The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
Inveterately tear-shot: there, be wise,
Mistress of mine, there, there, as if I meant
You insult! — shall your friend (not slave) be shent
For speaking home? Beside, care-bit erased
Broken-up beauties ever took my taste
Supremely; and I love you more, far more
Than her I looked should foot Life’s temple-floor.
Years ago, leagues at distance, when and where
A whisper came, “Let others seek! — thy care
“Is found, thy life’s provision; if thy race
“Should be thy mistress, and into one face
“The many faces crowd?” Ah, had I, judge,
Or no, your secret? Rough apparel — grudge
All ornaments save tag or tassel worn
To hint we are not thoroughly forlorn —
Slouch bonnet, unloop mantle, careless go
Alone (that’s saddest, but it must be so)
Through Venice, sing now and now glance aside,
Aught desultory or undignified, —
Then, ravishingest lady, will you pass
Or not each formidable group, the mass
Before the Basilic (that feast gone by,
God’s great day of the Corpus Domini)
And, wistfully foregoing proper men,
Come timid up to me for alms? And then
The luxury to hesitate, feign do
Some unexampled grace! — when, whom but you
Dare I bestow your own upon? And hear
Further before you say, it is to sneer
I call you ravishing; for I regret
Little that she, whose early foot was set
Forth as she ‘d plant it on a pedestal,
Now, i’ the silent city, seems to fall
Toward me — no wreath, only a lip’s unrest
To quiet, surcharged eyelids to be pressed
Dry of their tears upon my bosom. Strange
Such sad chance should produce in thee such change,
My love! Warped souls and bodies! yet God spoke
Of right-hand, foot and eye — selects our yoke,
Sordello, as your poetship may find!
So, sleep upon my shoulder, child, nor mind
Their foolish talk; we ‘ll manage reinstate
Your old worth; ask moreover, when they prate
Of evil men past hope, “Don’t each contrive,
“Despite the evil you abuse, to live? —
“Keeping, each losel, through a maze of lies,
“His own conceit of truth? to which he hies
“By obscure windings, tortuous, if you will,
“But to himself not inaccessible;
“He sees truth, and his lies are for the crowd
“Who cannot see; some fancied right allowed
“His vilest wrong, empowered the losel clutch
“One pleasure from a multitude of such
“Denied him.” Then assert, “All men appear
“To think all better than themselves, by here
“Trusting a crowd they wrong; but really,” say,
“All men think all men stupider than they,
“Since, save themselves, no other comprehends
“The complicated scheme to make amends
“ — Evil, the scheme by which, thro’ Ignorance,
“Good labours to exist.” A slight advance, —
Merely to find the sickness you die through,
And nought beside! but if one can’t eschew
One’s portion in the common lot, at least
One can avoid an ignorance increased
Tenfold by dealing out hint after hint
How nought were like dispensing without stint
The water of life — so easy to dispense
Beside, when one has probed the centre whence
Commotion ‘s born — could tell you of it all!
“ — Meantime, just meditate my madrigal
“O’ the mugwort that conceals a dewdrop safe!”
What, dullard? we and you in smothery chafe,
Babes, baldheads, stumbled thus far into Zin
The Horrid, getting neither out nor in,
A hungry sun above us, sands that bung
Our throats, — each dromedary lolls a tongue,
Each camel churns a sick and frothy chap,
And you, ‘twixt tales of Potiphar’s mishap,
And sonnets on the earliest ass that spoke,
— Remark, you wonder any one needs choke
With founts about! Potsherd him, Gibeonites!
While awkwardly enough your Moses smites
The rock, though he forego his Promised Land
Thereby, have Satan claim his carcass, and
Figure as Metaphysic Poet … ah,
Mark ye the dim first oozings? Meribah!
Then, quaffing at the fount my courage gained,
Recall — not that I prompt ye — who explained …
“Presumptuous!” interrupts one. You, not I
‘T is brother, marvel at and magnify
Such office: “office,” quotha? can we get
To the beginning of the office yet?
What do we here? simply experiment
Each on the other’s power and its intent
When elsewhere tasked, — if this of mine were trucked
For yours to either’s good, — we watch construct,
In short, an engine: with a finished one,
What it can do, is all, — nought, how ‘t is done.
But this of ours yet in probation, dusk
A kernel of strange wheelwork through its husk
Grows into shape by quarters and by halves;
Remark this tooth’s spring, wonder what that valve’s
Fall bodes, presume each faculty’s device,
Make out each other more or less precise —
The scope of the whole engine ‘s to be proved;
We die: which means to say, the whole ‘s removed,
Dismounted wheel by wheel, this complex gin, —
To be set up anew elsewhere, begin
A task indeed, but with a clearer clime
Than the murk lodgment of our building-time.
And then, I grant you, it behoves forget
How ‘t is done — all that