Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by Robert Browning Page A

eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
    Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
    Think first, fight afterwards – the soldier’s art:
[90] One taste of the old time sets all to rights.
    XVI
    Not it! I fancied Cuthbert’s reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
    An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
    That way he used. Alas, one night’s disgrace!
Out went my heart’s new fire and left it cold.
    XVII
    Giles then, the soul of honour – there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
    [100] Good – but the scene shifts – faugh! what hangman-hands
    Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!
    XVIII
    Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
    Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
    I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.
    XIX
    [110] A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
    No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
    This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
    For the fiend’s glowing hoof – to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.
    XX
    So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
    Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
    The river which had done them all the wrong,
[120] Whate’er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.
    XXI
    Which, while I forded, – good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
    For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
    – It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby’s shriek.
    XXII
    Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the stragglers, what war did they wage,
    [130] Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
    Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage –
    XXIII
    The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
    None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
    Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.
    XXIV
    And more than that – a furlong on – why, there!
[140] What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
    Or brake, not wheel – that harrow fit to reel
    Men’s bodies out like silk? with all the air
    Of Tophet’s tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.
    XXV
    Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
    Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
    [150] Changes and off he goes!) within a rood –
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.
    XXVI
    Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil’s
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
    Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
    Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.
    XXVII
    And just as far as ever from the end!
Naught in the distance but the evening, naught
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
    [160] A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,
    Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap – perchance the guide I sought.
    XXVIII
    For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
’Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains – with such name to grace
    Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
    How thus they had surprised me, – solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.
    XXIX
    Yet half