The unaccustomed head like Chianti21 wine! | Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you're Oh, the church knows! don't misreport me, now! It 's natural a poor monk out of bounds Something in Sant' Ambrogio 's! 23 Bless the gay 380 And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut, And so all's saved for me, and for the church 390 They want a cast o' my office.24 I shall paint Saint John,25 because he saves the Florentines. white The convent's friends and gives them a long And Job, I must have him there past mistake, Secured at their devotion, up shall come 360 man! Back I shrink-what is this I see and hear? -Addresses the celestial presence, "nay- His camel-hair26 make up a painting-brush? I shuffle sideways with my blushing face 21 A famous vineyard region near Florence. 22 Giving them money. 23 St. Ambrose's, a Florentine convent. 24 A stroke of my skill. 25 The patron saint of Florence. 26 See page 41 (Matthew, iii, 4). 27 18 perfecit opus ("This is he who made it") is the inscription on a scroll in the painting described, indicating the portrait of Lippi. The street 's hushed, and I know my own way back, Zooks! What of a villa? Though winter be over in March by rights, 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the heights: You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam and wheeze, And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.2 Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of rebukes, And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little new law of the Duke's! And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Revgray olive-trees. erend Don So-and-so, 20 All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i" the corn and mingle, Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is shrill, And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs on the hill. Enough of the seasons,-I spare you the months of the fever and chill. Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church-bells begin: No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in: You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. 40 By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth: Or the Pulcinello1-trumpet breaks up the market beneath. At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping hot! 1 English "Punch" (Punch and Judy show). With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords stuck in her heart! Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-tetootle the fife; No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleasure in life. But bless you, it 's dear-it 's dear! fowls, wine, at double the rate. They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil pays passing the gate It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not the city! Beggars can scarcely be choosers: but stillah, the pity, the pity! Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with cowls and sandals. Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, 2 There is subtle irony in making this soulless civilian betray his childish contempt for the liberal or republican party. * Once, in a bookstore. Browning overheard some one mention the fact that he had once seen Shelley. Browning was a youthful admirer of Shelley, having received from certain volumes of him and Keats-a chance-found "eagle-feather," as it were, some of his earliest inspiration. On Keats, see the next poem. But you were living before that, My starting moves your laughter! I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world no doubt, Yet a hand's breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about: For there I picked up on the heather And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather, an eagle-feather! Well, I forget the rest. POPULARITY Stand still, true poet that you are! † You rise, remember one man saw you, My star, God's glow-worm! Why extend That loving hand of his which leads you, Yet locks you safe from end to end Of this dark world, unless he needs you, Just saves your light to spend? His clenched hand shall unclose at last, Accepts the coming ages' duty, Their present for this past. That day the earth's feast-master's brow Shall clear, to God the chalice raising; "Others give best at first, but thou Forever set'st our table praising, Keep'st the good wine till now!'' Meantime, I'll draw you as you stand, With few or none to watch and wonder: I'll say a fisher, on the sand By Tyre the old, with ocean-plunder, A netful, brought to land. Who has not heard how Tyrian shells Enclosed the blue, that dye of dyes 10 20 This poet is not necessarily Keats, but Keats is a type of the great man who, missing popularity in his own life, dies obscurelylike the ancient obscure discoverer of the murex, the fish whose precious purple dyes made the fortune of many a mere trader or artisan who came after him. (Without intimating for a moment that Tennyson was a mere artisan, it may be freely acknowledged that much of his popularity, in which at this time. 1855, he quite exceeded Browning, was due to qualities which he derived from Keats.) Could criticise, and quote tradition Yet there's the dye, in that rough mesh, Such hangings for his cedar-house, Most like the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the bluebell's womb What time, with ardours manifold, The bee goes singing to her groom, Mere conchs! not. fit for warp or woof! The liquor filtered by degrees, And there's the extract, flasked and fine, 40 50 Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, III. iv, 187. "Childe" is an old title for a and yet so mystically portrayed, is allegorical or not. Doubtless there is no elaborate allegory in it, though there may well be a moral-something like constancy to an ideal, Browning admitted. Their steps-that just to fail as they, seemed best, And all the doubt was now-should I be fit? So, quiet as despair, I turned from him, That hateful cripple, out of his highway Into the path he pointed. All the day Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. For mark! no sooner was I fairly found Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 50 Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O'er the safe road, 't was gone; gray plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound. Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve: In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as For the fiend's glowing hoof-to see the wrath As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! Alive? he might be dead for aught I know, With that red gaunt and colloped3 neck a-strain, 80 Which, while I forded,-good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;-It may have been a water-rat I speared, I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart. But, ugh, it sounded like a baby's shriek. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face 91 The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque. What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk * That is, bespit, bespattered: from the archaic bespete. The rather unusual diction employed throughout the poem helps to heighten its grotesque character. |