The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning

Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrend-ous

       Demoniaco-seraphic

       Penman’s latest piece of graphic.

       Nay, my very wrist grows warm

       With his dragging weight of arm.

       E’en so, swimmingly appears,

       Through one’s after-supper musings,

       Some lost lady of old years

       With her beauteous vain endeavour

       And goodness unrepaid as ever;

       The face, accustomed to refusings,

       We, puppies that we were … Oh never

       Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled

       Being aught like false, forsooth, to?

       Telling aught but honest truth to?

       What a sin, had we centupled

       Its possessor’s grace and sweetness

       No! she heard in its completeness

       Truth, for truth’s a weighty matter,

       And truth, at issue, we can’t flatter!

       Well, ’tis done with; she’s exempt

       From damning us thro’ such a sally;

       And so she glides, as down a valley,

       Taking up with her contempt,

       Past our reach; and in, the flowers

       Shut her unregarded hours.

      V.

      Oh, could I have him back once more,

       This Waring, but one half-day more!

       Back, with the quiet face of yore,

       So hungry for acknowledgment

       Like mine! I’d fool him to his bent.

       Feed, should not he, to heart’s content?

       I’d say, “to only have conceived,

       “Planned your great works, apart from progress,

       “Surpasses little works achieved!”

       I’d lie so, I should be believed.

       I’d make such havoc of the claims

       Of the day’s distinguished names

       To feast him with, as feasts an ogress

       Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child!

       Or as one feasts a creature rarely

       Captured here, unreconciled

       To capture; and completely gives

       Its pettish humours license, barely

       Requiring that it lives.

      VI.

      Ichabod, Ichabod,

       The glory is departed!

       Travels Waring East away?

       Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,

       Reports a man upstarted

       Somewhere as a god,

       Hordes grown European-hearted,

       Millions of the wild made tame

       On a sudden at his fame?

       In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

       Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,

       With the demurest of footfalls

       Over the Kremlin’s pavement bright

       With serpentine and syenite,

       Steps, with five other Generals

       That simultaneously take snuff,

       For each to have pretext enough

       And kerchiefwise unfold his sash

       Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff

       To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,

       And leave the grand white neck no gash?

       Waring in Moscow, to those rough

       Cold northern natures born perhaps,

       Like the lambwhite maiden dear

       From the circle of mute kings

       Unable to repress the tear,

       Each as his sceptre down he flings,

       To Dian’s fane at Taurica,

       Where now a captive priestess, she alway

       Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech

       With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach

       As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands

       Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands

       Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry

       Amid their barbarous twitter!

       In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!

       Ay, most likely ’tis in Spain

       That we and Waring meet again

       Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane

       Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid

       All fire and shine — abrupt as when there’s slid

       Its stiff gold blazing pall

       From some black coffin-lid.

       Or, best of all,

       I love to think

       The leaving us was just a feint;

       Back here to London did he slink,

       And now works on without a wink

       Of sleep, and we are on the brink

       Of something great in fresco-pain:

       Some garret’s ceiling, walls and floor,

       Up and down and o’er and o’er

       He splashes, as none splashed before

       Since great Caldera Polidore.

       Or Music means this land of ours

       Some favour yet, to pity won

       By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers, —

       “Give me my so-long promised son,

       “Let Waring end what I begun!”

       Then down he creeps and out he steals

       Only when the night conceals

       His face — in Kent ’tis cherry-time,

       Or hops are picking: or at prime

       Of March he wanders as, too happy,

       Years ago when he was young,

       Some mild eve when woods grew sappy

       And the early moths had sprung

       To life from many a trembling sheath

       Woven the warm boughs beneath;

       While small birds said to themselves

       What should soon be actual song,

       And young gnats, by tens and twelves,

       Made as if they were the throng

       That crowd around and carry aloft

       The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,

       Out of a myriad noises soft,

       Into a tone that can endure

       Amid the noise of a July noon

       When all God’s creatures crave their boon,

       All at once and all in tune,

       And get it, happy as Waring then,

       Having first within his ken

       What a