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

A girl that laughed in beauty’s pride

Like lilies in your world outside.

III.

I had a lover — shame avaunt!

This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt,

Was kissed all over till it burned,

By lips the truest, love e’er turned

His heart’s own tint: one night they kissed

My soul out in a burning mist.

IV.

So, next day when the accustomed train

Of things grew round my sense again,

“That is a sin,” I said: and slow

With downcast eyes to church I go,

And pass to the confession-chair,

And tell the old mild father there.

V.

But when I falter Beltran’s name,

“Ha?” quoth the father; “much I blame

“The sin; yet wherefore idly grieve?

“Despair not — strenuously retrieve!

“Nay, I will turn this love of thine

“To lawful love, almost divine;

VI.

“For he is young, and led astray,

“This Beltran, and he schemes, men say,

“To change the laws of church and state;

“So, thine shall be an angel’s fate,

“Who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll

“Its cloud away and save his soul.

VII.

“For, when he lies upon thy breast,

“Thou mayst demand and be possessed

“Of all his plans, and next day steal

“To me, and all those plans reveal,

“That I and every priest, to purge

“His soul, may fast and use the scourge.”

VIII.

That father’s beard was long and white,

With love and truth his brow seemed bright;

I went back, all on fire with joy,

And, that same evening, bade the boy

Tell me, as lovers should, heart-free,

Something to prove his love of me.

IX.

He told me what he would not tell

For hope of heaven or fear of hell;

And I lay listening in such pride!

And, soon as he had left my side,

Tripped to the church by morning-light

To save his soul in his despite.

X.

I told the father all his schemes,

Who were his comrades, what their dreams;

“And now make haste,” I said, “to pray

“The one spot from his soul away;

“Tonight he comes, but not the same

“Will look!” At night he never came.

XI.

Nor next night: on the after-morn,

I went forth with a strength new-born.

The church was empty; something drew

My steps into the street; I knew

It led me to the market-place —

Where, lo, — on high — the father’s face!

XII.

That horrible black scaffold drest —

That stapled block … God sink the rest!

That head strapped back, that blinding vest,

Those knotted hands and naked breast —

Till near one busy hangman pressed —

And — on the neck these arms caressed …

XIII.

No part in aught they hope or fear!

No heaven with them, no hell! — and here,

No earth, not so much space as pens

My body in their worst of dens

But shall bear God and man my cry —

Lies — lies, again — and still, they lie!

Table of Contents

I.

YOU’RE my friend:

I was the man the Duke spoke to;

I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke, too;

So here’s the tale from beginning to end,

My friend!

II.

Ours is a great wild country:

If you climb to our castle’s top,

I don’t see where your eye can stop;

For when you’ve passed the cornfield country,

Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed,

And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,

And cattle-tract to open-chase,

And open-chase to the very base

Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,

Round about, solemn and slow,

One by one, row after row,

Up and up the pinetrees go,

So, like black priests up, and so

Down the other side again

To another greater, wilder country,

That’s one vast red drear burnt-up plain,

Branched through and through with many a vein

Whence iron’s dug, and copper’s dealt;

Look right, look left, look straight before, —

Beneath they mine, above they smelt,

Copper-ore and iron-ore,

And forge and furnace mould and melt,

And so on, more and ever more,

Till at the last, for a bounding belt,

Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,

— And the whole is our Duke’s country!

III.

I was born the day this present Duke was —

(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)

In the castle where the other Duke was —

(When I was happy and young, not old!)

I in the Kennel, he in the Bower:

We are of like age to an hour.

My father was huntsman in that day;

Who has not heard my father say

That, when a boar was brought to bay,

Three times, four times out of five,

With his huntspear he’d contrive

To get the killing-place transfixed,

And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?

And that’s why the old Duke would rather

He lost a salt-pit than my father,

And loved to have him ever in call;

That’s why my father stood in the hall

When the old Duke brought his infant out

To show the people, and while they passed

The wondrous bantling round about,

Was first to start at the outside blast

As the Kaiser’s courier blew his horn

Just a month after the babe was born.

“And,” quoth the Kaiser’s courier, “since

“The Duke has got an heir, our Prince

“Needs the Duke’s self at his side: “

The Duke looked down and seemed to wince,

But he thought of wars o’er the world wide,

Castles a-fire, men on their march,

The toppling tower, the crashing arch;

And up he looked, and awhile he eyed

The row of crests and shields and banners

Of all achievements after all manners,

And “ay,” said the Duke with a surly pride.

The more was his comfort when he died

At next year’s end, in a velvet suit,

With a gilt glove on his hand, his foot

In a silken shoe for a leather boot,

Petticoated like a herald,

In a chamher next to an anteroom,

Where he breathed the breath of page and groom,

What he called stink, and they, perfume:

— They should have set him on red Berold

Mad with pride, like fire to manage!

They should have got his cheek fresh tannage

Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine!

Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin!

(Hark, the wind’s on the heath at its game!

Oh for a noble falcon-lanner

To flap each broad wing like a banner,

And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!)

Had they broached a white-beer cask from Berlin

— Or if you incline to prescribe mere wine

Put to his lips, when they saw him pine,

A cup of our own Moldavia fine,

Cotnar for instance, green as May sorrel

And ropy with sweet, — we shall not quarrel.

IV.

So, at home, the sick tall yellow Duchess

Was left with the infant in her clutches,

She being the daughter of God knows who:

And now was the time to revisit her tribe.

Abroad and afar they went, the two,

And let our people rail and gibe

At the empty Hall and extinguished fire,

As loud as we liked, but ever in vain,

Till after long years we had our desire,

And back came the Duke and his mother again.

V.

And he came back the pertest little ape

That ever affronted human shape;

Full of his travel, struck at himself.

You’d say, he despised our bluff old ways?

— Not he! For in Paris they told the elf

Our rough North land was the Land of Lays,

The one good thing left in evil days;

Since the Mid-Age was the Heroic Time,