102. NAY BUT YOU, WHO DO NOT LOVE HER

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:
So, 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!

R. BROWNING.

103. HOME-THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA

NOBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-West died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;

In the dimmest North-East distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and grey;
Here and here did England help me: how can I help England ?

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say,

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.

R. BROWNING.

104. OH, GOOD GIGANTIC SMILE O' THE BROWN OLD EARTH

OH, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,
This autumn morning! How he sets his bones
To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;

Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

105.

R. BROWNING (James Lee's Wife).

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Он, to be in England

Now that April's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops-at the bent spray's edge—
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

R. BROWNING.

106. FROM ONE WORD MORE'

RAFAEL made a century of sonnets,

Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil

Else he only used to draw Madonnas:

These the world might view-but One, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her life-time?
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory,
Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving-
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's,
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's ?
You and I would rather read that volume
(Taken to his beating bosom by it),
Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael,
Would we not? than wonder at Madonnas.

Dante once prepared to paint an angel:
Whom to please? You whisper Beatrice'.
While he mused and traced it and retraced it
(Peradventure with a pen corroded

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for,
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked,
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma,
Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment,
Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle,
Let the wretch go festering through Florence)—
Dante, who loved well because he hated,
Hated wickedness that hinders loving,
Dante standing, studying his angel,-
In there broke the folk of his Inferno.

You and I would rather see that angel,
Painted by the tenderness of Dante,

Would we not ?-than read a fresh Inferno.

God be thanked, the meanest of His creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her.

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno.

Wrote one song-and in my brain I sing it,
Drew one angel-borne, see, on my bosom !

108.

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FROM A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL'

THAT low man seeks a little thing to do,

Sees it and does it:

'This high man, with a great thing to pursue,

Dies ere he knows it.

That low man goes on adding one to one,

His hundred 's soon hit:

This high man, aiming at a million,

Misses an unit.

That, has the world here-should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!

This, throws himself on God, and unperplext
Seeking shall find Him.

So, with the throttling hands of Death at strife,

Ground he at grammar;

Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer

He settled Hoti's business-let it be !—
Properly based Oun-

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.

Well, here the platform, here's the proper place.
Hail to your purlieus,

All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!

Here's the top-peak! the multitude below

Live, for they can, there.

This man decided not to Live but Know

Bury this man there?

Here-here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,

Stars come and go! let joy break with the storm,

Peace let the dew send !

Lofty designs must close in like effects:

Loftily lying,

Leave him-still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.

R. BROWNING.

110. MISCONCEPTIONS

THIS is a spray the Bird clung to,
Making it blossom with pleasure,
Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
Fit for her nest and her treasure.
Oh, what a hope beyond measure

Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to,-
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

This is a heart the Queen leant on,

Thrilled in a minute erratic,

Ere the true bosom she bent on,
Meet for love's regal dalmatic.

Oh, what a fancy ecstatic

Was the poor heart's, ere the wanderer went on-
Love to be saved for it, proffered to, spent on!

R. BROWNING.