<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=116316" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>James Lee's Wife</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.—James Lee's Wife Speaks at the Window</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>Ah, Love, but a day<br> And the world has changed!<br>The sun's away,<br> And the bird estranged;<br>The wind has dropped,<br> And the sky's deranged:<br>Summer has stopped.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>Look in my eyes!<br> Wilt thou change too?<br>Should I fear surprise?<br> Shall I find aught new<br>In the old and dear,<br> In the good and true,<br>With the changing year?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>Thou art a man,<br> But I am thy love.<br>For the lake, its swan;<br> For the dell, its dove;<br>And for thee—(oh, haste!)<br> Me, to bend above,<br>Me, to hold embraced.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.—By the Fireside</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>Is all our fire of shipwreck wood,<br> Oak and pine?<br>Oh, for the ills half-understood,<br> The dim dead woe<br> Long ago<br>Befallen this bitter coast of France!<br>Well, poor sailors took their chance;<br> I take mine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>A ruddy shaft our fire must shoot<br> O'er the sea:<br>Do sailors eye the casement—mute,<br> Drenched and stark,<br> From their bark—<br>And envy, gnash their teeth for hate<br>O' the warm safe house and happy freight<br> —Thee and me?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>God help you, sailors, at your need!<br> Spare the curse!<br>For some ships, safe in port indeed,<br> Rot and rust,<br> Run to dust,<br>All through worms i' the wood, which crept,<br>Gnawed our hearts out while we slept:<br> That is worse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>Who lived here before us two?<br> Old-world pairs.<br>Did a woman ever—would I knew!—<br> Watch the man<br> With whom began<br>Love's voyage full-sail,—(now, gnash your teeth!)<br>When planks start, open hell beneath<br> Unawares?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.—In the Doorway</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>The swallow has set her six young on the rail,<br> And looks sea-ward:<br>The water's in stripes like a snake, olive-pale<br> To the leeward,—<br>On the weather-side, black, spotted white with the wind.<br>"Good fortune departs, and disaster's behind,"—<br>Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>Our fig-tree, that leaned for the saltness, has furled<br> Her five fingers,<br>Each leaf like a hand opened wide to the world<br> Where there lingers<br>No glint of the gold, Summer sent for her sake:<br>How the vines writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake!<br>My heart shrivels up and my spirit shrinks curled.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>Yet here are we two; we have love, house enough,<br> With the field there,<br>This house of four rooms, that field red and rough,<br> Though it yield there,<br>For the rabbit that robs, scarce a blade or a bent;<br>If a magpie alight now, it seems an event;<br>And they both will be gone at November's rebuff.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>But why must cold spread? but wherefore bring change<br> To the spirit,<br>God meant should mate his with an infinite range,<br> And inherit<br>His power to put life in the darkness and cold?<br>Oh, live and love worthily, bear and be bold!<br>Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.—Along the Beach</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>I will be quiet and talk with you,<br> And reason why you are wrong.<br>You wanted my love—is that much true?<br>And so I did love, so I do:<br> What has come of it all along?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>I took you—how could I otherwise?<br> For a world to me, and more;<br>For all, love greatens and glorifies<br>Till God's a-glow, to the loving eyes,<br> In what was mere earth before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>Yes, earth—yes, mere ignoble earth!<br> Now do I mis-state, mistake?<br>Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?<br>Expect all harvest, dread no dearth,<br> Seal my sense up for your sake?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! not so, indeed!<br> You were just weak earth, I knew:<br>With much in you waste, with many a weed,<br>And plenty of passions run to seed,<br> But a little good grain too.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>And such as you were, I took you for mine:<br> Did not you find me yours,<br>To watch the olive and wait the vine,<br>And wonder when rivers of oil and wine<br> Would flow, as the Book assures?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.<br>Well, and if none of these good things came,<br> What did the failure prove?<br>The man was my whole world, all the same,<br>With his flowers to praise or his weeds to blame,<br> And, either or both, to love.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.<br>Yet this turns now to a fault—there! there!<br> That I do love, watch too long,<br>And wait too well, and weary and wear;<br>And 't is all an old story, and my despair<br> Fit subject for some new song:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.<br>"How the light, light love, he has wings to fly<br> "At suspicion of a bond:<br>"My wisdom has bidden your pleasure good-bye,<br>"Which will turn up next in a laughing eye,<br> "And why should you look beyond?"</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.—On the Cliff</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>I leaned on the turf,<br>I looked at a rock<br>Left dry by the surf;<br>For the turf, to call it grass were to mock:<br>Dead to the roots, so deep was done<br>The work of the summer sun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>And the rock lay flat<br>As an anvil's face:<br>No iron like that!