Men and Women. Robert Browning

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       Forget them, keep me all the more in mind!" 70

       Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?

       I found no truth in one report at least—

       That if you tracked him to his home, down lanes

       Beyond the Jewry, and as clean to pace,

       You found he ate his supper in a room

       Blazing with lights, four Titians on the wall,

       And twenty naked girls to change his plate!

       Poor man, he lived another kind of life

       In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge,

       Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! 80

       The whole street might o'erlook him as he sat,

       Leg crossing leg, one foot on the dog's back,

       Playing a decent cribbage with his maid

       (Jacynth, you're sure her name was) o'er the cheese

       And fruit, three red halves of starved winter-pears,

       Or treat of radishes in April. Nine,

       Ten, struck the church clock, straight to bed went he.

       My father, like the man of sense he was,

       Would point him out to me a dozen times;

       "'St—'St," he'd whisper, "the Corregidor!" 90

       I had been used to think that personage

       Was one with lacquered breeches, lustrous belt,

       And feathers like a forest in his hat,

       Who blew a trumpet and proclaimed the news,

       Announced the bull-fights, gave each church its turn,

       And memorized the miracle in vogue!

       He had a great observance from us boys;

       We were in error; that was not the man.

       I'd like now, yet had happy been afraid,

       To have just looked, when this man came to die, 100

       And seen who lined the clean gay garret-sides

       And stood about the neat low truckle-bed,

       With the heavenly manner of relieving guard.

       Here had been, mark, the general-in-chief,

       Thro' a whole campaign of the world's life and death,

       Doing the King's work all the dim day long,

       In his old coat and up to knees in mud,

       Smoked like a herring, dining on a crust,

       And, now the day was won, relieved at once!

       No further show or need for that old coat, 110

       You are sure, for one thing! Bless us, all the while

       How sprucely we are dressed out, you and I!

       A second, and the angels alter that.

       Well, I could never write a verse—could you?

       Let's to the Prado and make the most of time.

       NOTES

       "How it Strikes a Contemporary" is a portrait of the Poet as the

       unpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him. It is humorously

       colored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects

       without understanding either the greatness of the poet's spiritual

       personality and mission, or the nature of his life, which is

       withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted

       universal sympathies and kindly mediation between Humanity and its

       God.

       3. Valladolid: the royal city of the kings of Castile, before Philip

       II moved the Court to Madrid, where Cervantes, Calderon, and Las

       Casas lived and Columbus died.

       76. Titian: pictures by the Venetian, Tiziano Vecellio (1477–1576),

       glowing in color, presumably of large golden-haired women like his

       famous Venus.

       90. Corregidor: the Spanish title for a magistrate, literally, a

       corrector, from corregir, to correct.