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

And down let us go,

And see the fine things got in order

At Church for the show

Of the Sacrament, set forth this evening.

Tomorrow’s the Feast

Of the Rosary’s Virgin, by no means

Of Virgins the least —

As you’ll hear in the off-hand discourse

Which (all nature, no art)

The Dominican brother, these three weeks,

Was getting by heart.

Not a pillar nor post but is dizened

With red and blue papers;

All the roof waves with ribbons, each altar

A-blaze with long tapers;

But the great masterpiece is the scaffold

Rigged glorious to hold

All the fiddlers and fifers and drummers

And trumpeters bold,

Not afraid of Bellini nor Auber,

Who, when the priest’s hoarse,

Will strike us up something that’s brisk

For the feast’s second course.

And then will the flaxen-wigged Image

Be carried in pomp

Thro’ the plain, while in gallant procession

The priests mean to stomp.

All round the glad church lie old bottles

With gunpowder stopped,

Which will be, when the Image re-enters,

Religiously popped;

And at night from the crest of Calvano

Great bonfires will hang,

On the plain will the trumpets join chorus,

And more poppers bang!

At all events, come — to the garden

As far as the wall;

See me tap with a hoe on the plaster

Till out there shall fall

A scorpion with wide angry nippers!

… ”Such trifles!” — you say?

Fortù, in my England at home,

Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws

Be righteous and wise

— If ‘twere proper, Scirocco should vanish

In black from the skies!

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I.

JUST for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband to stick in his coat —

Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,

Lost all the others she lets us devote;

They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,

So much was theirs who so little allowed:

How all our copper had gone for his service!

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud!

We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,

Made him our pattern to live and to die!

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their graves!

He alone breaks from the van and the free-men,

— He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

II.

We shall march prospering, — not thro’ his presence;

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre;

Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence,

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,

One more triumph for devils, and sorrow for angels,

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!

Life’s night begins: let him never come back to us!

There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,

Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight,

Never glad confident morning again!

Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike gallantly,

Aim at our heart ere we pierce through his own;

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!

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I.

ALL’S over, then: does truth sound bitter

As one at first believes?

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter

About your cottage eaves!

II.

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,

I noticed that, to-day;

One day more bursts them open fully

— You know the red turns grey.

III.

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?

May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we, — well, friends the merest

Keep much that I resign:

IV.

For each glance of the eye so bright and black,

Though I keep with heart’s endeavour, —

Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,

Though it stay in my soul for ever! —

V.

— Yet I will but say what mere friends say,

Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,

Or so very little longer!

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I.

OH, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England — now!!

II.

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray’s edge —

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children’s dower

— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Table of Contents

NOBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west died away;

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;

Bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;

In the dimmest North-east distance dawned Gibraltar grand and gray;

“Here and here did England help me: how can I help England?” — say,

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray,

While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

Table of Contents

I.

MY HEART sank with our Claret-flask,

Just now, beneath the heavy sedges

That serve this Pond’s black face for mask

And still at yonder broken edges

Of the hole, where up the bubbles glisten,

After my heart I look and listen.

II.

Our laughing little flask, compelled

Thro’ depth to depth more bleak and shady;

As when, both arms beside her held,

Feet straightened out, some gay French lady

Is caught up from Life’s light and motion,

And dropped into Death’s silent ocean!

Up jumped Tokay on our table,

Like a pygmy castle-warder,

Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,

Arms and accoutrements all in order;

And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South,

Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,

Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather,

Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,

Jingled his huge brass spurs together,

Tightened his waist with its Buda sash,

And then, with an impudence nought could abash,

Shrugged his hump-shoulder,

To tell the beholder,

For twenty such knaves he should laugh but the bolder:

And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,

And dexter-hand on his haunch abutting,

Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting!

Here’s to Nelson’s memory!

’Tis the second time that I, at sea,

Right off Cape Trafalgar here,

Have drunk it deep in British beer:

Nelson for ever — any time

Am I his to command in prose or rhyme!

Give me of Nelson only a touch,

And I guard it, be it little or much;

Here’s one the Captain gives, and so