“What thou saidst and what thou didst,

“Our long and terrible journey through,

“And all thou art ready to say and do

“In the trials that remain:

“I trace them the vein and the other vein

“That meet on thy brow and part again,

“Making our rapid mystic mark;

“And I bid my people prove and probe

“Each eye’s profound and glorious globe

“Till they detect the kindred spark

“In those depths so dear and dark,

“Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,

“Circling over the midnight sea.

“And on that round young cheek of thine

“I make them recognize the tinge,

“As when of the costly scarlet wine

“They drip so much as will impinge

“And spread in a thinnest scale afloat

“One thick gold drop from the olive’s coat

“Over a silver plate whose sheen

“Still thro’ the mixture shall be seen.

“For so I prove thee, to one and all,

“Fit, when my people ope their breast,

“To see the sign, and hear the call,

“And take the vow, and stand the test

“Which adds one more child to the rest —

“When the breast is bare and the arms are wide,