My Last DuchessFERRARA by Robert Browning
1 That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
2 Looking as if she were alive. I call
3 That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
4 Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
5 Will 't please you sit and look at her? I said
6 "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
7 Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
8 The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
9 But to myself they turned (since none puts by
10 The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
11 And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
12 How such a glance came there; so, not the first
13 Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
14 Her husband's presence only, called that spot
15 Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
16 Frà Pandolf chanced to say, "Her mantle laps
17 Over my Lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
18 Must never hope to reproduce the faint
19 Half-flush that dies along her throat"; such stuff
20 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
21 For calling up that spot of joy. She had
22 A heart . . . how shall I say? . . . too soon made glad,
23 Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
24 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
25 Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
26 The dropping of the daylight in the West,
27 The bough of cherries some officious fool
28 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
29 She rode with round the terrace--all and each
30 Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
31 Or blush, at least. She thanked men,--good; but thanked
32 Somehow . . . I know not how . . . as if she ranked
33 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
34 With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
35 This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
36 In speech--(which I have not)--to make your will
37 Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
38 Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
39 Or there exceed the mark"--and if she let
40 Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
41 Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
42 --E'en then would be some stooping; and I chuse
43 Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
44 Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
45 Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
46 Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
47 As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
48 The company below, then. I repeat,
49 The Count your Master's known munificence
50 Is ample warrant that no just pretence
51 Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
52 Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
53 At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
54 Together down, Sir! Notice Neptune, though,
55 Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
56 Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloisterby Robert Browning
I
Gr-r-r-there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
II
At the meal we sit together:
Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
III
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps —
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
IV
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
— Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
V
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As I do, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp —
In three sips the Arian frustrate
While he drains his at one gulp.
VI
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us eager to get a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange! And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
VII
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails.
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
VIII
Or, my scrofulous French novel,
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
IX
Or, there's Satan! — one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss it till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . .
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r — you swine!
Porphyria’s Lover by Robert Browning
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me--she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
More poems by the Brownings…
Love among the Ruins
by Robert Browning
WHERE the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince
Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.
Now the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest
Twelve abreast.
And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’er-spreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.
Now—the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.
And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.
But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.
In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.
some quotes by Robert:
"What I aspired to be and was not, comforts me. "
"I count life just a stuff to try the soul's strength on. "
"Truth lies within ourselves: it takes no rise from outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness and to Know rather consists in opening out a way whence the imprisoned splendor may escape than in effecting entry for light supposed to be without. "
"Who hears music, feels his solitude
Peopled at once. "
"Truth never hurts the teller"
"Take away love, and our life is a tomb. "
"All poetry is putting the infinite within the finite."
“Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach, or what's a Heaven for?”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
VI.
1 Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
2 Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
3 Alone upon the threshold of my door
4 Of individual life, I shall command
5 The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
6 Serenely in the sunshine as before,
7 Without the sense of that which I forbore, ..
8 Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
9 Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
10 With pulses that beat double. What I do
11 And what I dream include thee, as the wine
12 Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
13 God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
14 And sees within my eyes, the tears of two.
XXXV
1 If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
2 And be all to me? Shall I never miss
3 Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
4 That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
5 When I look up, to drop on a new range
6 Of walls and floors ... another home than this?
7 Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
8 Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?
9 That's hardest. If to conquer love, has tried,
10 To conquer grief, tries more ... as all things prove;
11 For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
12 Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
13 Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
14 And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.
XLIII
1 How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
2 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
3 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
4 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
5 I love thee to the level of everyday's
6 Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
7 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
8 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
9 I love thee with the passion put to use
10 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
11 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
12 With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
13 Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
14 I shall but love thee better after death.
one more by Robert Browning:
"Grow old with me the best is yet to come. "