<br>Baked dry; of a weed, of a shell, no trace:<br>Sunshine outside, but ice at the core,<br>Death's altar by the lone shore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>On the turf, sprang gay<br>With his films of blue,<br>No cricket, I'll say,<br>But a warhorse, barded and chanfroned too,<br>The gift of a quixote-mage to his knight,<br>Real fairy, with wings all right.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>On the rock, they scorch<br>Like a drop of fire<br>From a brandished torch,<br>Fall two red fans of a butterfly:<br>No turf, no rock: in their ugly stead,<br>See, wonderful blue and red!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>Is it not so<br>With the minds of men?<br>The level and low,<br>The burnt and bare, in themselves; but then<br>With such a blue and red grace, not theirs,—<br>Love settling unawares!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.—Reading a Book, Under the Cliff</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>"Still ailing, Wind? Wilt be appeased or no?<br> "Which needs the other's office, thou or I?<br>"Dost want to be disburthened of a woe,<br> "And can, in truth, my voice untie<br>"Its links, and let it go?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>"Art thou a dumb wronged thing that would be righted,<br> "Entrusting thus thy cause to me? Forbear!<br>"No tongue can mend such pleadings; faith, requited<br> "With falsehood,—love, at last aware<br>"Of scorn,—hopes, early blighted,—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>"We have them; but I know not any tone<br> "So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow:<br>"Dost think men would go mad without a moan,<br> "If they knew any way to borrow<br>"A pathos like thy own?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>"Which sigh wouldst mock, of all the sighs? The one<br> "So long escaping from lips starved and blue,<br>"That lasts while on her pallet-bed the nun<br> "Stretches her length; her foot comes through<br>"The straw she shivers on;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>"You had not thought she was so tall: and spent,<br> "Her shrunk lids open, her lean fingers shut<br>"Close, close, their sharp and livid nails indent<br> "The clammy palm; then all is mute:<br>"That way, the spirit went.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.<br>"Or wouldst thou rather that I understand<br> "Thy will to help me?—like the dog I found<br>"Once, pacing sad this solitary strand,<br> "Who would not take my food, poor hound,<br>"But whined and licked my hand."</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> —————</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.<br>All this, and more, comes from some young man's pride<br> Of power to see,—in failure and mistake,<br>Relinquishment, disgrace, on every side,—<br> Merely examples for his sake,<br>Helps to his path untried:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.<br>Instances he must—simply recognize?<br> Oh, more than so!—must, with a learner's zeal,<br>Make doubly prominent, twice emphasize,<br> By added touches that reveal<br>The god in babe's disguise.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX.<br>Oh, he knows what defeat means, and the rest!<br> Himself the undefeated that shall be:<br>Failure, disgrace, he flings them you to test,—<br> His triumph, in eternity<br>Too plainly manifest!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">X.<br>Whence, judge if he learn forthwith what the wind<br> Means in its moaning—by the happy prompt<br>Instinctive way of youth, I mean; for kind<br> Calm years, exacting their accompt<br>Of pain, mature the mind:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI.<br>And some midsummer morning, at the lull<br> Just about daybreak, as he looks across<br>A sparkling foreign country, wonderful<br> To the sea's edge for gloom and gloss,<br>Next minute must annul,—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII.<br>Then, when the wind begins among the vines,<br> So low, so low, what shall it say but this?<br>"Here is the change beginning, here the lines<br> "Circumscribe beauty, set to bliss<br>"The limit time assigns."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII.<br>Nothing can be as it has been before;<br> Better, so call it, only not the same.<br>To draw one beauty into our hearts' core,<br> And keep it changeless! such our claim;<br>So answered,—Never more!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIV.<br>Simple? Why this is the old woe o' the world;<br> Tune, to whose rise and fall we live and die.<br>Rise with it, then! Rejoice that man is hurled<br> From change to change unceasingly,<br>His soul's wings never furled!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XV.<br>That's a new question; still replies the fact,<br> Nothing endures: the wind moans, saying so;<br>We moan in acquiescence: there's life's pact.<br> Perhaps probation—do I know?<br>God does: endure his act!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVI.<br>Only, for man, how bitter not to grave<br> On his soul's hands' palms one fair good wise thing<br>Just as he grasped it! For himself, death's wave;<br> While time first washes—ah, the sting!—<br>O'er all he'd sink to save.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.—Among the Rocks</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>Oh, good gigantic smile o' the brown old earth,<br> This autumn morning! How he sets his bones<br>To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet<br>For the ripple to run over in its mirth;<br> Listening the while, where on the heap of stones<br>The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true;<br> Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows.<br>If you loved only what were worth your love,<br>Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you:<br> Make the low nature better by your throes!<br>Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.—Beside the Drawing Board</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>"As like as a Hand to another Hand!"<br> Whoever said that foolish thing,<br>Could not have studied to understand<br> The counsels of God in fashioning,<br>Out of the infinite love of his heart,<br>This Hand, whose beauty I praise, apart<br>From the world of wonder left to praise,<br>If I tried to learn the other ways<br>Of love in its skill, or love in its power.<br> "As like as a Hand to another Hand":<br> Who said that, never took his stand,<br>Found and followed, like me, an hour,<br>The beauty in this,—how free, how fine<br>To fear, almost,—of the limit-line!<br>As I looked at this, and learned and drew,<br> Drew and learned, and looked again,<br>While fast the happy minutes flew,<br> Its beauty mounted into my brain,<br> And a fancy seized me; I was fain<br>To efface my work, begin anew,<br>Kiss what before I only drew;<br>Ay, laying the red chalk 'twixt my lips,<br> With soul to help if the mere lips failed,<br> I kissed all right where the drawing ailed,<br>Kissed fast the grace that somehow slips<br>Still from one's soulless finger-tips.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>'T is a clay cast, the perfect thing,<br> From Hand live once, dead long ago<br>Princess-like it wears the ring<br> To fancy's eye, by which we know<br>That here at length a master found<br> His match, a proud lone soul its mate,<br>As soaring genius sank to ground,<br> And pencil could not emulate<br>The beauty in this,—how free, how fine<br>To fear almost!—of the limit-line.<br>Long ago the god, like me<br>The worm, learned, each in our degree:<br>Looked and loved, learned and drew,<br> Drew and learned and loved again,<br>While fast the happy minutes flew,<br> Till beauty mounted into his brain<br>And on the finger which outvied<br> His art he placed the ring that's there,<br>Still by fancy's eye descried,<br> In token of a marriage rare:<br> For him on earth, his art's despair,<br>For him in heaven, his soul's fit bride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>Little girl with the poor coarse hand<br> I turned from to a cold clay cast—<br>I have my lesson, understand<br> The worth of flesh and blood at last.<br>Nothing but beauty in a Hand?<br> Because he could not change the hue,<br> Mend the lines and make them true<br>To this which met his soul's demand,—<br> Would Da Vinci turn from you?<br>I hear him laugh my woes to scorn—<br>"The fool forsooth is all forlorn<br>"Because the beauty, she thinks best,<br>"Lived long ago or was never born,—<br>"Because no beauty bears the test<br>"In this rough peasant Hand! Confessed!<br>"'Art is null and study void!'<br> "So sayest thou? So said not I,<br> "Who threw the faulty pencil by,<br>"And years instead of hours employed,<br>"Learning the veritable use<br> "Of flesh and bone and nerve beneath<br> "Lines and hue of the outer sheath,<br>"If haply I might reproduce<br>"One motive of the powers profuse,<br> "Flesh and bone and nerve that make<br> "The poorest coarsest human hand<br> "An object worthy to be scanned<br>"A whole life long for their sole sake.<br>"Shall earth and the cramped moment-space<br>"Yield the heavenly crowning grace?<br>"Now the parts and then the whole!<br>"Who art thou, with stinted soul<br> "And stunted body, thus to cry<br>"'I love,—shall that be life's strait dole?<br> "'I must live beloved or die!'<br>"This peasant hand that spins the wool<br> "And bakes the bread, why lives it on,<br> "Poor and coarse with beauty gone,—<br>"What use survives the beauty?" Fool!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Go, little girl with the poor coarse hand!<br>I have my lesson, shall understand.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>IX.—On Deck</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>I.<br>There is nothing to remember in me,<br> Nothing I ever said with a grace,<br>Nothing I did that you care to see,<br> Nothing I was that deserves a place<br>In your mind, now I leave you, set you free.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>Conceded! In turn, concede to me,<br> Such things have been as a mutual flame.<br>Your soul's locked fast; but, love for a key,<br> You might let it loose, till I grew the same<br>In your eyes, as in mine you stand: strange plea!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>For then, then, what would it matter to me<br> That I was the harsh ill-favoured one?<br>We both should be like as pea and pea;<br> It was ever so since the world begun:<br>So, let me proceed with my reverie.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>How strange it were if you had all me,<br> As I have all you in my heart and brain,<br>You, whose least word brought gloom or glee,<br> Who never lifted the hand in vain—<br>Will hold mine yet, from over the sea!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>Strange, if a face, when you thought of me,<br> Rose like your own face present now,<br>With eyes as dear in their due degree,<br> Much such a mouth, and as bright a brow,<br>Till you saw yourself, while you cried "'T is She!"</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.<br>Well, you may, you must, set down to me<br> Love that was life, life that was love;<br>A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,<br> A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,<br>A rapture to fall where your foot might be.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.<br>But did one touch of such love for me<br> Come in a word or a look of yours,<br>Whose words and looks will, circling, flee<br> Round me and round while life endures,—<br>Could I fancy "As I feel, thus feels he";</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.<br>Why, fade you might to a thing like me,<br> And your hair grow these coarse hanks of hair,<br>Your skin, this bark of a gnarled tree,—<br> You might turn myself!—should I know or care<br>When I should be dead of joy, James Lee?</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>Dramatis Personae</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=116316" data-title="James Lee's Wife de Robert Browning" data-description="I.—James Lee's Wife Speaks at the Window//I./Ah, Love, but a day/ And the world has changed!/The sun's away,/ And the bird estranged;/The wind has dropped,/ And the sky's deranged:/Summer has stopped./II./Look in my eyes!/ Wilt thou change too?/..."></div> </div> </div>

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