Robert Browning, By The Fire-Side

i
How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark Autumn evenings come,
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
4
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!
ii
I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
8
While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!
iii
Till the young ones whisper, finger on lip,
12
"There he is at it, deep in Greek:
Now, then, or never, out we slip
To cut from the hazels by the creek
A mainmast for our ship!"
iv
16
I shall be at it indeed, my friends!
Greek puts already on either side
Such a branch-work forth as soon extends
To a vista opening far and wide,
20
And I pass out where it ends.
v
The outside-frame, like your hazel-trees --
But the inside-archway widens fast, [*]
And a rarer sport succeeds to these,
24
And we slope to Italy at last
And youth, by green degrees.
vi
I follow wherever I am led,
Knowing so well the leader's hand:
28
Oh, woman-country, wooed not wed,
Loved all the more by earth's male-lands,
Laid to their hearts instead!
vii
Look at the ruined chapel again
32
Half-way up in the Alpine gorge.
Is that a tower, I point you plain,
Or is it a mill, or an iron forge
Breaks solitude in vain?
viii
36
A turn, and we stand in the heart of things;
The woods are round us, heaped and dim;
From slab to slab how it slips and springs --
The thread of water single and slim,
40
Through the ravage some torrent brings!
ix
Does it feed the little lake below?
That speck of white just on its marge
Is Pella; see, in the evening-glow,
44
How sharp the silver spear-heads charge
When Alp meets heaven in snow.
x
On our other side is the straight-up rock;
And a path is kept 'twixt the gorge and it
48
By boulder-stones where lichens mock
The marks on a moth, and small ferns fit
Their teeth to the polished block.
xi
Oh, the sense of the yellow mountain-flowers,
52
And the thorny balls, each three in one,
The chestnuts throw on our path in showers!
-- For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,
These early November hours,
xii
56
That crimson the creeper's leaf across
Like a splash of blood, intense, abrupt,
O'er a shield else gold from rim to boss,
And lay it for show on the fairy-cupped
60
Elf-needled mat of moss,
xiii
By the rose-flesh mushrooms, undivulged
Last evening -- nay, in to-day's first dew
Yon sudden coral nipple bulged,
64
Where a freaked, fawn-coloured, flaky crew
Of toad-stools peep indulged.
xiv
And yonder, at foot of the fronting ridge
That takes the turn to a range beyond,
68
Is the chapel reached by the one-arched bridge
Where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond
Danced over by the midge.
xv
The chapel and bridge are of stone alike,
72
Blackish-grey and mostly wet;
Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke.
See here again, how the lichens fret
And the roots of the ivy strike!
xvi
76
Poor little place, where its one priest comes
On a festa-day, if he comes at all,
To the dozen folk from their scattered homes,
Gathered within that precinct small
80
By the dozen ways one roams --
xvii
To drop from the charcoal-burners' huts,
Or climb from the hemp-dressers' low shed,
Leave the grange where the woodman stores his nuts,
84
Or the wattled cote where the fowlers spread
Their gear on the rock's bare juts.
xviii
It has some pretension too, this front,
With its bit of fresco half-moon-wise
88
Set over the porch, Art's early wont:
'Tis John in the Desert, I surmise,
But has borne the weather's brunt --
xix
Not from the fault of the builder, though,
92
For a pent-house properly projects
Where three carved beams make a certain show,
Dating -- good thought of our architect's --
'Five, six, nine, he lets you know.
xx
96
And all day long a bird sings there,
And a stray sheep drinks at the pond at times;
The place is silent and aware;
It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,
100
But that is its own affair.
xxi
My perfect wife, my Leonor,
Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
Whom else could I dare look backward for,
104
With whom beside should I dare pursue
The path grey heads abhor?
xxii
For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
Youth, flowery all the way, there stops --
108
Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
One inch from life's safe hem!
xxiii
With me, youth led ... I will speak now,
112
No longer watch you as you sit
Reading by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
Mutely, my heart knows how --
xxiv
116
When, if I think but deep enough,
You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
And you, too, find without a rebuff
Response your soul seeks many a time
120
Piercing its fine flesh-stuff.
xxv
My own, confirm me! If I tread
This path back, is it not in pride
To think how little I dreamed it led
124
To an age so blest that by its side
Youth seems the waste instead?
xxvi
My own, see where the years conduct!
