By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss
—Saul
“This woman’s heart and soul and brain
“Are mine as much as this gold chain
“She bids me wear; which’’ (say again)
“I choose to make by cherishing
“A precious thing, or choose to fling
“Over the boat-side, ring by ring.’’
—In a Gondola
Nay but you, who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught—speak truth—above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?
Because, you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over:
Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!
—Song
I am knit round
As with a charm, by sin and lust and pride
—Pauline
And she,—she lies in my hand as tame
As a pear late basking over a wall;
Just a touch to try and off it came;
‘Tis mine,—can I let it fall?
—A Light Woman
And I shall behold thee, face to face
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
I’ve a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me.
And I’ve a Lady—there he wakes,
The laughing fiend and prince of snakes
Within me, at her name, to pray
Fate send some creature in the way
Of my love for her, to be down-torn,
Upthrust and outward-borne,
So I might prove myself that sea
Of passion which I needs must be!
Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint
And my style infirm and its figures faint,
All the critics say, and more blame yet,
And not one angry word you get.
But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady’s foot
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends!
I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,
And feasted with love’s perfect feast,
To think I kill for her, at least,
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth’s end and manhood’s aim,
—So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
Filled full, eaten out and in
With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips, the little chin, the stir
Of shadow round her mouth; and she
—I’ll tell you,—calmly would decree
That I should roast at a slow fire,
If that would compass her desire
—Time’s Revenges
Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
That’s spirit: tho’ cloistered fast, soar free
—A Wall
The bee’s kiss, now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.
—In a Gondola
But you sink, for your eyes
Are altering—altered! Stay—“I love you, love” …
I could prevent it if I understood:
More of your words to me; was‘t in the tone
Or the words, your power?
—Pippa Passes
Now, what is it makes pulsate the robe?
Why tremble the sprays? What life o’erbrims
The body,—the house no eye can probe,—
Divined, as beneath a robe, the limbs?
—A Wall
That moment she was mine, mine, fair
—Porphyria’s Lover
O loaded curls, release your store
Of warmth and scent, as once before
The tingling hair did, lights and darks
Outbreaking into fairy sparks
—In Three Days
I, still with a gesture fit
Of my hands that best
Do my soul’s behest,
Pointing the power from it,
While myself do steadfast sit—
Steadfast and still the same
On my object bent,
While the hands give vent
To my ardour and my aim
And break into very flame—
—Mesmerism
Since words are only words. Give o’er!
—In a Gondola
What—why is this?
That whitening cheek, those still dilating eyes!
—Pippa Passes
For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
—Rabbi Ben Ezra
I have his heart, you know;
I may dispose of it: I give it you!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Love’s Despair
Why, with beauty, needs there money be,
Love with liking?
—A Pretty Woman
He may not shame such tender love and stay.
—Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
And this woman says, “My days were sunless and my nights were moonless,
Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark’s heart’s outbreak tuneless,
If you loved me not!” And I who—(ah, for words of flame!) adore her,
Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her—
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Go, my Love.
—Andrea del Sarto
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night’s rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love’s away!
I’d as lief that the blue were grey.
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
—The Bishop Orders His Tomb
Why, ‘twas my very fear of you, my love
Of you—(what passion like a boy’s for one
Like you?)—that ruined me! I dreamed of you—
You, all accomplished, courted everywhere,
The scholar and the gentleman. I burned
To knit myself to you: but I was young,
And your surpassing reputation kept me
So far aloof! Oh, wherefore all that love?
With less of love, my glorious yesterday
Of praise and gentlest words and kindest looks,
Had taken place perchance six months ago.
Even now, how happy we had been!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
—Epilogue to Asolando
Too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
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
—Porphyria’s Lover
“Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat:” such stuff
Was co
urtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed: she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
—My Last Duchess
This is not our last meeting?
One night more.
And then—think, then!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
So far as our story approaches the end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?—
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?
—A Light Woman
Can’t we touch these bubbles then
But they break?
—In a Year
Now it is done, I seem the vilest worm
That crawls, to have betrayed my lady.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.
—By the Fire-Side
Or else kiss away one’s soul on her?
Your love-fancies!
–A sick man sees
Truer, when his hot eyes roll on her!
