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

I may bring her, one of these days,

To fix you fast with as fine a spell,

Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;

But do not detain me now; for she lingers

There, like sunshine over the ground,

And ever I see her soft white fingers

Searching after the bud she found.

V.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,

Stay as you are and be loved for ever!

Bud, if I kiss you ’tis that you blow not:

Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!

For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,

Twinkling the audacious leaves between,

Till round they turn and down they nestle —

Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

VI.

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;

Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June’s twice June since she breathed it with me?

Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady’s lightest footfall!

— Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces —

Roses, you are not so fair after all!

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I.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!

He who wrote what I hold in my hand,

Centuries back was so good as to die,

Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;

This, that was a book in its time,

Printed on paper and bound in leather,

Last month in the white of a matin-prime

Just when the birds sang all together.

II.

Into the garden I brought it to read,

And under the arbute and laurustine

Read it, so help me grace in my need,

From titlepage to closing line.

Chapter on chapter did I count,

As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;

Added up the mortal amount;

And then proceeded to my revenge.

III.

Yonder’s a plum-tree with a crevice

An owl would build in, were he but sage;

For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis

In a castle of the Middle Age,

Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;

When he’d be private, there might he spend

Hours alone in his lady’s chamber:

Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

IV.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked,

— At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate;

Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked

To bury him with, my bookshelf’s magnate;

Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,

Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis;

Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf

Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

V.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss

And gum that locked our friend in limbo,

A spider had spun his web across,

And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:

So, I took pity, for learning’s sake,

And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,

Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake;

And up I fished his delectable treatise.

VI.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,

With all the binding all of a blister,

And great blue spots where the ink has run,

And reddish streaks that wink and glister

O’er the page so beautifully yellow —

Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!

Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?

Here’s one stuck in his chapter six!

VII.

How did he like it when the live creatures

Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,

And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,

Came in, each one, for his right of trover;

When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face

Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface

As tiled in the top of his black wife’s closet?

VIII.

All that life and fun and romping,

All that frisking and twisting and coupling,

While slowly our poor friend’s leaves were swamping

And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!

As if you had carried sour John Knox

To the playhouse at Paris, Vienna or Munich,

Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the Ballet with trousers and tunic.

IX.

Come, old Martyr! What, torment enough is it?

Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.

Goodbye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit!

See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!

A.’s book shall prop you up, B.’s shall cover you,

Here’s C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay,

And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,

Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!

Table of Contents

[ANCIEN RÉGIME.]

I.

NOW that I, tying thy glass mask tightly,

May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely,

As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy —

Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?

II.

He is with her, and they know that I know

Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow

While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear

Empty church, to pray God in, for them! — I am here.

III.

Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste,

Pound at thy powder, — I am not in haste!

Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things,

Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.

IV.

That in the mortar — you call it a gum?

Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue,

Sure to taste sweetly, — is that poison too?

V.

Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures,

What a wild crowd of invisible pleasures!

To carry pure death in an earring, a casket,

A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!

VI.

Soon, at the King’s, a mere lozenge to give,

And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live!

But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head

And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

VII.

Quick — is it finished? The colour’s too grim!

Why not soft like the phial’s, enticing and dim?

Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir,

And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer!

VIII.

What a drop! She’s not little, no minion like me!

That’s why she ensnared him: this never will free

The soul from those masculine eyes, — Say, “no!”

To that pulse’s magnificent come-and-go.

IX.

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought

My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought

Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall

Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

X.

Not that I bid you spare her the pain;

Let death be felt and the proof remain:

Brand, burn up, bite into its grace —

He is sure to remember her dying face!

XI.

Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose;

It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close;

The delicate droplet, my whole fortune’s fee —

If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?

XII.

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill,

You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will!

But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings

Ere I know it — next moment I dance at the King’s!

Table of Contents

[SPAIN.]

I.

IT IS a lie — their Priests, their Pope,

Their Saints, their … all they fear or hope

Are lies, and lies — there! through my door

And ceiling, there! and walls and floor,

There, lies, they lie, shall still be hurled

Till spite of them I reach the world!

II.

You think Priests just and holy men!

Before they put me in this den

I was a human creature too,

With flesh and blood like one of you,