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

All’s the set face of a child:

But behind it, where’s a trace

Of the staidness and reserve,

And formal lines without a curve,

In the same child’s playing-face?

No two windows look one way

O’er the small sea-water thread

Below them. Ah, the autumn day

I, passing, saw you overhead!

First, out a cloud of curtain blew,

Then a sweet cry, and last came you —

To catch your loory that must needs

Escape just then, of all times then,

To peck a tall plant’s fleecy seeds,

And make me happiest of men.

I scarce could breathe to see you reach

(So far back o’er the balcony

To catch him ere he climbed too high

Above you in the Smyrna peach)

That quick the round smooth cord of gold,

This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,

Fell down you like a gorgeous snake

The Roman girls were wont, of old,

When Rome there was, for coolness’ sake

To let lie curling o’er their bosoms.

Dear loory, may his beak retain

Ever its delicate rose stain

As if the wounded lotus-blossoms

Had marked their thief to know again!

Stay longer yet, for others’ sake

Than mine! What should your chamber do?

— With all its rarities that ache

In silence while day lasts, but wake

At night-time and their life renew,

Suspended just to pleasure you

— That brought against their will together

These objects, and, while day lasts, weave

Around them such a magic tether

That dumb they look: your harp, believe,

With all the sensitive tight strings

Which dare not speak, now to itself

Breathes slumberously, as if some elf

Went in and out the chords, his wings

Make murmur wheresoe’er they graze,

As an angel may, between the maze

Of midnight palace-pillars, on

And on, to sow God’s plagues, have gone

Through guilty glorious Babylon.

And while such murmurs flow, the nymph

Bends o’er the harp-top from her shell

As the dry limpet for the lymph

Come with a tune he knows so well.

And how your statues’ hearts must swell!

And how your pictures must descend

To see each other, friend with friend!

Oh, could you take them by surprise,

You’d find Schidone’s eager Duke

Doing the quaintest courtesies

To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!

And, deeper into her rock den,

Bold Castelfranco’s Magdalen

You’d find retreated from the ken

Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser —

As if the Tizian thinks of her,

And is not, rather, gravely bent

On seeing for himself what toys

Are these, his progeny invent,

What litter now the board employs

Whereon he signed a document

That got him murdered! Each enjoys

Its night so well, you cannot break

The sport up, so, indeed must make

More stay with me, for others’ sake.

She speaks.

I.

Tomorrow, if a harp-string, say,

Is used to tie the jasmine back

That overfloods my room with sweets,

Contrive your Zorzi somehow meets

My Zanze! If the ribbon’s black,

The Three are watching: keep away!

II.

Your gondola — let Zorzi wreathe

A mesh of waterweeds about

Its prow, as if he unaware

Had struck some quay or bridge-foot stair!

That I may throw a paper out

As you and he go underneath.

There’s Zanze’s vigilant taper; safe are we!

Only one minute more tonight with me?

Resume your past self of a month ago!

Be you the bashful gallant, I will be

The lady with the colder breast than snow.

Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand

More than I touch yours when I step to land,

And say, All thanks, Siora! —

Heart to heart

And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part,

Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art!

He is surprised, and stabbed.

It was ordained to be so, sweet! — and best

Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.

Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care

Only to put aside thy beauteous hair

My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn

To death, because they never lived: but I

Have lived indeed, and so — (yet one more kiss) — can die!

Table of Contents

I AM a Goddess of the ambrosial courts,

And save by Here, Queen of Pride, surpassed

By none whose temples whiten this the world.

Thro’ Heaven I roll my lucid moon along;

I shed in Hell o’er my pale people peace;

On Earth, I, caring for the creatures, guard

Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-bitch sleek.

And every feathered mother’s callow brood,

And all that love green haunts and loneliness.

Of men, the chaste adore me, hanging crowns

Of poppies red to blackness, bell and stem,

Upon my image at Athenai here;

And this dead Youth, Asclepios bends above,

Was dearest to me. He my buskined step

To follow thro’ the wildwood leafy ways,

And chase the panting stag, or swift with darts

Stop the swift ounce, or lay the leopard low,

Neglected homage to another God:

Whence Aphrodite, by no midnight smoke

Of tapers lulled, in jealousy dispatched

A noisome lust that, as the gadbee stings,

Possessed his stepdame Phaidra for himself

The son of Theseus her great absent spouse.

Hippolutos exclaiming in his rage

Against the miserable Queen, she judged

Life insupportable, and, pricked at heart

An Amazonian stranger’s race should dare

To scorn her, perished by the murderous cord:

Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll

The fame of him her swerving made not swerve,

Which Theseus read, returning, and believed,

So, exiled in the blindness of his wrath,

The man without a crime, who, last as first,

Loyal, divulged not to his sire the truth.

Now Theseus from Poseidon had obtained

That of his wishes should be granted Three,

And this he imprecated straight — alive

May ne’er Hippolutos reach other lands!

Poseidon heard, ai ai! And scarce the prince

Had stepped into the fixed boots of the car,

That gave the feet a stay against the strength

Of the Henetian horses, and around

His body flung the reins, and urged their speed

Along the rocks and shingles of the shore,

When from the gaping wave a monster flung

His obscene body in the coursers’ path!

These, mad with terror as the sea-bull sprawled

Wallowing about their feet, lost care of him

That reared them; and the master-chariot-pole

Snapping beneath their plunges like a reed,

Hippolutos, whose feet were trammeled fast,

Was yet dragged forward by the circling rein

Which either hand directed; nor was quenched

The frenzy of that flight before each trace,

Wheel-spoke and splinter of the woeful car,

Each boulder-stone, sharp stub, and spiny shell,

Huge fish-bone wrecked and wreathed amid the sands

On that detested beach, was bright with blood

And morsels of his flesh: then fell the steeds

Head-foremost, crashing in their mooned fronts,

Shivering with sweat, each white eye horror-fixed.

His people, who had witnessed all afar,

Bore back the ruins of Hippolutos.

But when his sire, too swoln with pride, rejoiced,

(Indomitable as a man foredoomed)

That vast Poseidon had fulfilled his prayer,

I, in a flood of glory visible,

Stood o’er my dying votary, and deed

By deed revealed, as all took place, the truth.

Then Theseus lay the woefullest of men,

And worthily; but ere the death-veils hid