Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Brennan
Art credits:
Shutterstock/tukkki, page viii
Shutterstock/Olga Korneeva, page 16
Shutterstock/Ajuga, page 40
Shutterstock/DeMih, page 62
Shutterstock/Labetskiy Alexandr, page 96
Shutterstock/Nataliia Litovchenko, page 114
Shutterstock/mamita, page 136
Shutterstock/Baleika Tamara, page 156
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Jane Sheppard
Cover photo by Shutterstock
Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-239-9
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-886-5
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Love’s Desire
Love’s Hope
Love’s Promise
Ecstasy of Love
Love’s Despair
Love’s Regret
Memory of Love
Love’s Letters
You will only expect a few words, what will those be?
When the heart is full it may run over, but the real fullness stays within.
Words can never tell you, however, form them, transform them anyway, how perfectly dear you are to me, perfectly dear to my heart and soul.
I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence, you have been entirely perfect to me, I would not change one word, one look.
My hope and aim are to preserve this love, not to fall from it, for which I trust to God who procured it for me, and doubtless can preserve it.
You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another.
I am all gratitude, and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.
—Letter to Elizabeth Barrett Browning on the occasion of their marriage
Love’s Desire
That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!
—A Pretty Woman
She would succeed in her absurd attempt,
And fascinate by sinning, show herself
—Pippa Passes
“At last thou art come! Ere I tell, ere thou speak,
Kiss my cheek, wish me well!’’ Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek.
—Saul
She should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not love her!
—Cristina
A soft and easy life these ladies lead:
Whiteness in us were wonderful indeed.
Oh, save that brow its virgin dimness,
Keep that foot its lady primness,
Let those ankles never swerve
From their exquisite reserve,
Yet have to trip along the streets like me,
All but naked to the knee!
—In Three Days
Give her but a least excuse to love me!
—Pippa Passes
Each enjoys
Its night so well, you cannot break
The sport up, so, indeed must make
More stay with me, for others’ sake.
—In a Gondola
‘You have black eyes, Love—you are, sure enough,
My peerless bride—
—Pippa Passes
Through one’s after-supper musings,
Some lost lady of old years
With her beauteous vain endeavour
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings
—Waring
Escape me?
Never–
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
—Life in a Love
If you say, “you love him”—straight, “he’ll not be gulled!”
—Pippa Passes
You’ll love me yet!—and I can tarry
Your love’s protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April’s sowing.
I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield–what you’ll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like.
You’ll look at least on love’s remains,
A grave’s one violet:
Your look?—that pays a thousand pains.
What’s death? You’ll love me yet!
—Pippa Passes
Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name?
—Abt Vogler
Thou art my single day
—In Three Days
Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
June’s twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
Treasure my lady’s lightest footfall!
—Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces—
Roses, you are not so fair after all!
—Garden Fancies
Could thought of mine improve you?
—In a Gondola
Doubt you whether
This she felt as, looking at me,
Mine and her souls rushed together?
—Cristina
And I ventured to remind her,
I suppose with a voice of less steadiness
Than usual, for my feeling exceeded me,
—Something to the effect that I was in readiness
Whenever God should please she needed me
—The Flight of the Duchess
Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look
Across the waters to this twilight nook
—Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli
And “love”
Is a short word that says so very much!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance
—My Last Duchess
Heap Cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
—Heap Cassia, Sandal-Buds and Stripes
Let my hands frame your face in your hair’s gold
—Andrea del Sarto
“Is it true,”
Thou’lt ask, “some eyes are beautiful and new?
“Some hair,—how can one choose but grasp such wealt
h?
“And if a man would press his lips to lips
“Fresh as the wilding hedge-rose-cup there slips
“The dew-drop out of, must it be by stealth?
—Any Wife to Any Husband
Is it not in my nature to adore…?
—Pauline
God bless in turn
That heart which beats, those eyes which mildly burn
With love for all men! I, to-night at least,
Would be that holy and beloved priest.
—Pippa Passes
The heroic in passion, or in action,—
Or, lowered for sense’s satisfaction,
To the mere outside of human creatures,
Mere perfect form and faultless features.
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
You creature with the eyes!
If I could look forever up to them,
As now you let me—I believe all sin,
All memory of wrong done, suffering borne,
Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth
Whence all that’s low comes, and there touch and stay
—Never to overtake the rest of me,
All that, unspotted, reaches up to you,
Drawn by those eyes!
—Pippa Passes
The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his Heaven—
All’s right with the world!
—Pippa Passes
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O’er the breast’s superb abundance where a man might base his head?
—A Toccata of Galuppi’s
So, we leave the sweet face fondly there:
Be its beauty
Its sole duty!
—A Pretty Woman
Witchcraft’s a fault in him,
For you’re bewitched.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
‘Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for! my flesh, that I seek
—Saul
How shall I fix you, fire you, freeze you,
Break my heart at your feet to please you?
Oh, to possess and be possessed!
Hearts that beat ‘neath each pallid breast!
Once but of love, the poesy, the passion,
Drink but once and die!—In vain, the same fashion
—Women and Roses
—Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,
Bade her scribes abhor the trick
Of poetry and rhetoric,
And exult with hearts set free,
In blessed imbecility
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
Love’s Hope
What spell or what charm…?
—Saul
A novel grace and a beauty strange.
—Women and Roses
Your love can claim no right
O’er her save pure love’s claim
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
She does not also take it for earnest, I hope?
—Pippa Passes
Then,—if my heart’s strength serve,
And through all and each
Of the veils I reach
To her soul and never swerve,
Knitting an iron nerve—
Command her soul to advance
And inform the shape
Which has made escape
And before my countenance
Answers me glance for glance—
—Mesmerism
On the face alone he expends his devotion
—Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
There’s a woman like a dew-drop, she’s so purer than the purest;
And her noble heart’s the noblest, yes, and her sure faith’s the surest:
And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre
Hid i’ the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the wild-grape cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck’s rose-misted marble:
Then her voice’s music … call it the well’s bubbling, the bird’s warble!
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
If one could have that little head of hers
Painted upon a background of pure gold
—A Face
I had devised a certain tale
Which, when ‘twas told her, could not fail
Persuade a peasant of its truth;
—The Italian In England
“Speak, I love thee best!’’
He exclaimed:
“Let thy love my own foretell!’’
I confessed:
“Clasp my heart on thine
“Now unblamed,
“Since upon thy soul as well
“Hangeth mine!”
—In a Year
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.
—Love Among the Ruins
I believe
If once I threw my arms about your neck
And sunk my head upon your breast, that I
Should weep again.
—A Blot In the ‘Scutcheon
As I ride, as I ride,
Could I loose what Fate has tied,
Ere I pried, she should hide
(As I ride, as I ride)
All that’s meant me—satisfied
When the Prophet and the Bride
Stop veins I’d have subside
As I ride, as I ride!
—Through the Metidja to Abd-El-Kadr
Here’s my case. Of old I used to love him.
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.
—Fears and Scruples
I wonder do you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.
Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellowing fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork’s cleft,
Some old tomb’s ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,
Where one small orange cup amassed
Five beetles,—blind and green they grope
Among the honey-meal: and last,
Everywhere on the grassy slope
I traced it. Hold it fast!
The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air—
Rome’s ghost since her decease.
Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting nature have her way
While heaven looks from its towers!
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine—nor slave nor free!
/> Where does the fault lie? What the core
O’ the wound, since wound must be?
I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul’s springs,—your part my part
In life, for good and ill.
No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul’s warmth,—I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak—
Then the good minute goes.
Already how am I so far
Out of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?
Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The old trick! Only I discern—
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.
—Two in the Campagna
Yet so we look ere we will love; not I
—Pippa Passes
Truth is within ourselves.
—Paracelsus
Too bold, too confident she’ll still face down
The spitefullest of talkers in our town.
—In Three Days
And you—O, how feel you? Feel you for me?
—Pippa Passes
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’
—Rabbi Ben Ezra
Shall I sonnet-sing you about myself?
Do I live in a house you would like to see?
Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf?
“Unlock my heart with a sonnet-key?”
—House
I said—Then, dearest, since ‘tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be—
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave,—I claim
Robert Browning on Love Page 1