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!
Robert Browning. 1812-1889
722. Earl Mertoun's Song
THERE 's a woman like a dewdrop, she 's so purer than the purest;
And her noble heart 's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's the
surest:
And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre
Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-grape
cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted marble:
Then her voice's music … call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
warble!
And this woman says, 'My days were sunless and my nights were
moonless,
Parch'd 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—
I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me,
And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me!
Robert Browning. 1812-1889
723. In a Gondola
THE moth's kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made me believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.
The bee's kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you enter'd gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is render'd up,
And passively its shatter'd cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.
Robert Browning. 1812-1889