- a scold

What 's in the "Times"?.
At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
That's as fair as himself is bold:

There they sit ermine-stoled, And she powders her hair with gold.

Fancy the Pampas' sheen!

Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow

In a solid glow,

And-to break now and then the screen
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between!

Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Through the finger-tips

In a fire which a few discern,

And a very few feel burn,

And the rest, they may live and learn!

Then we would up and pace,
For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o'er neck:
'Tis our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we 'll embrace.

See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!

'Tis a huge fur cloak
Like a reindeer's yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip

With a burnt stick's tip

And you turn into such a man!

Just the two spots that spa
Half the bill of the young malwan.

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow

With his hand's first sweep
Put the earth to sleep :

'Twas a time when the heart could show

All- how was earth to know.

'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro ?

Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,

Lived and loved the sanie
Till an evening came

When a shaft from the devil's ow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and f

Not from the heart beneath
'Twas a bubble born of brea
Neither sneer nor vau'
Nor reproach nor taur

ur.

ed; nium-flo

I think :

See a word, how it severeth!

Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last

Me, your own, your You, -
Since, as truth is true,

I was You all the happy past -
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you

For the pure and true,

And the beauteous and the right,
Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white!

What of a hasty word?

Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm's pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?

See the eye, by a fly's-foot blurred -
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain's coat of curd!

Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?

'Tis the world the same For my praise or blame, And endurance is easy there.

Wrong in the one thing rare Oh, it is hard to bear!

Here's the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows;
We shall have the word
In a minor third,

There is none but the cuckoo knows:
Heaps of the guelder-rose!

I must bear with it, I suppose.

Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb
At the warning slash

Of his driver's-lash

I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
Facing the castle glum

And the giant's fee-faw-fum!

Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped

We can stand apart,
Heart dispense with heart
in the sun, with the flowers unnipped,
Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

Cach in the crypt would cry
But one freezes here! and why?
When a heart, as chill,
At my own would thrill

Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
Heart, shall we live or die?
settle by and by!"

The rest,

173

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!

There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast;

While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more than a beast.

Well now, look at our villa! stuck like the horn of a bull

Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull,

Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull !

-I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's turned wool.

But the city, oh the city- the square with the houses! Why?

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something to take the eye!

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front

awry;

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who hurries by ;

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the sun gets high;

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted properly.

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 the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees.

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at once;

In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April suns.

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well,

The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell

Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to pick and sell.

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to spout and splash!

In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such foambows flash

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and paddle and pash

Round the lady atop in her conch-fifty gazers do not abash,

Though all that she wears is some weeds round her waist in a sort of sash.

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.

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets blood, draws teeth;

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the mar ket beneath.

At the post-office such a scene-picture-the new play, piping hot!

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal thieves were shot.

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!

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Rever end Don So-and-so,

Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and Cicero,

"And moreover," (the sonnet goes rhyming,) "the skirts of Saint Paul has reached, Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more unctuous than ever he preached." Noon strikes, here sweeps the procession! our Lady borne smiling and smart 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!

66

Published in Men and Women in 1855. An American author, visiting Browning and his wife at Casa Guidi in 1847, wrote of their occupations: "Mrs. Browning," he said, was still too much of an invalid to walk, but she sat under the great trees upon the lawn-like hillsides near the convent, or in the seats of the dusky convent chapel, while Robert Browning at the organ chased a fugue, or dreamed out upon the twilight keys a faint throbbing toccata of Galuppi."

Он Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;

But although I take your meaning, 't is with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings, Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 't is arched by what you call Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

I

was never out of England - it's as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,

When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,

On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bellflower on its bed,

O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well, and it was graceful of them -- they'd break talk off and afford

175

-She, to bite her mask's black velvet- he, to finger on his sword,

While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord"?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions "Must we die?" Those commiserating sevenths - "Life might last! we can but try!"

"Were you happy?" "Yes." And are you still as happy?" "Yes. And

you?

"Then, more kisses!". "Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?" Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say

66

Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,

While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,

In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.

The soul, doubtless, is immortal - where a soul can be discerned.

OLD PICTURES IN FLORENCE

THE morn when first it thunders in March,
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say:
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa-gate this warm March day,
No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled
In the valley beneath where, white and wide
And washed by the morning water-gold,

Florence lay out on the mountain-side.

River and bridge and street and square
Lay mine, as much at my beck and call,
Through the live translucent bath of air,
As the sights in a magic crystal ball.
And of all I saw and of all I praised,

The most to praise and the best to see,
Was the startling bell-tower Giotto raised:
But why did it more than startle me?

Giotto, how, with that soul of yours,

Could you play me false who loved you so? Some slights if a certain heart endures

Yet it feels, I would have your fellows know! I' faith, I perceive not why I should care

To break a silence that suits them best, But the thing grows somewhat hard to bear When I find a Giotto join the rest.

On the arch where olives overhead

Print the blue sky with twig and leaf, (That sharp-curled leaf which they never shed) 'Twixt the aloes, I used to lean in chief, And mark through the winter afternoons,

By a gift God grants me now and then, In the mild decline of those suns like moons, Who walked in Florence, besides her men.

