Lie back; could thought of mine improve you?
From this shoulder let there spring
A wing; from this, another wing;
Wings, not legs and feet, shall move you!
Snow-white must they spring, to blend
With your flesh, but I intend
They shall deepen to the end,
Broader, into burning gold,

Till both wings crescent-wise enfold
Your perfect self, from 'neath your feet
To o'er your head, where, lo, they meet
As if a million sword-blades hurled
Defiance from you to the world!

Rescue me thou, the only real!
And scare away this mad ideal
That came, nor motions to depart!
Thanks! Now, stay ever as thou art!

Still he muses.

What if the Three should catch at last
Thy serenader? While there 's cast
Paul's cloak about my head, and fast
Gian pinions me, Himself has past
His stylet through my back; I reel;
And... is it thou I feel?

They trail me, these three godless knaves, Past every church that saints and saves,

Dip your arm o'er the boat-side, elbow-deep,
As I do: thus: were death so unlike sleep,
Caught this way? Death's to fear from flame
or steel,

Or poison doubtless; but from water-feel!
Go find the bottom! Would you stay me?
There!

Now pluck a great blade of that ribbon-grass
To plait in where the foolish jewel was,

I flung away since you have praised my hair,
"T is proper to be choice in what I wear.
He speaks.

Row home? must we row home? Too surely
Know I where its front 's demurely
Over the Giudecca piled;
Window just with window mating,
Door on door exactly waiting,
All's the set face of a child:
But behind it, where 's a trace
Of the staidness and reserve,
And formal lines without a curve,
In the same child's playing-face?
No two windows look one way
O'er the small sea-water thread
Below them. Ah, the autumn day
I, passing, saw you overhead!
First, out a cloud of curtain blew,
Then a sweet cry, and last came you
To catch your lory that must needs
Escape just then, of all times then,
To peck a tall plant's fleecy seeds,
And make me happiest of men.

I scarce could breathe to see you reach
So far back o'er the balcony

To catch him ere he climbed too high
Above you in the Smyrna peach,

That quick the round smooth cord of gold,
This coiled hair on your head, unrolled,

Fell down you like a gorgeous snake

The Roman girls were wont, of old,

When Rome there was, for coolness' sake

To let lie curling o'er their bosoms.
Dear lory, may his beak retain
Ever its delicate rose stain

As if the wounded lotus-blossoms

Had marked their thief to know again!

Went in and out the chords, his wings
Make murmur wheresoe'er they graze,
As an angel may, between the maze
Of midnight palace-pillars, on
And on, to sow God's plagues, have gone
Through guilty glorious Babylon.

And while such murmurs flow, the nymph
Bends o'er the harp-top from her shell
As the dry limpet for the lymph
Come with a tune he knows so well.
And how your statues' hearts must swell!
And how your pictures must descend
To see each other, friend with friend!
Oh, could you take them by surprise,
You'd find Schidone's eager Duke
Doing the quaintest courtesies

To that prim saint by Haste-thee-Luke!
And, deeper into her rock den,
Bold Castelfranco's Magdalen
You'd find retreated from the ken
Of that robed counsel-keeping Ser-
As if the Tizian thinks of her,
And is not, rather, gravely bent
On seeing for himself what toys
Are these, his progeny invent,
What litter now the board employs
Whereon he signed a document
That got him murdered! Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others' sake.

There's Zanze 's vigilant taper; safe are we.
Only one minute more to-night with me?
Resume your past self of a month ago!
Be you the bashful gallant, I will be
The lady with the colder breast than snow.
Now bow you, as becomes, nor touch my hand
More than I touch yours when I step to land,
And say,
"All thanks, Siora!".

Heart to heart And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art! He is surprised, and stabbed.

It was ordained to be so, sweet! - and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast.

Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards! Care
Only to put aside thy beauteous hair

My blood will hurt! The Three, I do not scorn
To death, because they never lived: but I
Have lived indeed, and so-(yet one
kiss) can die!

more

WARING

An account of Alfred Domett, Browning's early friend, who was the occasion of this poem, will be found in the notes.

I

I

WHAT 's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London town?

II

Who'd have guessed it from his lip
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship
Or started landward? - little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together
(Friends of his too, I remember)

And walked home through the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December.

I left his arm that night myself

For what 's-his-name's, the new prose-poet

Who wrote the book there, on the shelf
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!

III

He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,

As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who's to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?

