Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee Drop heavily down,-burst, shattered, everywhere! Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee And breathe within thy shadow a new air, I do not think of thee-I am too near thee. XXX I SEE thine image through my tears tonight, And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. Refer the cause?-Beloved, is it thou On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight, As he, in his swooning ears, the choir's Amen. Beloved, dost thou love? or did I see all The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when Too vehement light dilated my ideal, For my soul's eyes? Will that light come again, As now these tears come-falling hot and real? XXXI THOU Comest! all is said without a word. Their happy eyelids from an unaverred Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue The sin most, but the occasion-that we two Should for a moment stand unministered By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near and close, Thou dovelike help! and, when my fears would rise, With thy broad heart serenely interpose: Brood down with thy divine sufficiencies PARDON, oh, pardon, that my soul should make, Of all that strong divineness which I know For thine and thee, an image only so Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break. It is that distant years which did not take Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit : As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a snort And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate. XXXVIII FIRST time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "Oh, list." When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. The second passed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed! That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown, With sanctifying sweetness, did precede. The third upon my lips was folded down In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed, I have been proud and said, "My love, my own." XXXIX BECAUSE thou hast the power and own'st the grace To look through and behind this mask of ine (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains), and behold my soul's true face, The dim and weary witness of life's race, Because thou hast the faith and love to see, Through that same soul's distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for a place BELOVED, thou hast brought me many flowers Plucked in the garden, all the summer through And winter, and it seemed as if they grew In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers. So, in the like name of that love of ours, Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too, And which on warm and cold days I withdrew From my heart's ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue, And wait thy weeding; yet here's eglantine, Here's ivy-take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colors ROBERT BROWNING LIST OF REFERENCES EDITIONS * POETICAL WORKS, 17 volumes, Smith, Elder & Co., 1888-94. - POETICAL WORKS, 9 volumes, The Macmillan Co., 1894-1903. POETICAL WORKS, 12 volumes, edited by Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke, Crowell & Co., 1898 (Camberwell Edition). POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS, 6 volumes, edited by G. W. Cooke, The Houghton Mifflin Co., 1899 (New Riverside Edition). - POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS, 3 volumes, The Houghton Mifflin Co., 1906 (New Popular Edition). - POETICAL WORKS, 2 volumes, edited by Augustine Birrell, The Macmillan Co., 1896 (Globe Edition). * POETICAL AND DRAMATIC WORKS, 1 volume, edited by H. E. Scudder, 1895 (Cambridge Edition); the same, on Oxford India paper, 1905 (Special Cambridge Edition). SELECTIONS, 2 volumes, Smith, Elder & Co., 1872 (Browning's own selection); * the same, with additional poems subsequent to 1872, edited by C. Porter and H. A. Clarke, Crowell & Co., 1896. SELECT POEMS, edited by Percival Chubb, 1905 (Longmans' English Classics). SELECT POEMS, edited by A. J. George, Little, Brown & Co., 1905. BIOGRAPHY ORR (Alexandra L.), Life and Letters of Robert Browning, 1891; * new enlarged edition, edited by F. G. Kenyon, 1908. SHARP (Wm.), Life of Browning, 1890 (Great Writers Series). WAUGH (Arthur), Robert Browning, 1900 (Westminster Biographies). - CHESTERTON (G. K.), Browning, 1903 (English Men of Letters Series). — DOUGLAS (James), Robert Browning, 1904 (Bookman Biographies). -* DOWDEN (Edward), Browning, 1904 (Temple Biographies). HERFORD (C. H.), Browning, 1904 (Modern English Writers Series). See also: Forster's Life of Landor; Hallam Tennyson's Life of Tennyson; * W. W. Story and his Friends, edited by Henry James, 1904; * LETTERS of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, edited by F. G. Kenyon, 1897; * LETTERS of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, edited by Robert Barrett Browning, 1899; and * Robert Browning and Alfred Domett, edited by F. G. Kenyon, 1906. REMINISCENCES AND EARLY CRITICISM HORNE (R. H.), A New Spirit of the Age, 1844. POWELL (T.), The Living Authors of England, 1849.-OSSOLI (M. F.), Art, Literature and the Drama. MORRIS (Wm.), Review of Men and Women, 1856. HAWTHORNE, Italian Note-books. BAGEHOT (W.), Literary Studies, Vol. II, 1879: Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning; or Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art in English Poetry; from the National Review, Nov., |