They might chirp and chaffer, come and go
For pleasure or profit, her men alive
My business was hardly with them, I trow,
But with empty cells of the human hive;
With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church's apsis, aisle or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave.

Wherever a fresco peels and drops,

Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops,

Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:

One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, - A lion who dies of an ass's kick,

The wronged great soul of an ancient Master.

For oh, this world and the wrong it does!

They are safe in heaven with their backs to it.

The Michaels and Rafaels, you hum and buzz
Round the works of, you of the little wit!
Do their eyes contract to the earth's old scope,
Now that they see God face to face,
And have all attained to be poets, I hope?
'Tis their holiday now, in any case.

Not dreaming that Old and New are fellows: A younger succeeds to an elder brother,

Da Vincis derive in good time from Dellos.

And here where your praise might yield returns
And a handsome word or two give help,
Here, after your kind, the mastiff girns
And the puppy pack of poodles yelp.
What, not a word for Stefano there,

Of brow once prominent and starry,
Called Nature's Ape, and the world's despair
For his peerless painting? (See Vasari.)

There stands the Master. Study, my friends, What a man's work comes to! So he plans Performs it, perfects it, makes amends

it,

For the toiling and moiling, and then, sic transit!

Happier the thrifty blind-folk labor,

With upturned eye while the hand is busy, Not sidling a glance at the coin of their neighbor!

"T is looking downward that makes one dizzy.

"If you knew their work you would deal your dole."

May I take upon me to instruct you? When Greek Art ran and reached the goal,

Thus much had the world to boast in fructu The Truth of Man, as by God first spoken, Which the actual generations garble, Was re-uttered, and Soul (which Limbs betoken And Limbs (Soul informs) made new in marble.

So you saw yourself as you wished you were,
As you might have been, as you cannot be ;
Earth here, rebuked by Olympus there:
And grew content in your poor degree
With your little power, by those statues' god-
head,

And your little scope, by their eyes' full sway, And your little grace, by their grace embodied, And your little date, by their forms that stay.

You would fain be kinglier, say, than I am ?
Even so, you will not sit like Theseus.
You would prove a model? The Son of Priam
Has yet the advantage in arms' and knees'

use.

You're wroth -can you slay your snake like Apollo?

You 're grieved--still Niobe 's the grander! You live there's the Racers' frieze to follow: You die - there's the dying Alexander.

So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty Measured by Art in your breadth and length, You learned to submit is a mortal's duty.

Then I say "you" 't is the common soul, The collective, I mean: the race of Man That receives life in parts to live in a whole,

And grow here according to God's clear plan.

Growth came when, looking your last on them all,

You turned your eyes inwardly one fine day And cried with a start - What if we so small

Be greater and grander the while than they? Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stat

ure?

In both, of such lower types are we Precisely because of our wider nature; For time, theirs ours, for eternity.

To-day's brief passion limits their range;

It seethes with the morrow for us and more. They are perfect-how else? they shall never change:

We are faulty- why not? we have time in

store.

The Artificer's hand is not arrested

With us; we are rough-hewn, nowise polished:

They stand for our copy, and, once invested With all they can teach, we shall see them abolished.

'Tis a life-long toil till our lump be leaven The better! What's come to perfection

perishes. Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven:

Works done least rapidly, Art most cherishes. Thyself shalt afford the example, Giotto!

Thy one work, not to decrease or diminish, Done at a stroke, was just (was it not?) “O!” Thy great Campanile is still to finish.

Is it true that we are now, and shall be hereafter,

But what and where depend on life's minute? Hails heavenly cheer or infernal laughter

Our first step out of the gulf or in it?
Shall Man, such step within his endeavor,
Man's face, have no more play and action
Than joy which is crystallized forever,
Or grief, an eternal petrifaction?

On which I conclude, that the early painters, To eries of "Greek Art and what more wish you?"

Replied, "To become now self-acquainters,
And paint man, man, whatever the issue!
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they
fray,

New fears aggrandize the rags and tatters:
To bring the invisible full into play!

Let the visible go to the dogs - what matters?"

Give these, I exhort you, their guerdon and glory

For daring so much, before they well did it. The first of the new, in our race's story,

Beats the last of the old; 't is no idle quiddit. The worthies began a revolution,

But at any rate I have loved the season
Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy ;
My sculptor is Nicolo the Pisan,

My painter who but Cimabue?
Nor ever was man of them all indeed,

From these to Ghiberti and Ghirlandajo, Could say that he missed my critic-meed.

So, now to my special grievance - heigh-ho!

Their ghosts still stand, as I said before,

Watching each fresco flaked and rasped, Blocked up, knocked out, or whitewashed o'er: -No getting again what the church has grasped!

The works on the wall must take their chance; "Works never conceded to England's thick clime!

(I hope they prefer their inheritance

Of a bucketful of Italian quick-lime.)

When they go at length, with such a shaking
Of heads o'er the old delusion, sadly

Each master his way through the black streets taking,

Where many a lost work breathes though badly

Why don't they bethink them of who has merited?

Why not reveal, while their pictures dree Such doom, how a captive might be out-ferreted? Why is it they never remember me?

Not that I expect the great Bigordi,

Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose; Nor the wronged Lippino; and not a word I Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's:

But are you too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,

To grant me a taste of your intonaco, Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad