SELECTIONS FROM ROBERT BROWNING ALL that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw MY STAR. (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled : They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world ? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it. A FACE. IF one could have that little head of hers Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround. Of heaven, his angel faces orb on orb Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky MY LAST DUCHESS. FERRARA. THAT'S my last Duchess painted on the wall, That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Half-flush that dies along her throat;" such stuff 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 Or there exceed the mark "-and if she let Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master's known munificence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me! SONG FROM "PIPPA PASSES." I. GIVE her but a least excuse to love me! When-where How can this arm establish her above me, There already, to eternally reprove me? ("Hist!" said Kate the queen ; But "Oh," cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 'Tis only a page that carols unseen, Crumbling your hounds their messes!") II. Is she wronged?—To the rescue of her honor, My heart! Is she poor? What costs it to become a donor? Merely an earth to cleave, a sea to part. But that fortune should have thrust all this upon her! ("Nay, list!" bade Kate the queen; And still cried the maiden, binding her tresses, 66 'Tis only a page that carols unseen, Fitting your hawks their jesses!") CRISTINA. I. SHE should never have looked at me if she meant I should not love her! There are plenty . . men, you call such, I suppose may discover ..she 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! but not quite so sunk that moments, Sure though seldom, are denied us, when the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise it if pursuing Or the right way or the wrong way, to its triumph or undoing. IV. There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle; While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a lifetime that away the rest have trifled. V. Doubt you if, in some such moment, as she fixed me, she felt clearly, Ages past the soul existed, here an age 'tis resting merely, single, It stops here for is, this love way, with some other soul to mingle? |