Robert Browning on Love Read online

  By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss

  —Saul

  “This woman’s heart and soul and brain

  “Are mine as much as this gold chain

  “She bids me wear; which’’ (say again)

  “I choose to make by cherishing

  “A precious thing, or choose to fling

  “Over the boat-side, ring by ring.’’

  —In a Gondola

  Nay but you, who do not love her,

  Is she not pure gold, my mistress?

  Holds earth aught—speak truth—above her?

  Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,

  And this last fairest tress of all,

  So fair, see, ere I let it fall?

  Because, you spend your lives in praising;

  To praise, you search the wide world over:

  Then why not witness, calmly gazing,

  If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?

  Above this tress, and this, I touch

  But cannot praise, I love so much!

  —Song

  I am knit round

  As with a charm, by sin and lust and pride

  —Pauline

  And she,—she lies in my hand as tame

  As a pear late basking over a wall;

  Just a touch to try and off it came;

  ‘Tis mine,—can I let it fall?

  —A Light Woman

  And I shall behold thee, face to face

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  I’ve a Friend, over the sea;

  I like him, but he loves me.

  And I’ve a Lady—there he wakes,

  The laughing fiend and prince of snakes

  Within me, at her name, to pray

  Fate send some creature in the way

  Of my love for her, to be down-torn,

  Upthrust and outward-borne,

  So I might prove myself that sea

  Of passion which I needs must be!

  Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint

  And my style infirm and its figures faint,

  All the critics say, and more blame yet,

  And not one angry word you get.

  But, please you, wonder I would put

  My cheek beneath that lady’s foot

  Rather than trample under mine

  The laurels of the Florentine,

  And you shall see how the devil spends

  A fire God gave for other ends!

  I tell you, I stride up and down

  This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,

  And feasted with love’s perfect feast,

  To think I kill for her, at least,

  Body and soul and peace and fame,

  Alike youth’s end and manhood’s aim,

  —So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,

  Filled full, eaten out and in

  With the face of her, the eyes of her,

  The lips, the little chin, the stir

  Of shadow round her mouth; and she

  —I’ll tell you,—calmly would decree

  That I should roast at a slow fire,

  If that would compass her desire

  —Time’s Revenges

  Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing

  That’s spirit: tho’ cloistered fast, soar free

  —A Wall

  The bee’s kiss, now!

  Kiss me as if you entered gay

  My heart at some noonday,

  A bud that dares not disallow

  The claim, so all is rendered up,

  And passively its shattered cup

  Over your head to sleep I bow.

  —In a Gondola

  But you sink, for your eyes

  Are altering—altered! Stay—“I love you, love” …

  I could prevent it if I understood:

  More of your words to me; was‘t in the tone

  Or the words, your power?

  —Pippa Passes

  Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?

  Why tremble the sprays? What life o’erbrims

  The body,—the house no eye can probe,—

  Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?

  —A Wall

  That moment she was mine, mine, fair

  —Porphyria’s Lover

  O loaded curls, release your store

  Of warmth and scent, as once before

  The tingling hair did, lights and darks

  Outbreaking into fairy sparks

  —In Three Days

  I, still with a gesture fit

  Of my hands that best

  Do my soul’s behest,

  Pointing the power from it,

  While myself do steadfast sit—

  Steadfast and still the same

  On my object bent,

  While the hands give vent

  To my ardour and my aim

  And break into very flame—

  —Mesmerism

  Since words are only words. Give o’er!

  —In a Gondola

  What—why is this?

  That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!

  —Pippa Passes

  For pleasant is this flesh;

  Our soul, in its rose-mesh

  —Rabbi Ben Ezra

  I have his heart, you know;

  I may dispose of it: I give it you!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Love’s Despair

  Why, with beauty, needs there money be,

  Love with liking?

  —A Pretty Woman

  He may not shame such tender love and stay.

  —Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

  And this woman says, “My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,

  Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark’s heart’s outbreak tuneless,

  If you loved me not!” And I who—(ah, for words of flame!) adore her,

  Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her—

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Go, my Love.

  —Andrea del Sarto

  Oh, what a dawn of day!

  How the March sun feels like May!

  All is blue again

  After last night’s rain,

  And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.

  Only, my Love’s away!

  I’d as lief that the blue were grey.

  —A Lovers’ Quarrel

  And as she died so must we die ourselves,

  And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.

  —The Bishop Orders His Tomb

  Why, ‘twas my very fear of you, my love

  Of you—(what passion like a boy’s for one

  Like you?)—that ruined me! I dreamed of you—

  You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,

  The scholar and the gentleman. I burned

  To knit myself to you: but I was young,

  And your surpassing reputation kept me

  So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?

  With less of love, my glorious yesterday

  Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,

  Had taken place perchance six months ago.

  Even now, how happy we had been!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!

  —Epilogue to Asolando

  Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,

  To set its struggling passion free

  From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

  And give herself to me for ever.

  But passion sometimes would prevail,

  Nor could to-night’s gay feast restrain

  A sudden thought of one so pale

  For love of her, and all in vain

  —Porphyria’s Lover

  “Paint

  Must never hope to reproduce the faint

  Half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff

  Was co
urtesy, she thought, and cause enough

  For calling up that spot of joy. She had

  A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,

  Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er

  She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

  —My Last Duchess

  This is not our last meeting?

  One night more.

  And then—think, then!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  So far 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?

  —A Light Woman

  Can’t we touch these bubbles then

  But they break?

  —In a Year

  Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm

  That crawls, to have betrayed my lady.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Hither we walked then, side by side,

  Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,

  And still I questioned or replied,

  While my heart, convulsed to really speak,

  Lay choking in its pride.

  —By the Fire-Side

  Or else kiss away one’s soul on her?

  Your love-fancies!

  –A sick man sees

  Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!

  —A Pretty Woman

  Never any more,

  While I live,

  Need I hope to see his face

  As before.

  Once his love grown chill,

  Mine may strive:

  Bitterly we re-embrace,

  Single still.

  —In a Year

  He’s gone. Oh, I’ll believe him every word!

  I was so young, I loved him so, I had

  No mother, God forgot me, and I fell.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Room after room,

  I hunt the house through

  We inhabit together.

  Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—

  Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her

  Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!

  As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew:

  Yon looking-glass gleaned at the wave of her feather.

  Yet the day wears,

  And door succeeds door;

  I try the fresh fortune—

  Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.

  Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.

  Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?

  But ‘tis twilight, you see,—with such suites to explore,

  Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!

  —Love in a Life

  You love him still, then?

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  So I grew wise in Love and Hate,

  From simple that I was of late.

  Once when I loved, I would enlace

  Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face

  Of her I loved, in one embrace—

  As if by mere love I could love immensely!

  Once, when I hated, I would plunge

  My sword, and wipe with the first lunge

  My foe’s whole life out like a sponge—

  As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!

  But now I am wiser, know better the fashion

  How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:

  And if I see cause to love more, hate more

  Than ever man loved, ever hated before—

  And seek in the Valley of Love,

  The nest, or the nook in Hate’s Grove

  Where my soul may surely reach

  The essence, naught less, of each,

  The Hate of all Hates, the Love

  Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove—

  I find them the very warders

  Each of the other’s borders.

  When I love most, Love is disguised

  In Hate; and when Hate is surprised

  In Love, then I hate most: ask

  How Love smiles through Hate’s iron casque,

  Hate grins through Love’s rose-braided mask,—

  And how, having hated thee,

  I sought long and painfully

  To reach thy heart, nor prick

  The skin but pierce to the quick—

  —Pippa Passes

  Dearest, three months ago

  When we loved each other so,

  Lived and loved the same

  Till an evening came

  When a shaft from the devil’s bow

  Pierced to our ingle-glow,

  And the friends were friend and foe!

  —A Lovers’ Quarrel

  Gone? All thwarts us.

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  He is with her, and they know that I know

  Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow

  While they laugh, laugh at me

  —The Laboratory

  Unlearned love was safe from spurning—

  Can’t we respect your loveless learning?

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  What’s she? an infant save in heart and brain. Young!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  O’ Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,

  And all a wonder and a wild desire,—

  Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,

  Took sanctuary within the holier blue,

  And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—

  Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—

  When the first summons from the darkling earth

  Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,

  And bared them of the glory—to drop down,

  To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—

  This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?

  Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

  Never may I commence my song, my due

  To God who best taught song by gift of thee,

  Except with bent head and beseeching hand—

  That still, despite the distance and the dark,

  What was, again may be; some interchange

  Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought,

  Some benediction anciently thy smile:

  —Never conclude, but raising hand and head

  Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn

  For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,

  Their upmost up and on,—so blessing back

  In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,

  Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,

  Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!

  —The Ring and The Book

  In earnest, do you think I’d choose

  That sort of new love to enslave me?

  Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;

  As little fear of losing it as winning:

  Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,

  And only parents’ love can last our lives.

  —Pippa Passes

  If you had pity on my passion, pity

  On my protested sickness of the soul

  To sit beside you, hear you breathe, and watch

  Your eyelids and the eyes beneath—if you

  Accorded gifts and knew not they were gifts—

  If I grew mad at last with enterprise

  And must behold my beauty in her bower

  Or perish—(I was ignorant of even

  My own desires—what then were you?) if sorrow—

  Sin—if the end came—must I now renounce

  My reason, blind myself to light, say truth

  Is false and lie to God and my own soul?

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  I found God there, his visible power;

  Yet felt in my heart, amid all
its sense

  Of the power, an equal evidence

  That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.

  For the loving worm within its clod,

  Were diviner than a loveless god

  Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.

  You know what I mean: God’s all, man’s nought:

  But also, God, whose pleasure brought

  Man into being, stands away

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  How she can lie!

  —Pippa Passes

  Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!

  Water your damned flower-pots, do!

  —Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

  Sin has surprised us, so will punishment

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  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!

  —Waring

  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?

  —A Lovers’ Quarrel

  Alone! I am left alone once more—

  —Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

  That way you’d take, friend Austin? What a shame

  I was your cousin, tamely from the first

  Your bride, and all this fervour’s run to waste!

  —A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon

  Love’s Regret

  Then how grace a rose? I know a way!

  Leave it, rather.

  Must you gather?

  Smell, kiss, wear it—at last, throw away!

  —A Pretty Woman

  Had she willed it, still had stood the screen

  So slight, so sure, ‘twixt my love and her:

  I could fix her face with a guard between,

  And find her soul as when friends confer,

  Friends—lovers that might have been.

  —By the Fire-Side

  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!

  —A Light Woman

  In my own heart love had not been made wise

  To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind,