To know even hate is but a mask of love’s.
To see a good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak
—Paracelsus
And still, as love’s brief morning wore,
With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,
They found love not as it seemed before.
—The Statue and the Bust
But you don’t know music! Wherefore
Keep on casting pearls
To a—poet? All I care for
Is—to tell him that a girl’s
“Love” comes aptly in when gruff
Grows his singing. (There, enough!)
—A Tale
But do not let us quarrel any more
—Andrea del Sarto
Is the knowledge of her, naught? the memory, naught?
—Lady, should such an one have looked on you,
Ne’er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life’s end—
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt—and dwell.
—Colombe’s Birthday
I think then, I should wish to stand
This evening in that dear, lost land,
Over the sea the thousand miles,
And know if yet that woman smiles
With the calm smile; some little farm
She lives in there, no doubt: what harm
If I sat on the door-side bench,
And, while her spindle made a trench
Fantastically in the dust,
Inquired of all her fortunes—just
Her children’s ages and their names,
And what may be the husband’s aims
For each of them. I’d talk this out,
And sit there, for an hour about,
Then kiss her hand once more, and lay
Mine on her head, and go my way.
—The Italian In England
Over?
Oh, what is over? what must I live through
And say, “’tis over”? Is our meeting over?
Have I received in presence of them all
The partner of my guilty love—with brow
Trying to seem a maiden’s brow—with lips
Which make believe that when they strive to form
Replies to you and tremble as they strive
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
If two lives join, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
—By the Fire-Side
Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
Fretless and free,
Soul, clap thy pinion!
Earth have dominion,
Body, o’er thee!
Wander at will,
Day after day—
Wander away,
Wandering still—
Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:
Body shall cumber
Soul-flight no more.
Waft of soul’s wing!
What lies above?
Sunshine and Love,
Skyblue and Spring!
Body hides—where?
Ferns of all feather,
Mosses and heather.
Yours be the care!
—Good to Forgive
Let’s contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
—Only sleep!
—A Woman’s Last Word
All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, ‘tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;
One day more bursts them open fully
—You know the red turns grey.
To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we,—well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of the eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart’s endeavour,—
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!—
Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!
—The Lost Mistress
How could it end in any other way?
—Andrea del Sarto
I loved you, Evelyn, all the while.
My heart seemed full as it could hold?
—Evelyn Hope
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
Young-hearted women, old-minded men
—The Flight of the Duchess
I seem to see! We meet and part; ‘tis brief
—Any Wife to Any Husband
Would he loved me yet,
On and on,
While I found some way undreamed
—Paid my debt!
Gave more life and more,
Till, all gone
—In a Year
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music’s wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!
My whole life long I learned to love.
This hour my utmost art I prove
And speak my passion—heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? ‘Tis well!
Lose who may—I still can say,
Those who win heaven, blest are they!
—One Way of Love
I earned no more by a warble
Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marble,
I needed a music-master.
—Youth and Art
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?
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
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?
—The Last Ride Together
The counter our lovers staked was lost
As surely as if it were lawful coin:
And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
You of the virtue (we issue join)
How strive you? De te, fabula.
—The Statue and the Bust
She followed down to the sea-shore;
I left and never saw her more.
—The Italian In England
There may be heaven; there must be hell;
Meantime, there is our earth here—well!
—Time’s Revenges
Love, to be wise …
Should we have—months ago, when first we loved
—Pippa Passes
Into her very hair, back swerving
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded
—The Flight of the Duchess
Sitting by my side,
At my feet,
So he breathed but air I breathed,
Satisfied!
I, too, at love’s brim
Touched the sweet
—In a Year
Loving is done with. Were he sitting now,
As so few hours since, on that seat, we’d love
No more—contrive no thousand happy ways
To hide love from the loveless, any more.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
But you meet the Prince at the Board,
I’m queen myself at bals-paré,
I’ve married a rich old lord,
And you’re dubbed knight and an R.A.
Each life unfulfilled, you see;
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.
And nobody calls you a dunce,
And people suppose me clever:
This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it for ever.
—Youth and Art
I should have gone home again,
Kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned myself!
—The Flight of the Duchess
Oh, Mildred, feel you not
That now, while I remember every glance
Of yours, each word of yours, with power to test
And weigh them in the diamond scales of pride
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
“Not my hair!” made the girl her moan—
“All the rest is gone or to go;
But the last, last grace, my all, my own,
Let it stay in the grave, that the ghosts may know!
Leave my poor gold hair alone!”
The passion thus vented, dead lay she;
Her parents sobbed their worst on that;
All friends joined in, nor observed degree:
For indeed the hair was to wonder at,
As it spread—not flowing free,
But curled around her brow, like a crown,
And coiled beside her cheeks, like a cap,
And calmed about her neck—ay, down
To her breast, pressed flat, without a gap
I’ the gold, it reached her gown.
All kissed that face, like a silver wedge
‘Mid the yellow wealth, nor disturbed its hair:
E’en the priest allowed death’s privilege,
As he planted the crucifix with care
On her breast, ’twixt edge and edge.
—Gold Hair
So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam
The glory dropped from their youth and love,
And both perceived they had dreamed a dream.
—The Statue and the Bust
Alas,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!
—Confessions
Mildred, break it if you choose,
A heart the love of you uplifted—still
Uplifts, thro’ this protracted agony,
To heaven! but Mildred, answer me
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
But love, love, love—there’s better love, I know!
This foolish love was only day’s first offer;
I choose my next love to defy the scoffer
—In Three Days
So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple,
“I wanted a taste, and now there’s enough of it”
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
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
—Waring
All traces of the rough forbidden path
My rash love lured her to! Each day must see
Some fear of hers effaced, some hope renewed:
Then there will be surprises, unforeseen
Delights in store. I’ll not regret the past.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Memory of Love
We would try and trace
One another’s face
In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other’s flaws,
How we chattered like two church daws!
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
And oh, all my heart how it loved him!
—Saul
So grew my own small life complete,
As nature obtained her best of me—
One born to love you, sweet!
—By the Fire-Side
And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married
—The Glove
But the soul
Whence the love comes, all ravage leaves that whole;
Vainly the flesh fades; soul makes all things new.
—Any Wife to Any Husband
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark
—Life in a Love
How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
—By the Fire-Side
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
—My Last Duchess
Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,—
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go—
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
Love, you did give all I asked
—Andrea del Sarto
Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again,
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall!
—By the Fire-Side
One likes to show the truth for the truth;
That the woman was light is very true
—A Light Woman
One lyric woman, in her crocus vest
Woven of sea-wools, with her two white hands
Commends to me the strainer and the cup
Thy lip hath bettered ere it blesses mine.
—Cleon
My perfect wife, my Leonor,
Oh heart, my own, oh eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path grey heads abhor?
—By the Fire-Side
No, indeed! for God above
Is great to grant, as mighty to make,
And creates the love to reward the love:
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I claim you still, for my own love’s sake!
—Evelyn Hope
Say again, what we are?
The sprite of a star,
I lure thee above where the destinies bar
My plumes their full play
Till a ruddier ray
Than my pale one announce there is withering away
Some … Scatter the vision for ever! And now,
As of old, I am I, thou art thou!
—In a Gondola
Was it something said,
Something done,
Vexed him? was it touch of hand,
Turn of head?
Strange! that very way
Love begun:
I as little understand
Love’s decay.
—In a Year
What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
‘Tis something, nay ‘tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what’s best for men?
—The Last Ride Together
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is
—A Death in the Desert
Thy singleness of soul that made me proud,
Thy purity of heart I loved aloud,
Thy man’s-truth I was bold to bid God see!
—Any Wife to Any Husband
For there I picked up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.
—Memorabilia
Dear, the pang is brief,
Do thy part,
Have thy pleasure! How perplexed
Grows belief!
Well, this cold clay clod
Was man’s heart:
Crumble it, and what comes next?
Is it God?
—In a Year
All, that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
Robert Browning on Love Page 5
