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 --

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

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:

The past was a sleep, and their 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.)

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?

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 cast,

That the door she had passed was shut on her

Till the final catafalque repassed.

The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,

Through a certain window facing the East,

She could watch like a convent's chronicler.

Since passing the door might lead to a feast,

And a feast might lead to so much beside,

He, of many evils, chose the least.

"Freely I choose too," said the bride --

"Your window and its world suffice,"

Replied the tongue, while the heart replied --

"If I spend the night with that devil twice,

May his window serve as my loop of hell

Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!

"I fly to the Duke who loves me well,

Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow

Ere I count another ave-bell.

"'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,

And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim,

And I save my soul -- but not tomorrow" --

(She checked herself and her eye grew dim)

"My father tarries to bless my state:

I must keep it one day more for him.

"Is one day more so long to wait?

Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;

We shall see each other, sure as fate."

She turned on her side and slept. Just so!

So we resolve on a thing and sleep:

So did the lady, ages ago.

That night the Duke said, "Dear or cheap

As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove

To body or soul, I will drain it deep."

And on the morrow, bold with love,

He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,

As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove)

And smiled "'Twas a very funeral,

Your lady will think, this feast of ours, --

A shame to efface, whate'er befall!

"What if we break from the Arno bowers,

And try if Petraja, cool and green,

Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?"

The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen

On his steady brow and quiet mouth,

Said, "Too much favour for me so mean!

"But, alas! my lady leaves the South;

Each wind that comes from the Apennine

Is a menace to her tender youth:

"Nor a way exists, the wise opine,

If she quits her palace twice this year,

To avert the flower of life's decline."

Quoth the Duke, "A sage and a kindly fear.

Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:

Be our feast tonight as usual here!"

And then to himself -- "Which night shall bring

Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool --

Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!

"Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool --

For tonight the Envoy arrives from France

Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.

"I need thee still and might miss perchance.

Today is not wholly lost, beside,

With its hope of my lady's countenance:

"For I ride -- what should I do but ride?

And passing her palace, if I list,

May glance at its window -- well betide!"

So said, so done: nor the lady missed

One ray that broke from the ardent brow,

Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.

Be sure that each renewed the vow,

No morrow's sun should arise and set

And leave them then as it left them now.

But next day passed, and next day yet,

With still fresh cause to wait one day more

Ere each leaped over the parapet.

And still, as love's brief morning wore,

With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,

They found love not as it seemed before.

They thought it would work infallibly,

But not in despite of heaven and earth:

The rose would blow when the storm passed by.

Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth

By store of fruits that supplant the rose:

The world and its ways have a certain worth:

And to press a point while these oppose

Were simple policy; better wait:

We lose no friends and we gain no foes.

Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate,

Who daily may ride and pass and look

Where his lady watches behind the grate!

And she -- she watched the square like a book

Holding one picture and only one,

Which daily to find she undertook:

When the picture was reached the book was done,

And she turned from the picture at night to scheme

Of tearing it out for herself next sun.

So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam

The glory dropped from their youth and love,

And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;

Which hovered as dreams do, still above:

But who can take a dream for a truth?

Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!

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."

But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine,

With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,

Was set where now is the empty shrine --

(And, leaning out of a bright blue space,

As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,

The passionate pale lady's face --

Eyeing ever, with earnest eye

And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,

Some one who ever is passing by --)

The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch

In Florence, "Youth -- my dream escapes!

Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch

Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes --

"Can the soul, the will, die out of a man

Ere his body find the grave that gapes?

"John of Douay shall effect my plan,

Set me on horseback here aloft,

Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

"In the very square I have crossed so oft:

That men may admire, when future suns

Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze --

Admire and say, 'When he was alive

How he would take his pleasure once!'

"And it shall go hard but I contrive

To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb

At idleness which aspires to strive."

---

So! While these wait the trump of doom,

How do their spirits pass, I wonder,

Nights and days in the narrow room?

Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder

What a gift life was, ages ago,

Six steps out of the chapel yonder.

Only they see not God, I know,

Nor all that chivalry of his,

The soldier-saints who, row on row,

Burn upward each to his point of bliss --

Since, the end of life being manifest,

He had burned his way through the world to this.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,

For their end was a crime." -- Oh, a crime will do

As well, I reply, to serve for a test,

As a virtue golden through and through,

Sufficient to vindicate itself

And prove its worth at a moment's view!

Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?

Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram

To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.

The true has no value beyond the sham:

As well the counter as coin, I submit,

When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.

Stake your counter as boldly every whit,

Venture as warily, use the same skill,

Do your best, whether winning or losing it,

If you choose to play! -- is my principle.

Let a man contend to the uttermost

For his life's set prize, be it what it will!

The counter our lovers staked was lost

As surely as if it were lawful coin:

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost

Is -- the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,

Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

You of the virtue (we issue join)

How strive you? De te, fabula.

Robert Browning

"Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes"

HEAP cassia, sandal-buds and stripes

  Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,

Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes

  From out her hair: such balsam falls

  Down sea-side mountain pedestals,

From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,

Spent with the vast and howling main,

To treasure half their island-gain.

And strew faint sweetness from some old

  Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud

Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;

  Or shredded perfume, like a cloud

  From closet long to quiet vowed,

With mothed and dropping arras hung,

Mouldering her lute and books among,

As when a queen, long dead, was young.

Robert Browning

Porphyria's Lover

[Note: In Dramatic Lyrics, this poem was placed together with another under the heading "Madhouse Cells"; it was originally published in The Monthly Repository in 1836, making it almost certainly Browning's first dramatic monologue. --Nelson]

THE rain set early to-night,

  The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

  And did its worst to vex the lake:

  I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

  She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

  Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

  Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

  And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

  And, last, she sat down by my side

  And called me. When no voice replied,

She put her arm about my waist,

  And made her smooth white shoulder bare

And all her yellow hair displaced,

  And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

  And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me--she

  Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,

To set its struggling passion free

  From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

  And give herself to me forever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

  Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

  For love of her, and all in vain:

  So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

  Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

  Made my heart swell, and still it grew

  While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

  Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

  In one long yellow string I wound

  Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

  I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

  I warily oped her lids: again

  Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

  About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

  I propped her head up as before,

  Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

  The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

  That all it scorned at once is fled,

  And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

  Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

  And all night long we have not stirred,

  And yet God has not said a word!

Robert Browning

Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

[Note: Salve tibi in Stanza 2 means "Hail to thee"; "Arian" in Stanza 5 refers to a follower of the heresy of Arias who denied the divinity of Christ and therefore also denied the Trinity; "Manichee" in Stanza 7 means "a heretic"; Hy, Zy, Hine in Stanza 9 seems to be the beginning of a necromantic spell for summoning Satan, while Plena gratia ave Virgo means "Hail, Virgin, full of grace," a version of the Ave Maria. --Nelson]

GR-R-R--there go, my heart's abhorrence!

  Water your damned flower-pots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

  God's blood, would not mine kill you!

What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?

  Oh, that rose has prior claims--

Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

  Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together;

  Salve tibi! I must hear

Wise talk of the kind of weather,

  Sort of season, time of year:

Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely

  Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:

What's the Latin name for "parsley"?

  What's the Greek name for "swine's snout"?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,

  Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,

  And a goblet for ourself,

Rinsed like something sacrificial

  Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--

Marked with L. for our initial!

  (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While Brown Dolores

  Squats outside the Convent bank

With Sanchicha, telling stories,

  Steeping tresses in the tank,

Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,

  --Can't I see his dead eye glow,

Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?

  (That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection*,            [meal]

  Knife and fork he never lays

Cross-wise, to my recollection,

  As I do, in Jesu's praise.

I the Trinity illustrate,

  Drinking watered orange-pulp--

In three sips the Arian frustrate;

  While he drains his at one gulp!

Oh, those melons! if he's able

  We're to have a feast; so nice!

One goes to the Abbot's table,

  All of us get each a slice.

How go on your flowers? None double?

  Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,

  Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,

  Once you trip on it, entails

Twenty-nine distinct damnations,

  One sure, if another fails;

If I trip him just a-dying,

  Sure of heaven as sure can be,

Spin him round and send him flying

  Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel

  On gray paper with blunt type!

Simply glance at it, you grovel

  Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;

If I double down the pages

  At the woeful sixteenth print,

When he gathers his greengages*,            [plums]

  Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan!--one might venture

  Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave

Such a flaw in the indenture

  As he'd miss till, past retrieve,

Blasted lay that rose-acacia

  We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine . . . .

'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia

  Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r--you swine!

Robert Browning