I was a human creature too, With flesh and blood like one of you, III. I had a lover-shame avaunt! This poor wrenched body, grim and gaunt, Was kissed all over till it burned, By lips the truest, love e'er turned His heart's own tint: one night they kissed My soul out in a burning mist. IV. So, next day when the accustomed train V. But when I falter Beltran's name, "Ha?” quoth the father; "much I blame "The sin; yet wherefore idly grieve? "Despair not-strenuously retrieve! "Nay, I will turn this love of thine "To lawful love, almost divine, VI. "For he is young, and led astray, "This Beltran, and he schemes, men say, "To change the laws of church and state; "So, thine shall be an angel's fate, "Who, ere the thunder breaks, should roll VII. "For, when he lies upon thy breast, VIII. That father's beard was long and white, And, that same evening, bade the boy, IX. He told me what he would not tell X. I told the father all his schemes, Who were his comrades, what their dreams; "To-night he comes, but not the same Robert Browning. III. At night he never came. 3 XI. Nor next night: on the after-morn, XII. That horrible black scaffold dressed, XIII. No part in aught they hope or fear! But shall bear God and man my cry, CRISTINA. I. SHE should never have looked at me All her soul to, if she pleases, And yet leave much as she found them: But I'm not so, and she knew it When she fixed me, glancing round them. II. What? To fix me thus meant nothing? But I can't tell (there's my weakness) What her look said!-no vile cant, sure, About "need to strew the bleakness "Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed, "That the sea feels"-no "strange yearning "That such souls have, most to lavish "Where there's chance of least returning." III. Oh we're sunk enough here, God knows! When the spirit's true endowments Or the right way or the wrong way, IV. There are flashes struck from midnights, Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, That away the rest have trifled. V. Doubt you if, in some such moment, Here an age 't is resting merely, VI. Else it loses what it lived for, Deeper blisses (if you choose it), Have been lost here. Doubt you whether This she felt as, looking at me, Mine and her souls rushed together? VII. Oh, observe! Of course, next moment, Never fear but there's provision VIII. Such am I: the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her; |