An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry Part 35

1.

What is he buzzing in my ears?

"Now that I come to die, Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

2.

What I viewed there once, what I view again Where the physic bottles stand On the table's edge,--is a suburb lane, With a wall to my bedside hand.

3.

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do, From a house you could descry O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue Or green to a healthy eye?

4.

To mine, it serves for the old June weather Blue above lane and wall; And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"

Is the house o'er-topping all.

5.

At a terrace, somewhat near the stopper, There watched for me, one June, A girl: I know, sir, it's improper, My poor mind's out of tune.

6.

Only, there was a way. . .you crept Close by the side, to dodge Eyes in the house, two eyes except: They styled their house "The Lodge".

7.

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close, With the good wall's help,--their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

8.

Yet never catch her and me together, As she left the attic, there, By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether", And stole from stair to stair,

9.

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas, We loved, sir--used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was-- But then, how it was sweet!

Respectability.

1.

Dear, had the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim "I know you both, Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!"-- How many precious months and years Of youth had pa.s.sed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, and what it fears?

2.

How much of priceless life were spent With men that every virtue decks, And women models of their s.e.x, Society's true ornament,-- Ere we dared wander, nights like this, Through wind and rain, and watch the Seine, And feel the Boulevart break again To warmth and light and bliss?

3.

I know! the world proscribes not love; Allows my finger to caress Your lips' contour and downiness, Provided it supply a glove.

The world's good word!--the Inst.i.tute!

Guizot receives Montalembert!

Eh? Down the court three lampions flare: Put forward your best foot!

-- St. 3. Guizot: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French statesman and historian, b. 1787, d. 1874.

Montalembert: Charles Forbes Rene, Comte de Montalembert, French statesman, orator, and political writer, b. 1810, d. 1870.

Guizot receives Montalembert: i.e., on purely conventional grounds.

Home Thoughts, from Abroad.

1.

Oh, to be in England now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now!

And after April, when May follows And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover {10} Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush: he sings each song twice over Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with h.o.a.ry dew, And will be gay when noontide wakes anew The b.u.t.tercups, the little children's dower --Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

{despite this stanza being numbered 1, there is apparently no 2.}

Home Thoughts, from the Sea.