A bit more Browning

My Last Duchess
Robert Browning
 
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
"Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
"Must never hope to reproduce the faint
"Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, 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.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men good! but thanked
Somehow I know not how as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech which I have not to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
"Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
"Or there exceed the mark" and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and make excuse,
E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

 

A portrait of Lucrezia de’ Medici, by Bronzino, generally believed to be My Last Duchess

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”

Robert Browning (1812–89)

MY  first thought was, he lied in every word,   That hoary cripple, with malicious eye   Askance to watch the working of his lie On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d         5   Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby. What else should he be set for, with his staff?   What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare   All travellers who might find him posted there, And ask the road? I guess’d what skull-like laugh         10 Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph   For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare, If at his counsel I should turn aside   Into that ominous tract which, all agree,   Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly         15 I did turn as he pointed: neither pride Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,   So much as gladness that some end might be. For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,   What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope         20   Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope With that obstreperous joy success would bring,— I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring   My heart made, finding failure in its scope. As when a sick man very near to death         25   Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end   The tears and takes the farewell of each friend, And hears one bid the other go, draw breath Freelier outside, (“since all is o’er,” he saith,   “And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;”)         30 While some discuss if near the other graves   Be room enough for this, and when a day   Suits best for carrying the corpse away, With care about the banners, scarves and staves, And still the man hears all, and only craves         35   He may not shame such tender love and stay. Thus, I had so long suffer’d, in this quest,   Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ   So many times among “The Band”—to wit, The knights who to the Dark Tower’s search address’d         40 Their steps—that just to fail as they, seem’d best.   And all the doubt was now—should I be fit? So, quiet as despair, I turn’d from him,   That hateful cripple, out of his highway   Into the path the pointed. All the day         45 Had been a dreary one at best, and dim Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim   Red leer to see the plain catch its estray. For mark! no sooner was I fairly found   Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,         50   Than, pausing to throw backward a last view O’er the safe road, ’t was gone; gray plain all round: Nothing but plain to the horizon’s bound.   I might go on; nought else remain’d to do. So, on I went. I think I never saw         55   Such starv’d ignoble nature; nothing throve:   For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove! But cockle, spurge, according to their law Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,   You ’d think; a burr had been a treasure trove.         60 No! penury, inertness and grimace,   In the strange sort, were the land’s portion. “See   Or shut your eyes,” said Nature peevishly, “It nothing skills: I cannot help my case: ’T is the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,         65   Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.” If there push’d any ragged thistle=stalk   Above its mates, the head was chopp’d; the bents   Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruis’d as to baulk         70 All hope of greenness? ’T is a brute must walk   Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair   In leprosy; thin dry blades prick’d the mud   Which underneath look’d kneaded up with blood.         75 One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupefied, however he came there:   Thrust out past service from the devil’s stud! Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,   With that red, gaunt and collop’d neck a-strain,         80   And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so;   He must be wicked to deserve such pain. I shut my eyes and turn’d them on my heart.         85   As a man calls for wine before he fights,   I ask’d one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art:   One taste of the old time sets all to rights.         90 Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face   Beneath its garniture of curly gold,   Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm in mine to fix me to the place, That way he us’d. Alas, one night’s disgrace!         95   Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold. Giles then, the soul of honor—there he stands   Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.   What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good—but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands         100 Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands   Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! Better this present than a past like that;   Back therefore to my darkening path again!   No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.         105 Will the night send a howlet of a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat   Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. A sudden little river cross’d my path   As unexpected as a serpent comes.         110   No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it froth’d by, might have been a bath For the fiend’s glowing hoof—to see the wrath   Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. So petty yet so spiteful All along,         115   Low scrubby alders kneel’d down over it;   Drench’d willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong,   Whate’er that was, roll’d by, deterr’d no whit.         120 Which, while I forded,—good saints, how I fear’d   To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,   Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! —It may have been a water-rat I spear’d,         125   But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek. Glad was I when I reach’d the other bank.   Now for a better country. Vain presage!   Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank         130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poison’d tank,   Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage— The fight must so have seem’d in that fell cirque.   What penn’d them there, with all the plain to choose?   No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,         135 None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk   Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. And more than that—a furlong on—why, there!   What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,         140   Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reel Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,   Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. Then came a bit of stubb’d ground, once a wood,         145   Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth   Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—   Bog, clay, and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.         150 Now blotches rankling, color’d gay and grim,   Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s   Broke into moss or substances like thus; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim         155   Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. And just as far as ever from the end,   Nought in the distance but the evening, nought   To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,         160 Sail’d past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penn’d   That brush’d my cap—perchance the guide I sought. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,   Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place   All round to mountains—with such name to grace         165 Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surpris’d me,—solve it, you!   How to get from them was no clearer case. Yet half I seem’d to recognize some trick   Of mischief happen’d to me, God knows when—         170   In a bad perhaps. Here ended, then, Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click   As when a trap shuts—you ’re inside the den. Burningly it came on me all at once,         175   This was the place! those two hills on the right,   Couch’d like two bulls lock’d horn in horn in fight, While, to the left, a tall scalp’d mountain … Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,   After a life spent training for the sight!         180 What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?   The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,   Built of brown stone, without a counter-part In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf         185   He strikes on, only when the timbers start. Not see? because of night perhaps?—Why, day   Came back again for that! before it left,   The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,         190 Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—   “Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!” Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it toll’d   Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears   Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—         195 How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old   Lost, lost! one moment knell’d the woe of years. There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met   To view the last of me, a living frame         200   For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,   And blew “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”