Collected English Verse — Robert Browning. b. 1812, d. 1889 (Part 7 of 7)

Oh heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns!
     Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
     Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest.
     Love is best!

738   Misconceptions

        THIS is a spray the Bird clung to,
          Making it blossom with pleasure,
        Ere the high tree-top she sprung to,
          Fit for her nest and her treasure.
          O, what a hope beyond measure
Was the poor spray’s, which the flying feet hung to,—
So to be singled out, built in, and sung to!

        This is a heart the Queen leant on,
          Thrill’d in a minute erratic,
        Ere the true bosom she bent on,
          Meet for love’s regal dalmatic.
          O, what a fancy ecstatic
Was the poor heart’s, ere the wanderer went on—
Love to be saved for it, proffer’d to, spent on!

739   Home-thoughts, from Abroad

O TO be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom’d pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

740   Home-thoughts, from the Sea

NOBLY, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the North-west
died away;
Sunset ran, one glorious blood- red, reeking into Cadiz Bay;
Bluish ’mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay;
In the dimmest North- east distance dawn’d Gibraltar grand
   and gray;
‘Here and here did England help me: how can I help Eng-
   land?’—say,
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and
   pray,
While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.