—A Pretty Woman
Never any more,
While I live,
Need I hope to see his face
As before.
Once his love grown chill,
Mine may strive:
Bitterly we re-embrace,
Single still.
—In a Year
He’s gone. Oh, I’ll believe him every word!
I was so young, I loved him so, I had
No mother, God forgot me, and I fell.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Room after room,
I hunt the house through
We inhabit together.
Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her—
Next time, herself!—not the trouble behind her
Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume!
As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew:
Yon looking-glass gleaned at the wave of her feather.
Yet the day wears,
And door succeeds door;
I try the fresh fortune—
Range the wide house from the wing to the centre.
Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter.
Spend my whole day in the quest,—who cares?
But ‘tis twilight, you see,—with such suites to explore,
Such closets to search, such alcoves to importune!
—Love in a Life
You love him still, then?
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
So I grew wise in Love and Hate,
From simple that I was of late.
Once when I loved, I would enlace
Breast, eyelids, hands, feet, form and face
Of her I loved, in one embrace—
As if by mere love I could love immensely!
Once, when I hated, I would plunge
My sword, and wipe with the first lunge
My foe’s whole life out like a sponge—
As if by mere hate I could hate intensely!
But now I am wiser, know better the fashion
How passion seeks aid from its opposite passion:
And if I see cause to love more, hate more
Than ever man loved, ever hated before—
And seek in the Valley of Love,
The nest, or the nook in Hate’s Grove
Where my soul may surely reach
The essence, naught less, of each,
The Hate of all Hates, the Love
Of all Loves, in the Valley or Grove—
I find them the very warders
Each of the other’s borders.
When I love most, Love is disguised
In Hate; and when Hate is surprised
In Love, then I hate most: ask
How Love smiles through Hate’s iron casque,
Hate grins through Love’s rose-braided mask,—
And how, having hated thee,
I sought long and painfully
To reach thy heart, nor prick
The skin but pierce to the quick—
—Pippa Passes
Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,
Lived and loved the same
Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil’s bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
Gone? All thwarts us.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
He is with her, and they know that I know
Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow
While they laugh, laugh at me
—The Laboratory
Unlearned love was safe from spurning—
Can’t we respect your loveless learning?
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
What’s she? an infant save in heart and brain. Young!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
O’ Lyric Love, half angel and half bird,
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand—
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:
—Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their upmost up and on,—so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!
—The Ring and The Book
In earnest, do you think I’d choose
That sort of new love to enslave me?
Mine should have lapped me round from the beginning;
As little fear of losing it as winning:
Lovers grow cold, men learn to hate their wives,
And only parents’ love can last our lives.
—Pippa Passes
If you had pity on my passion, pity
On my protested sickness of the soul
To sit beside you, hear you breathe, and watch
Your eyelids and the eyes beneath—if you
Accorded gifts and knew not they were gifts—
If I grew mad at last with enterprise
And must behold my beauty in her bower
Or perish—(I was ignorant of even
My own desires—what then were you?) if sorrow—
Sin—if the end came—must I now renounce
My reason, blind myself to light, say truth
Is false and lie to God and my own soul?
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
I found God there, his visible power;
Yet felt in my heart, amid all
its sense
Of the power, an equal evidence
That his love, there too, was the nobler dower.
For the loving worm within its clod,
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.
You know what I mean: God’s all, man’s nought:
But also, God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
How she can lie!
—Pippa Passes
Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
—Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
Sin has surprised us, so will punishment
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!
—Waring
Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You,—
Since, as truth is true,
I was You all the happy past—
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?
—A Lovers’ Quarrel
Alone! I am left alone once more—
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
That way you’d take, friend Austin? What a shame
I was your cousin, tamely from the first
Your bride, and all this fervour’s run to waste!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Love’s Regret
Then how grace a rose? I know a way!
Leave it, rather.
Must you gather?
Smell, kiss, wear it—at last, throw away!
—A Pretty Woman
Had she willed it, still had stood the screen
So slight, so sure, ‘twixt my love and her:
I could fix her face with a guard between,
And find her soul as when friends confer,
Friends—lovers that might have been.
—By the Fire-Side
When I saw him tangled in her toils,
A shame, said I, if she adds just him
To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,
The hundredth for a whim!
—A Light Woman
In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind,