Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) by Robert Browning Page B

I seemed to recognize some trick
[170] Of mischief happened to me, God knows when –
    In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
    Progress this way. When, in the very nick
    Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts – you’re inside the den!
    XXX
    Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
    While to the left, a tall scalped mountain … Dunce,
    Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
[180] After a life spent training for the sight!
    XXXI
    What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool’s heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
    In the whole world. The tempest’s mocking elf
    Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.
    XXXII
    Not see? because of night perhaps? – why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
    [190] The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
    Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, –
‘Now stab and end the creature – to the heft!’
    XXXIII
    Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
    Of all the lost adventurers my peers, –
    How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
    And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.
    XXXIV
    There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
[200] To view the last of me, a living frame
    For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
    I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
    Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ‘ Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came .’

The Statue and the Bust
    There’s a palace in Florence, the world knows well,
    And a statue watches it from the square,
    And this story of both do our townsmen tell.
    Ages ago, a lady there,
    At the farthest window facing the East
    Asked, ‘Who rides by with the royal air?’
    The bridesmaids’ prattle around her ceased;
    She leaned forth, one on either hand;
    They saw how the blush of the bride increased –
    [10] They felt by its beats her heart expand –
    As one at each ear and both in a breath
    Whispered, ‘The Great-Duke Ferdinand.’
    That self-same instant, underneath,
    The Duke rode past in his idle way,
    Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.
    Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,
    Till he threw his head back – ‘Who is she?’
    – ‘A bride the Riccardi brings home today.’
    Hair in heaps lay heavily
    [20] Over a pale brow spirit-pure –
    Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,
    Crisped like a war-steed’s encolure –
    And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes
    Of the blackest black our eyes endure.
    And lo, a blade for a knight’s emprise
    Filled the fine empty sheath of a man, –
    The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.
    He looked at her, as a lover can;
    She looked at him, as one who awakes:
    [30] The past was a sleep, and her life began.
    Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,
    A feast was held that selfsame night
    In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.
    (For Via Larga is three-parts light,
    But the palace overshadows one,
    Because of a crime which may God requite!
    To Florence and God the wrong was done,
    Through the first republic’s murder there
    By Cosimo and his cursèd son.)
    [40] The Duke (with the statue’s face in the square)
    Turned in the midst of his multitude
    At the bright approach of the bridal pair.
    Face to face the lovers stood
    A single minute and no more,
    While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued –
    Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor –
    For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,
    As the courtly custom was of yore.
    In a minute can lovers exchange a word?
    [50] If a word did pass, which I do not think,
    Only one out of the thousand heard.
    That was the bridegroom. At day’s brink
    He and his bride were alone at last
    In a bedchamber by a taper’s blink.
    Calmly he said that her lot was