Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116302" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Statue and the Bust</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,<br>And a statue watches it from the square,<br>And this story of both do our townsmen tell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ages ago, a lady there,<br>At the farthest window facing the East,<br>Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bridesmaids' prattle around her ceased;<br>She leaned forth, one on either hand;<br>They saw how the blush of the bride increased—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They felt by its beats her heart expand—<br>As one at each ear and both in a breath<br>Whispered, "The Great-Duke Ferdinand."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That self-same instant, underneath,<br>The Duke rode past in his idle way,<br>Empty and fine like a swordless sheath.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Gay he rode, with a friend as gay,<br>Till he threw his head back—"Who is she?"<br>—"A bride the Riccardi brings home today."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hair in heaps lay heavily<br>Over a pale brow spirit-pure—<br>Carved like the heart of the coal-black tree,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Crisped like a war-steed's encolure—<br>And vainly sought to dissemble her eyes<br>Of the blackest black our eyes endure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And lo, a blade for a knight's emprise<br>Filled the fine empty sheath of a man,—<br>The Duke grew straightway brave and wise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He looked at her, as a lover can;<br>She looked at him, as one who awakes:<br>The past was a sleep, and their life began.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, love so ordered for both their sakes,<br>A feast was held that selfsame night<br>In the pile which the mighty shadow makes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(For Via Larga is three-parts light,<br>But the palace overshadows one,<br>Because of a crime which may God requite!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To Florence and God the wrong was done,<br>Through the first republic's murder there<br>By Cosimo and his cursèd son.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Duke (with the statue's face in the square)<br>Turned in the midst of his multitude<br>At the bright approach of the bridal pair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Face to face the lovers stood<br>A single minute and no more,<br>While the bridegroom bent as a man subdued—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bowed till his bonnet brushed the floor—<br>For the Duke on the lady a kiss conferred,<br>As the courtly custom was of yore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a minute can lovers exchange a word?<br>If a word did pass, which I do not think, <br>Only one out of the thousand heard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That was the bridegroom. At day's brink<br>He and his bride were alone at last<br>In a bedchamber by a taper's blink.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Calmly he said that her lot was cast,<br>That the door she had passed was shut on her<br>Till the final catafalque repassed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The world meanwhile, its noise and stir,<br>Through a certain window facing the East,<br>She could watch like a convent's chronicler.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Since passing the door might lead to a feast,<br>And a feast might lead to so much beside,<br>He, of many evils, chose the least.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Freely I choose too," said the bride—<br>"Your window and its world suffice,"<br>Replied the tongue, while the heart replied—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"If I spend the night with that devil twice,<br>May his window serve as my loop of hell<br>Whence a damned soul looks on paradise!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"I fly to the Duke who loves me well,<br>Sit by his side and laugh at sorrow<br>Ere I count another ave-bell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"'Tis only the coat of a page to borrow,<br>And tie my hair in a horse-boy's trim,<br>And I save my soul—but not tomorrow"—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(She checked herself and her eye grew dim)<br>"My father tarries to bless my state:<br>I must keep it one day more for him.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Is one day more so long to wait?<br>Moreover the Duke rides past, I know;<br>We shall see each other, sure as fate."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She turned on her side and slept. Just so!<br>So we resolve on a thing and sleep:<br>So did the lady, ages ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That night the Duke said, "Dear or cheap<br>As the cost of this cup of bliss may prove<br>To body or soul, I will drain it deep."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And on the morrow, bold with love,<br>He beckoned the bridegroom (close on call,<br>As his duty bade, by the Duke's alcove)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And smiled "'Twas a very funeral,<br>Your lady will think, this feast of ours,—<br>A shame to efface, whate'er befall!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"What if we break from the Arno bowers,<br>And try if Petraja, cool and green,<br>Cure last night's fault with this morning's flowers?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bridegroom, not a thought to be seen<br>On his steady brow and quiet mouth,<br>Said, "Too much favour for me so mean!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"But, alas! my lady leaves the South; <br>Each wind that comes from the Apennine<br>Is a menace to her tender youth:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Nor a way exists, the wise opine,<br>If she quits her palace twice this year,<br>To avert the flower of life's decline."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Quoth the Duke, "A sage and a kindly fear.<br>Moreover Petraja is cold this spring:<br>Be our feast tonight as usual here!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And then to himself—"Which night shall bring<br>Thy bride to her lover's embraces, fool—<br>Or I am the fool, and thou art the king!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Yet my passion must wait a night, nor cool—<br>For tonight the Envoy arrives from France<br>Whose heart I unlock with thyself, my tool.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"I need thee still and might miss perchance.<br>Today is not wholly lost, beside,<br>With its hope of my lady's countenance:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"For I ride—what should I do but ride?<br>And passing her palace, if I list,<br>May glance at its window—well betide!