Men and Women. Robert Browning

breathed themselves

       On the main promenade just at the wrong time:

       You'd come upon his scrutinizing hat

       Making a peaked shade blacker than itself

       Against the single window spared some house

       Intact yet with its mouldered Moorish work—

       Or else surprise the ferret of his stick 20

       Trying the

       mortar's temper 'tween the chinks

       Of some new shop a-building, French and fine.

       He stood and watched the cobbler at his trade,

       The man who slices lemons into drink,

       The coffee-roaster's brazier, and the boys

       That volunteer to help him turn its winch.

       He glanced o'er books on stalls with half an eye,

       And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor's string,

       And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall.

       He took such cognizance of men and things, 30

       If any beat a horse, you felt he saw;

       If any cursed a woman, he took note;

       Yet stared at nobody—you stared at him,

       And found, less to your pleasure than surprise,

       He seemed to know you and expect as much.

       So, next time that a neighbor's tongue was loosed,

       It marked the shameful and notorious fact,

       We had among us, not so much a spy,

       As a recording chief-inquisitor,

       The town's true master if the town but knew 40

       We merely kept a governor for form,

       While this man walked about and took account

       Of all thought, said and acted, then went home,

       And wrote it fully to our Lord the King

       Who has an itch to know things, he knows why,

       And reads them in his bedroom of a night.

       Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch,

       A tang of … well, it was not wholly ease

       As back into your mind the man's look came.

       Stricken in years a little—such a brow 50

       His eyes had to live under!—clear as flint

       On either side the formidable nose

       Curved, cut and colored like an eagle's claw,

       Had he to do with A.'s surprising fate?

       When altogether old B. disappeared

       And young C. got his mistress, was't our friend,

       His letter to the King, that did it all?

       What paid the Woodless man for so much pains?

       Our Lord the King has favorites manifold,

       And shifts his ministry some once a month; 60

       Our city gets new governors at whiles—

       But never word or sign, that I could hear,

       Notified to this man about the streets

       The King's approval of those letters conned

       The last thing duly at the dead of night.

       Did the man love his office? Frowned our Lord,

       Exhorting when none heard—"Beseech me not!

       Too far above my people—beneath me!

       I set the watch—how should the people know?

       Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!" 70

       Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

       I found no truth in one report at least—

       That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes

       Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,

       You found he ate his supper in a room

       Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,

       And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

       Poor man, he lived another kind of life

       In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,

       Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! 80

       The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,

       Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,

       Playing a decent cribbage with his maid

       (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese

       And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,

       Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,

       Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

       My father, like the man of sense he was,

       Would point him out to me a dozen times;

       "'St—'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!" 90

       I had been used to think that personage

       Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,

       And feathers like a forest in his hat,

       Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,

       Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,

       And memorized the miracle in vogue!

       He had a great observance from us boys;

       We were in error; that was not the man.

       I'd like now, yet had happy been afraid,

       To have just looked, when this man came to die, 100

       And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides

       And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,

       With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.

       Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,

       Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,

       Doing the King's work all the dim day long,

       In his old coat and up to knees in mud,

       Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,

       And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

       No further show or need for that old coat, 110

       You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while

       How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

       A second, and the angels alter that.

       Well, I could never write a verse—could you?

       Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

       NOTES

       "How it Strikes a Contemporary" is a portrait of the Poet as the

       unpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him. It is humorously

       colored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects

       without understanding either the greatness of the poet's spiritual

       personality and mission, or the nature of his life, which is

       withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted

       universal sympathies and kindly mediation between Humanity and its

       God.

       3. Valladolid: the royal city of the kings of Castile, before Philip

       II moved the Court to Madrid, where Cervantes, Calderon, and Las

       Casas