SONNET
1834
Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!)
May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears:
I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low
Their passionate praises reach thee—my cheek wears
Alone no wonder when thou passest by;
Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply
To the irrepressible homage which doth glow
On every lip but mine: if in thine ears
Their accents linger—and thou dost recall
Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale,
Beside each votarist whose lighted brow
Wore worship like an aureole, "O'er them all
My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail
Save that one only:"—Lady, could'st thou know!
It is perhaps characteristic of Browning that this early sonnet should be so irregular in its rime-scheme.
The songs in Paracelsus (1835) prove that Browning was a genuine lyrical poet: the best of them, Over the Sea Our Galleys Went, is more properly a dramatic monologue: but the song in the second act, by Aprile (who I think stands for Keats) is a pure lyric, and so are the two stanzas sung by Paracelsus in the fourth act. There are lines here which suggest something of the drowsy music of Tennyson's Lotos-Eaters, published in 1832:
…. such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.