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So said, so done: nor the lady missed<br>One ray that broke from the ardent brow,<br>Nor a curl of the lips where the spirit kissed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Be sure that each renewed the vow,<br>No morrow's sun should arise and set<br>And leave them then as it left them now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But next day passed, and next day yet,<br>With still fresh cause to wait one day more<br>Ere each leaped over the parapet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still, as love's brief morning wore,<br>With a gentle start, half smile, half sigh,<br>They found love not as it seemed before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They thought it would work infallibly,<br>But not in despite of heaven and earth:<br>The rose would blow when the storm passed by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meantime they could profit in winter's dearth<br>By store of fruits that supplant the rose:<br>The world and its ways have a certain worth:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And to press a point while these oppose<br>Were simple policy; better wait:<br>We lose no friends and we gain no foes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meantime, worse fates than a lover's fate,<br>Who daily may ride and pass and look<br>Where his lady watches behind the grate!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And she—she watched the square like a book<br>Holding one picture and only one,<br>Which daily to find she undertook:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the picture was reached the book was done,<br>And she turned from the picture at night to scheme<br>Of tearing it out for herself next sun. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So weeks grew months, years; gleam by gleam<br>The glory dropped from their youth and love,<br>And both perceived they had dreamed a dream;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Which hovered as dreams do, still above:<br>But who can take a dream for a truth?<br>Oh, hide our eyes from the next remove!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One day as the lady saw her youth<br>Depart, and the silver thread that streaked<br>Her hair, and, worn by the serpent's tooth,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The brow so puckered, the chin so peaked,—<br>And wondered who the woman was,<br>Hollow-eyed and haggard-cheeked,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fronting her silent in the glass—<br>"Summon here," she suddenly said,<br>"Before the rest of my old self pass,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Him, the Carver, a hand to aid,<br>Who fashions the clay no love will change,<br>And fixes a beauty never to fade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Let Robbia's craft so apt and strange<br>Arrest the remains of young and fair,<br>And rivet them while the seasons range.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Make me a face on the window there,<br>Waiting as ever, mute the while,<br>My love to pass below in the square!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And let me think that it may beguile<br>Dreary days which the dead must spend<br>Down in their darkness under the aisle,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"To say, 'What matters it at the end?<br>I did no more while my heart was warm<br>Than does that image, my pale-faced friend.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Where is the use of the lip's red charm,<br>The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,<br>And the blood that blues the inside arm—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,<br>The earthly gift to an end divine?<br>A lady of clay is as good, I trow."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But long ere Robbia's cornice, fine,<br>With flowers and fruits which leaves enlace,<br>Was set where now is the empty shrine—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(And, leaning out of a bright blue space,<br>As a ghost might lean from a chink of sky,<br>The passionate pale lady's face—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Eyeing ever, with earnest eye<br>And quick-turned neck at its breathless stretch,<br>Some one who ever is passing by—)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Duke had sighed like the simplest wretch<br>In Florence, "Youth—my dream escapes!<br>Will its record stay?" And he bade them fetch</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some subtle moulder of brazen shapes—<br>"Can the soul, the will, die out of a man<br>Ere his body find the grave that gapes?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"John of Douay shall effect my plan,<br>Set me on horseback here aloft,<br>Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"In the very square I have crossed so oft:<br>That men may admire, when future suns<br>Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze—<br>Admire and say, 'When he was alive<br>How he would take his pleasure once!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"And it shall go hard but I contrive<br>To listen the while, and laugh in my tomb<br>At idleness which aspires to strive."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">  </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So! While these wait the trump of doom,<br>How do their spirits pass, I wonder,<br>Nights and days in the narrow room?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Still, I suppose, they sit and ponder<br>What a gift life was, ages ago,<br>Six steps out of the chapel yonder.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Only they see not God, I know,<br>Nor all that chivalry of his,<br>The soldier-saints who, row on row,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Burn upward each to his point of bliss—<br>Since, the end of life being manifest,<br>He had burned his way through the world to this.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I hear you reproach, "But delay was best,<br>For their end was a crime."—Oh, a crime will do<br>As well, I reply, to serve for a test,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As a virtue golden through and through,<br>Sufficient to vindicate itself<br>And prove its worth at a moment's view!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Must a game be played for the sake of pelf?<br>Where a button goes, 'twere an epigram<br>To offer the stamp of the very Guelph.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The true has no value beyond the sham:<br>As well the counter as coin, I submit,<br>When your table's a hat, and your prize a dram.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Stake your counter as boldly every whit,<br>Venture as warily, use the same skill,<br>Do your best, whether winning or losing it,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If you choose to play!—is my principle.<br>Let a man contend to the uttermost<br>For his life's set prize, be it what it will!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The counter our lovers staked was lost<br>As surely as if it were lawful coin:<br>And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin,<br>Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.<br>You of the virtue (we issue join)<br>How strive you? De te, fabula!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Robert+Browning">Robert Browning</a> from <i>Men and Women</i><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116302" data-title="The Statue and the Bust de Robert Browning" data-description="There's a palace in Florence, the world knows well,/And a statue watches it from the square,/And this story of both do our townsmen tell./Ages ago, a lady there,/At the farthest window facing the East,/Asked, "Who rides by with the royal air?"/The..."></div>
</div>
</div>