There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets--here's the book, the leaf is folded down!
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets--here's the book, the leaf is folded down!
Elizabeth Browning
"
XXXIV.
"Not so quickly," she retorted,--"I confess, where'er you go, you
Find for things, names--shows for actions, and pure gold for honour
clear:
But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you
The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence
here. "
XXXV.
Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;
Friends, who listened, laughed her words off, while her lovers deemed
her fair:
A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station
Near the statue's white reposing--and both bathed in sunny air!
XXXVI.
With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal murmur,
And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move,
And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer,
Then recoiling in a tremble from the too much light above.
XXXVII.
'T is a picture for remembrance. And thus, morning after morning,
Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet.
Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs--we both were dogs for
scorning--
To be sent back when she pleased it and her path lay through the wheat.
XXXVIII.
And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sorrow,
Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along,--
Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow,
Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.
XXXIX.
Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans,
With the forest green behind us and its shadow cast before,
And the river running under, and across it from the rowans
A brown partridge whirring near us till we felt the air it bore,--
XL.
There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets--here's the book, the leaf is folded down!
XLI.
Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,--
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the
middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
XLII.
Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making:
Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth,
For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking,
And the chariot wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them
forth.
XLIII.
After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging
A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast
She would break out on a sudden in a gush of woodland singing,
Like a child's emotion in a god--a naiad tired of rest.
XLIV.
Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest,
For her looks sing too--she modulates her gestures on the tune,
And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are
finest,
'T is the eyes that shoot out vocal light and seem to swell them on.
XLV.
Then we talked--oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the
talking,
Made another singing--of the soul! a music without bars:
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were
walking,
Brought interposition worthy-sweet,--as skies about the stars.
XLVI.
And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought
them;
She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,
Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,
In the birchen-wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.
XXXIV.
"Not so quickly," she retorted,--"I confess, where'er you go, you
Find for things, names--shows for actions, and pure gold for honour
clear:
But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you
The world's book which now reads dryly, and sit down with Silence
here. "
XXXV.
Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;
Friends, who listened, laughed her words off, while her lovers deemed
her fair:
A fair woman, flushed with feeling, in her noble-lighted station
Near the statue's white reposing--and both bathed in sunny air!
XXXVI.
With the trees round, not so distant but you heard their vernal murmur,
And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move,
And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer,
Then recoiling in a tremble from the too much light above.
XXXVII.
'T is a picture for remembrance. And thus, morning after morning,
Did I follow as she drew me by the spirit to her feet.
Why, her greyhound followed also! dogs--we both were dogs for
scorning--
To be sent back when she pleased it and her path lay through the wheat.
XXXVIII.
And thus, morning after morning, spite of vows and spite of sorrow,
Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along,--
Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns to-morrow,
Or to teach the hill-side echo some sweet Tuscan in a song.
XXXIX.
Ay, for sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans,
With the forest green behind us and its shadow cast before,
And the river running under, and across it from the rowans
A brown partridge whirring near us till we felt the air it bore,--
XL.
There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made to Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser, or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch's sonnets--here's the book, the leaf is folded down!
XLI.
Or at times a modern volume, Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt's ballad-verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,--
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the
middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.
XLII.
Or at times I read there, hoarsely, some new poem of my making:
Poets ever fail in reading their own verses to their worth,
For the echo in you breaks upon the words which you are speaking,
And the chariot wheels jar in the gate through which you drive them
forth.
XLIII.
After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging
A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast
She would break out on a sudden in a gush of woodland singing,
Like a child's emotion in a god--a naiad tired of rest.
XLIV.
Oh, to see or hear her singing! scarce I know which is divinest,
For her looks sing too--she modulates her gestures on the tune,
And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are
finest,
'T is the eyes that shoot out vocal light and seem to swell them on.
XLV.
Then we talked--oh, how we talked! her voice, so cadenced in the
talking,
Made another singing--of the soul! a music without bars:
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were
walking,
Brought interposition worthy-sweet,--as skies about the stars.
XLVI.
And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought
them;
She had sympathies so rapid, open, free as bird on branch,
Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,
In the birchen-wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.
