Written by
Robert Browning |
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive.
I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus.
Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much," or "Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat": such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy.
She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favor at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least.
She thanked men—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift.
Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—which I have not—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop.
Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together.
There she stands
As if alive.
Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then.
I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretense
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self as I avowed
At starting, is my object.
Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir.
Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
|
Written by
Edgar Lee Masters |
I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion!
How proud of father's rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father's fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband found he had married
A girl who was really poor,
He taunted me with the spires,
And called the house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;
And a man while selling his vote
Should get enough from the people's betrayal
To wall the whole of his family in.
He vexed my life till I went back home
And lived like an old maid till I died,
Keeping house for father.
|
Written by
Robert Browning |
Si credere dignum est.
--Virgil, Georgics, III, 390
Oh, worthy of belief I hold it was,
Virgil, your legend in those strange three lines!
No question, that adventure came to pass
One black night in Arcadia: yes, the pines,
Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass
Of black with void black heaven: the earth's confines,
The sky's embrace,--below, above, around,
All hardened into black without a bound.
Fill up a swart stone chalice to the brim
With fresh-squeezed yet fast-thickening poppy-juice:
See how the sluggish jelly, late a-swim,
Turns marble to the touch of who would loose
The solid smooth, grown jet from rim to rim,
By turning round the bowl! So night can fuse
Earth with her all-comprising sky.
No less,
Light, the least spark, shows air and emptiness.
And thus it proved when--diving into space,
Stript of all vapor, from each web of mist,
Utterly film-free--entered on her race
The naked Moon, full-orbed antagonist
Of night and dark, night's dowry: peak to base,
Upstarted mountains, and each valley, kissed
To sudden life, lay silver-bright: in air
Flew she revealed, Maid-Moon with limbs all bare.
Still as she fled, each depth,--where refuge seemed--
Opening a lone pale chamber, left distinct
Those limbs: mid still-retreating blue, she teemed
Herself with whiteness,--virginal, uncinct
By any halo save what finely gleamed
To outline not disguise her: heavenwas linked
In one accord with earth to quaff the joy,
Drain beauty to the dregs without alloy.
Whereof she grew aware.
What help? When, lo,
A succorable cloud with sleep lay dense:
Some pinetree-top had caught it sailing slow,
And tethered for a prize: in evidence
Captive lay fleece on fleece of piled-up snow
Drowsily patient: flake-heaped how or whence,
The structure of that succorable cloud,
What matter? Shamed she plunged into its shroud.
Orbed--so the woman-figure poets call
Because of rounds on rounds--that apple-shaped
Head which its hair binds close into a ball
Each side the curving ears--that pure undraped
Pout of the sister paps--that .
.
.
once for all,
Say--her consummate circle thus escaped
With its innumerous circlets, sank absorbed,
Safe in the cloud--O naked Moon full-orbed!
But what means this? The downy swathes combine,
Conglobe, the smothery coy-caressing stuff
Curdles about her! Vain each twist and twine
Those lithe limbs try, encroached on by a fluff
Fitting as close as fits the dented spine
Its flexible ivory outside-flesh: enough!
The plumy drifts contract, condense, constringe,
Till she is swallowed by the feathery springe.
As when a pearl slips lost in the thin foam
Churned on a sea-shore, and, o'er-frothed, conceits
Herself safe-housed in Amphitrite's dome,--
If, through the bladdery wave-worked yeast, she meets
What most she loathes and leaps from,--elf from gnome
No gladlier,--finds that safest of retreats
Bubble about a treacherous hand wide ope
To grasp her--(divers who pick pearls so grope)--
So lay this Maid-Moon clasped around and caught
By rough red Pan, the god of all that tract:
He it was schemed the snare thus subtly wrought
With simulated earth-breath,--wool-tufts packed
Into a billowy wrappage.
Sheep far-sought
For spotless shearings yield such: take the fact
As learned Virgil gives it,--how the breed
Whitens itself forever: yes, indeed!
If one forefather ram, though pure as chalk
From tinge on fleece, should still display a tongue
Black 'neath the beast's moist palate, prompt men balk
The propagating plague: he gets no young:
They rather slay him,--sell his hide to calk
Ships with, first steeped with pitch,--nor hands are wrung
In sorrow for his fate: protected thus,
The purity we loved is gained for us.
So did girl-Moon, by just her attribute
Of unmatched modesty betrayed, lie trapped,
Bruised to the breast of Pan, half god half brute,
Raked by his bristly boar-sward while he lapped
--Never say, kissed her! that were to pollute
Love's language--which moreover proves unapt
To tell how she recoiled--as who finds thorns
Where she sought flowers--when, feeling, she touched--horns!
Then--does the legend say?--first moon-eclipse
Happened, first swooning-fit which puzzled sore
The early sages? Is that why she dips
Into the dark, a minute and no more,
Only so long as serves her while she rips
The cloud's womb through and, faultless as before,
Pursues her way? No lesson for a maid
Left she, a maid herself thus trapped, betrayed?
Ha, Virgil? Tell the rest, you! "To the deep
Of his domain the wildwood, Pan forthwith
Called her, and so she followed"--in her sleep,
Surely?--"by no means spurning him.
" The myth
Explain who may! Let all else go, I keep
--As of a ruin just a monolith--
Thus much, one verse of five words, each a boon:
Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon.
|
Written by
Ben Jonson |
XII.
— EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND.
That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven,
And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given,
Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court,
To every squire, or groom, that will report
Well or ill, only all the following year,
Just to the weight their this day's presents bear ;
While it makes huishers serviceable men,Of some grand peer, whose air doth make rejoice
The fool that gave it ; who will want and weep,
When his proud patron's favors are asleep ;
While thus it buys great grace, and hunts poor fame ;
Runs between man and man ; 'tween dame, and dame ;
Solders crack'd friendship ; makes love last a day ;
Or perhaps less : whilst gold bears all this sway,
I, that have none to send you, send you verse.
Than this our gilt, nor golden age can deem,
When gold was made no weapon to cut throats,
Or put to flight Astrea, when her ingóts
Were yet unfound, and better placed in earth,
Than here, to give pride fame, and peasants birth,
But let this dross carry what price it will
With noble ignorants, and let them still
Turn upon scorned verse, their quarter-face :Were it to think, that you should not inherit
His love unto the Muses, when his skill
Almost you have, or may have when you will !
Wherein wise nature you a dowry gave,
Worth an estate, treble to that you have.
Beauty I know is good, and blood is more ;
Riches thought most ; but, madam, think what store
The world hath seen, which all these had in trust,And at her strong arm's end, hold up, and even,
The souls she loves.
Those other glorious notes,
Inscribed in touch or marble, or the coats
Painted, or carv'd upon our great men's tombs,
Or in their windows, do but prove the wombs
That bred them, graves : when they were born they died,
That had no muse to make their fame abide.
How many equal with the Argive queen,Or, in an army's head, that lock'd in brass
Gave killing strokes.
There were brave men before
Ajax, or Idomen, or all the store
That Homer brought to Troy ; yet none so live,
Because they lack'd the sacred pen could give
Like life unto them.
Who heav'd Hercules
Unto the stars, or the Tindarides ?
Who placed Jason's Argo in the sky,Or lifted Cassiopea in her chair,
But only poets, rapt with rage divine ?
And such, or my hopes fail, shall make you shine.
You, and that other star, that purest light,
Of all Lucina's train, Lucy the bright ;
Than which a nobler heaven itself knows not ;
Who, though she hath a better verser got,
Or poet, in the court-account, than I,To my less sanguine muse, wherein she hath won
My grateful soul, the subject of her powers,
I have already used some happy hours,
To her remembrance ; which when time shall bring
To curious light, to notes I then shall sing,
Will prove old Orpheus' act no tale to be :
For I shall move stocks, stones, no less than he.
Then all that have but done my Muse least grace,Had not their form touch'd by an English wit.
There, like a rich and golden pyramed,
Borne up by statues, shall I rear your head
Above your under-carved ornaments,
And shew how to the life my soul presents
Your form imprest there : not with tickling rhymes,
Or common-places, filch'd, that take these times,
But high and noble matter, such as fliesAnd your brave friend and mine so well did love.
Who, wheresoe'er he be ?
The rest is lost.
Whilst that for which all virtue now is sold,
And almost every vice, almighty gold,
That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven,
And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given,
Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court,
To every squire, or groom, that will report
Well or ill, only all the following year,
Just to the weight their this day's presents bear ;
While it makes huishers serviceable men,
|
Written by
Czeslaw Milosz |
Your hand, my wonder, is now icy cold.
The purest light of the celestial dome
has burned me through.
And now we are
as two still plams lying in darlmess,
as two black banks of a frozen stream
in the chasm of the world.
Our hair combed back is carved in wood,
the moon walks over our ebony shoulders.
A distant cockcrow, the night goes by, silent.
Rich is the rime of love, withered the dowry.
Where are you, living in what depths of time,
love, stepping down into what waters,
now, when the frost of our voiceless lips
does not fend off the divine fires?
In a forest of clouds, of fcam, and of silver
we live, caressing lands under our
And we are wielding the might of a dark scepter
to earn oblivion.
My love, your breast cut through by a clinel
knows nothing anymore of what it was.
Of clouds at dawn, of angers at daybreak,
of shallows in springtime it has no remembrance.
And you have led me, as once an angel led
Tobias, onto the rusty mashes of Lombardy.
But a day came when a sign frightened you,
a stinma of golden measure.
With a scream, with inunobile fear in your thin hands
you fell into a pit that ashes lie over,
where neither northern firs nor Italian yews
could protect our andent bed of lovers.
What was it.
what is it, what will it be
we filled the world with our cry and calling.
The dawn is back, the red moon set,
do we know now? In a heavy ship
A helmman comes, throws a silken rope
and binds w tightly to eaah other,
then he pours on friends, once enemies,
a handful of snow.
|
Written by
Omar Khayyam |
To drink wine and rejoice is my gospel of life. To
be as indifferent to heresy as to religion is my creed. I
asked the bride of the human race [the world] what her
dowry was, and she answered: My dowry consists in the
joy of my heart.
293
|