At first, 'twas something our two souls
128
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked
In each now: on, the new stream rolls,
Whatever rocks obstruct.
xxvii
Think, when our one soul understands
132
The great Word which makes all things new --
When earth breaks up and heaven expands --
How will the change strike me and you
In the House not made with hands?
xxviii
136
Oh I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before, in fine,
See and make me see, for your part,
140
New depths of the Divine!
xxix
But who could have expected this,
When we two drew together first
Just for the obvious human bliss,
144
To satisfy life's daily thirst
With a thing men seldom miss?
xxx
Come back with me to the first of all,
Let us lean and love it over again --
148
Let us now forget and now recall,
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall!
xxxi
What did I say? -- that a small bird sings
152
All day long, save when a brown pair
Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings
Strained to a bell; 'gainst the noon-day glare
You count the streaks and rings.
xxxii
156
But at afternoon or almost eve
'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows
160
Its bosom does so heave.
xxxiii
Hither we walked, then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
164
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.
xxxiv
Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet,
168
And care about the fresco's loss,
And wish for our souls a like retreat,
And wonder at the moss.
xxxv
Stoop and kneel on the settle under --
172
Look through the window's grated square:
Nothing to see! for fear of plunder,
The cross is down and the altar bare,
As if thieves don't fear thunder.
xxxvi
176
We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date,
Then cross the bridge we crossed before,
180
Take the path again -- but wait!
xxxvii
Oh moment, one and infinite!
The water slips o'er stock and stone;
The West is tender, hardly bright:
184
How grey at once is the evening grown --
One star, its chrysolite!
xxxviii
We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well:
188
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.
xxxix
Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
192
And the little less, and what worlds away!
How a sound shall quicken content to bliss,
Or a breath suspend the blood's best play,
And life be a proof of this!
xl
196
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,
200
Friends -- lovers that might have been.
xli
For my heart had a touch of the woodland-time,
Wanting to sleep now over its best.
Shake the whole tree in the summer-prime,
204
But bring to the last leaf no such test!
"Hold the last fast!" runs the rhyme.
xlii
For a chance to make your little much,
To gain a lover and lose a friend,
208
Venture the tree and a myriad such,
When nothing you mar but the year can mend:
But a last leaf -- fear to touch!
xliii
Yet should it unfasten itself and fall
212
Eddying down till it find your face
At some slight wind -- (best chance of all)
Be your heart henceforth its dwelling-place
You trembled to forestall!
xliv
216
Worth how well, those dark grey eyes,
-- That hair so dark and dear, how worth
That a man should strive and agonize,
And taste a veriest hell on earth
220
For the hope of such a prize!
xlv
Oh, you might have turned and tried a man,
Set him a space to weary and wear
And prove which suited more your plan,
224
His best of hope or his worst despair,
Yet end as he began.
xlvi
But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
228
If you join two lives, there is oft a scar,
They are one and one, with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.
xlvii
A moment after, and hands unseen
232
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen.
xlviii
236
The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once and good,
Their work was done -- we might go or stay,
240
They relapsed to their ancient mood.
xlix
How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
244
When a soul declares itself -- to wit,
By its fruit -- the thing it does!
l
Be Hate that fruit or Love that fruit,
It forwards the General Deed of Man,
248
And each of the Many helps to recruit
The life of the race by a general plan;
Each living his own, to boot.
li
I am named and known by that hour's feat;
252
There took my station and degree:
So grew my own small life complete,
As nature obtained her best of me --
One born to love you, Sweet!
lii
256
And to watch you sink by the fire-side now
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it,
260
Yonder, my heart knows how!
liii
So, the earth has gained by one man the more,
And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too;
And the whole is well worth thinking o'er
264
When autumn comes: which I mean to do
One day, as I said before.

Notes

line 22: In the 1907 Oxford edition the inside-archway narrows fast, but more recent editions have widens. [ Back to text ]