Browning's England: A Study in English Influences in Browning. Helen Archibald Clarke

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СКАЧАТЬ Some one shall somehow run a muck

       With this old world for want of strife

       Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive

       To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive?

       Our men scarce seem in earnest now.

       Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow,

       As if they played at being names

       Still more distinguished, like the games

       Of children. Turn our sport to earnest

       With a visage of the sternest!

       Bring the real times back, confessed

       Still better than our very best!

      II

      I

      "When I last saw Waring. … "

       (How all turned to him who spoke!

       You saw Waring? Truth or joke?

       In land-travel or sea-faring?)

      II

      "We were sailing by Triest

       Where a day or two we harbored:

       A sunset was in the West,

       When, looking over the vessel's side,

      27 One of our company espied

       A sudden speck to larboard.

       And as a sea-duck flies and swims

       At once, so came the light craft up,

       With its sole lateen sail that trims

       And turns (the water round its rims

       Dancing, as round a sinking cup)

       And by us like a fish it curled,

       And drew itself up close beside,

       Its great sail on the instant furled,

       And o'er its thwarts a shrill voice cried,

       (A neck as bronzed as a Lascar's)

       'Buy wine of us, you English Brig?

       Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?

       A pilot for you to Triest?

       Without one, look you ne'er so big,

       They'll never let you up the bay!

       We natives should know best.'

       I turned, and 'just those fellows' way,'

       Our captain said, 'The 'long-shore thieves

       Are laughing at us in their sleeves.'

      III

      "In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;

       And one, half-hidden by his side

       Under the furled sail, soon I spied,

       With great grass hat and kerchief black,

       Who looked up with his kingly throat,

       Said somewhat, while the other shook

       His hair back from his eyes to look

       Their longest at us; then the boat,

       I know not how, turned sharply round,

       Laying her whole side on the sea

       As a leaping fish does; from the lee

      28 Into the weather, cut somehow

       Her sparkling path beneath our bow,

       And so went off, as with a bound,

       Into the rosy and golden half

       O' the sky, to overtake the sun

       And reach the shore, like the sea-calf

       Its singing cave; yet I caught one

       Glance ere away the boat quite passed,

       And neither time nor toil could mar

       Those features: so I saw the last

       Of Waring!"—You? Oh, never star

       Was lost here but it rose afar!

       Look East, where whole new thousands are!

       In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

      "May and Death" is perhaps more interesting for the glimpse it gives of Browning's appreciation of English Nature than for its expression of grief for the death of a friend.

MAY AND DEATH

       Table of Contents

      I

      I wish that when you died last May,

       Charles, there had died along with you

       Three parts of spring's delightful things;

       Ay, and, for me, the fourth part too.

      II

      A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps!

       There must be many a pair of friends

       Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm

       Moon-births and the long evening-ends.

      29

      III

      So, for their sake, be May still May!

       Let their new time, as mine of old,

       Do all it did for me: I bid

       Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold.

      IV

      Only, one little sight, one plant,

       Woods have in May, that starts up green

       Save a sole streak which, so to speak,

       Is spring's blood, spilt СКАЧАТЬ