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

His face, the murdered prince full pardon breathed

To his rash sire. Whereat Athenai wails.

So, I who ne’er forsake my votaries,

Lest in the cross-way none the honey-cake

Should tender, nor pour out the dog’s hot life;

Lest at my fain the priests disconsolate

Should dress my image with some faded poor

Few crowns, made favours of, nor dare object

Such slackness to my worshippers who turn

The trusting heart and loaded hand elsewhere

As they had climbed Oulumpos to report

Of Artemis and nowhere found her throne —

I interposed: and, this eventful night,

While round the funeral pyre the populace

Stood with fierce light on their black robes that blind

Each sobbing head, while yet their hair they clipped

O’er the dead body of their withered prince,

And, in his palace, Theseus prostrated

On the cold hearth, his brow cold as the slab

’Twas bruised on, groaned away the heavy grief —

As the pyre fell, and down the cross logs crashed,

Sending a crowd of sparkles thro’ the night,

And the gay fire, elate with mastery,

Towered like a serpent o’er the clotted jars

Of wine, dissolving oils and frankincense,

And splendid gums, like gold, — my potency

Conveyed the perished man to my retreat

In the thrice venerable forest here.

And this white-bearded Sage who squeezes now

The berried plant, is Phoibos’ son of fame,

Asclepios, whom my radiant brother taught

The doctrine of each herb and flower and root,

To know their secret’st virtue and express

The saving soul of all — who so has soothed

With lavers the torn brow and murdered cheeks,

Composed the hair and brought its gloss again,

And called the red bloom to the pale skin back,

And laid the strips and jagged ends of flesh

Even once more, and slacked the sinew’s knot

Of every tortured limb — that now he lies

As if mere sleep possessed him underneath

These interwoven oaks and pines. Oh, cheer,

Divine presenter of the healing rod

Thy snake, with ardent throat and lulling eye,

Twines his lithe spires around! I say, much cheer!

Proceed thou with thy wisest pharmacies!

And ye, white crowd of woodland sister-nymphs,

Ply, as the Sage directs, these buds and leaves

That strew the turf around the Twain! While I

Await, in fitting silence, the event.

Table of Contents

I.

WHAT’S become of Waring

Since he gave us all the slip,

Chose land-travel or seafaring,

Boots and chest or staff and scrip,

Rather than pace up and down

Any longer London town?

II.

Who’d have guessed it from his lip

Or his brow’s accustomed bearing,

On the night he thus took ship

Or started landward? — little caring

For us, it seems, who supped together

(Friends of his too, I remember)

And walked home thro’ the merry weather,

The snowiest in all December.

I left his arm that night myself

For what’s-his-name’s, the new prose-poet

Who wrote the book there, on the shelf —

How, forsooth, was I to know it

If Waring meant to glide away

Like a ghost at break of day?

Never looked he half so gay!

III.

He was prouder than the devil:

How he must have cursed our revel!

Ay and many other meetings,

Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,

As up and down he paced this London,

With no work done, but great works undone,

Where scarce twenty knew his name.

Why not, then, have earlier spoken,

Written, bustled? Who’s to blame

If your silence kept unbroken?

“True, but there were sundry jottings,

“Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,

“Certain first steps were achieved

“Already which” — (is that your meaning?)

“Had well borne out whoe’er believed

“In more to come!” But who goes gleaning

Hedgeside chance-glades, while full-sheaved

Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o’erweening

Pride alone, puts forth such claims

O’er the day’s distinguished names.

IV.

Meantime, how much I loved him,

I find out now I’ve lost him.

I who cared not if I moved him,

Who could so carelessly accost him,

Henceforth never shall get free

Of his ghostly company,

His eyes that just a little wink

As deep I go into the merit

Of this and that distinguished spirit —

His cheeks’ raised colour, soon to sink,

As long I dwell on some stupendous

And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)

Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrend-ous

Demoniaco-seraphic

Penman’s latest piece of graphic.

Nay, my very wrist grows warm

With his dragging weight of arm.

E’en so, swimmingly appears,

Through one’s after-supper musings,

Some lost lady of old years

With her beauteous vain endeavour

And goodness unrepaid as ever;

The face, accustomed to refusings,

We, puppies that we were … Oh never

Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled

Being aught like false, forsooth, to?

Telling aught but honest truth to?

What a sin, had we centupled

Its possessor’s grace and sweetness

No! she heard in its completeness

Truth, for truth’s a weighty matter,

And truth, at issue, we can’t flatter!

Well, ’tis done with; she’s exempt

From damning us thro’ such a sally;

And so she glides, as down a valley,

Taking up with her contempt,

Past our reach; and in, the flowers

Shut her unregarded hours.

V.

Oh, could I have him back once more,

This Waring, but one half-day more!

Back, with the quiet face of yore,

So hungry for acknowledgment

Like mine! I’d fool him to his bent.

Feed, should not he, to heart’s content?

I’d say, “to only have conceived,

“Planned your great works, apart from progress,

“Surpasses little works achieved!”

I’d lie so, I should be believed.

I’d make such havoc of the claims

Of the day’s distinguished names

To feast him with, as feasts an ogress

Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!

Or as one feasts a creature rarely

Captured here, unreconciled

To capture; and completely gives

Its pettish humours license, barely

Requiring that it lives.

VI.

Ichabod, Ichabod,

The glory is departed!

Travels Waring East away?

Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,

Reports a man upstarted

Somewhere as a god,

Hordes grown European-hearted,

Millions of the wild made tame

On a sudden at his fame?

In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,

With the demurest of footfalls

Over the Kremlin’s pavement bright

With serpentine and syenite,

Steps, with five other Generals

That simultaneously take snuff,

For each to have pretext enough

And kerchiefwise unfold his sash

Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff

To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,

And leave the grand white neck no gash?

Waring in Moscow, to those rough

Cold northern natures born perhaps,

Like the lambwhite maiden dear

From the circle of mute kings

Unable to repress the tear,

Each as his sceptre down he flings,

To Dian’s fane at Taurica,

Where now a captive priestess, she alway

Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech

With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach

As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands

Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands

Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry