The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
And back I turned and bade the crone follow.
And what makes me confident what’s to be told you
Had all along been of this crone’s devising,
Is, that, on looking round sharply, behold you,
There was a novelty quick as surprising:
For first, she had shot up a full head in stature,
And her step kept pace with mine nor faultered,
As if age had foregone its usurpature,
And the ignoble mien was wholly altered,
And the face looked quite of another nature,
And the change reached too, whatever the change meant,
Her shaggy wolfskin cloak’s arrangement:
For where its tatters hung loose like sedges,
Gold coins were glittering on the edges,
Like the band-roll strung with tomans
Which proves the veil a Persian woman’s:
And under her brow, like a snail’s horns newly
Come out as after the rain he paces,
Two unmistakeable eye-points duly
Live and aware looked out of their places.
So, we went and found Jacynth at the entry
Of the lady’s chamber standing sentry;
I told the command and produced my companion,
And Jacynth rejoiced to admit any one,
For since last night, by the same token,
Not a single word had the lady spoken:
They went in both to the presence together,
While I in the balcony watched the weather.
XV.
And now, what took place at the very first of all,
I cannot tell, as I never could learn it:
Jacynth constantly wished a curse to fall
On that little head of hers and burn it,
If she knew how she came to drop so soundly
Asleep of a sudden and there continue
The whole time sleeping as profoundly
As one of the boars my father would pin you
‘Twixt the eyes where life holds garrison,
— Jacynth forgive me the comparison!
But where I begin my own narration
Is a little after I took my station
To breathe the fresh air from the balcony,
And, having in those days a falcon eye,
To follow the hunt thro’ the open country,
From where the bushes thinlier crested
The hillocks, to a plain where’s not one tree.
When, in a moment, my ear was arrested
By — was it singing, or was it saying,
Or a strange musical instrument playing
In the chamber? — and to be certain
I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain,
And there lay Jacynth asleep,
Yet as if a watch she tried to keep,
In a rosy sleep along the floor
With her head against the door;
While in the midst, on the seat of state,
Was a queen — the Gipsy woman late,
With head and face downbent
On the Lady’s head and face intent:
For, coiled at her feet like a child at ease,
The lady sate between her knees
And o’er them the Lady’s clasped hands met,
And on those hands her chin was set,
And her upturned face met the face of the crone
Wherein the eyes had grown and grown
As if she could double and quadruple
At pleasure the play of either pupil
— Very like, by her hands’ slow fanning,
As up and down like a gor-crow’s flappers
They moved to measure, or bell-clappers.
I said Is it blessing, is it banning,
Do they applaud you or burlesque you?
Those hands and fingers with no flesh on?
But, just as I thought to spring in to the rescue,
At once I was stopped by the lady’s expression:
For it was life her eyes were drinking
From the crone’s wide pair above unwinking,
Life’s pure fire received without shrinking,
Into the heart and breast whose heaving
Told you no single drop they were leaving, —
Life, that filling her, passed redundant
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened, —
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world,
Word took word as hand takes hand,
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the unbroken thread,
The Gipsy said: —
“And so at last we find my tribe.
“And so I set thee in the midst,
“And to one and all of them describe
“What thou saidst and what thou didst,
“Our long and terrible journey through,
“And all thou art ready to say and do
“In the trials that remain:
“I trace them the vein and the other vein
“That meet on thy brow and part again,
“Making our rapid mystic mark;
“And I bid my people prove and probe
“Each eye’s profound and glorious globe
“Till they detect the kindred spark
“In those depths so dear and dark,
“Like the spots that snap and burst and flee,
“Circling over the midnight sea.
“And on that round young cheek of thine