Robert Browning: How to Know Him

by William Lyon Phelps

One day as the lady saw her youth
Depart, and the silver thread that streaked
Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,

The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,
And wondered who the woman was,
Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,

Fronting her silent in the glass—
"Summon here," she suddenly said,
"Before the rest of my old self pass,"

"Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,
Who fashions the clay no love will change,
And fixes a beauty never to fade."

"Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange
Arrest the remains of young and fair,
And rivet them while the seasons range."

"Make me a face on the window there,
Waiting as ever, mute the while,
My love to pass below in the square!"

"And let me think that it may beguile
Dreary days which the dead must spend
Down in their darkness under the aisle,"

"To say, 'What matters it at the end?
I did no more while my heart was warm
Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'"

"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm—"

"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?
A lady of clay is as good, I trow."