66

True, but there were sundry jottings, Stray-leaves, fragments, blurs and blottings, Certain first steps were achieved

Already which " (is that your meaning?)

"Had well borne out whoe'er believed
In more to come!" But who goes gleaning
Hedgeside chance-blades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o'erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O'er the day's distinguished names.

IV

Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I've lost him.

I who cared not if I moved him,
Who could so carelessly accost him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit

Of this and that distinguished spirit
His cheeks' raised color, soon to sink,

As long I dwell on some stupendous And tremendous (Heaven defend us!) 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 endeavor
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, 't is done with; she's exempt
From damning us through 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.

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 't is 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-paint :
Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o'er and o'er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore.
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favor 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 't is 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 man might do with men :
And far too glad, in the even-glow,

To mix with the world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so-
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
O Waring, what 's to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick, say, out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck?
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius -am I right? - shall tuck
His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run a-muck
With this old world for want of strife
Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now.
Distinguished names! - but 't is, somehow,
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II

I

"When I last saw Waring

(How all turned to him who spoke! You saw Waring? Truth or joke? In land-travel or sea-faring?)

IL

"We were sailing by Triest

Where a day or two we harbored :
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel's side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And as a sea-duck flies and swims
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)
Buy wine of us, you English brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne'er so big,
They'll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.'

I turned, and just those fellows' way,'
Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

III

"In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat and kerchief black,

Who looked up with his kingly throat
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rosy and golden half
O' the sky, to overtake the sun
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!"-You? Oh, never star
Was lost here but it rose afar!

Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar ?

THE TWINS

"Give" and "It-shall-be-given-unto-you "

Originally published in 1854, in connection with a poem by Mrs. Browning, A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London, in a volume issued for a bazaar to benefit the "Refuge for Young Destitute Girls."

GRAND rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables - flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:

Do roses stick like burrs?

A beggar asked an alms

One day at an abbey-door,

Said Luther; but, seized with qualms, The Abbot replied, "We 're poor!

"Poor, who had plenty once,

When gifts fell thick as rain:
But they give us naught, for the nonce,
And how should we give again?

Then the beggar, "See your sins!
Of old, unless I err,

Ye had brothers for inmates, twins,
Date and Dabitur.

"While Date was in good case
Dabitur flourished too:
For Dabitur's lenten face
No wonder if Date rue.

"Would ye retrieve the one?

Try and make plump the other! When Date's penance is done, Dabitur helps his brother.

"Only, beware relapse!"

The Abbot hung his head. This beggar might be perhaps An angel, Luther said.

A LIGHT WOMAN

So var as our story approaches the end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?

My friend was already too good to lose,

And seemed in the way of improvement yet,

When she crossed his path with her hunting

noose,

And over him drew her net.

When I saw him tangled in her toils,

A shame, said I, if she adds just him To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim!

And before my friend be wholly hers,
How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagle's the game her pride prefers,
Though she snaps at a wren instead!

So. I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,

My hand sought hers as in earnest need, And round she turned for my noble sake, And gave me herself indeed.

The eagle am I, with my fame in the world,
The wren is he, with his maiden face.
- You look away and your lip is curled?
Patience, a moment's space!

For see, my friend goes shaking and white;
He eyes me as the basilisk:

I have turned, it appears, his day to night, Eclipsing his sun's disk.

One likes to show the truth for the truth;
That the woman was light is very true:
But suppose she says, - Never mind that
youth!

What wrong have I done to you?

Well, anyhow, here the story stays,
So far at least as I understand;
And, Robert Browning, you writer of plays,
Here's a subject made to your hand!

THE LAST RIDE TOGETHER

I SAID -Then, dearest, since 't is so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave, - I claim
Only a memory of the same,

And this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me.

My mistress bent that brow of hers;
Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
When pity would be softening through,
Fixed me a breathing-while or two

With life or death in the balance: right!
The blood replenished me again;
My last thought was at least not vain :
I and my mistress, side by side

Shall be together, breathe and ride,

So, one day more am I deified.

Who knows but the world may end to-night?

Hush! if you saw some western cloud
All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
By many benedictions
sun's
And moon's and evening-star's at once
And so, you, looking and loving best,
Conscious grew, your passion drew
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!
Thus leant she and lingered-joy and fear!
Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.

What need to strive with a life awry ?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!
Where had I been now if the worst befell ?
And here we are riding, she and I.

Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive, and who succeeds?
We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,

As the world rushed by on either side.