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    My Last Duchess and Other Poems
    My Last Duchess and Other Poems
    My Last Duchess and Other Poems
    Ebook207 pages2 hours

    My Last Duchess and Other Poems

    By Robert Browning

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    About this ebook

    The Victorian poet Robert Browning (1812 –1889) is perhaps most admired today for his inspired development of the dramatic monologue. In this compelling poetic form, he sought to reveal his subjects' true natures in their own, often self-justifying, accounts of their lives and affairs. A number of these vivid monologues, including the famed "Fra Lippo Lippi," "How It Strikes a Contemporary," and "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church," are included in this selection of forty-two poems.
    Here, too, are the famous "My Last Duchess," dramatic lyrics such as "Memorabilia" and "Love among the Ruins," and well-known shorter works: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," "Home-Thoughts, from Abroad," "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," and more. Together these poems reveal Browning's rare gifts as both a lyric poet and a monologist of rare psychological insight and dramatic flair.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMar 5, 2012
    ISBN9780486114255
    My Last Duchess and Other Poems

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    My Last Duchess and Other Poems - Robert Browning

    e9780486114255_cover.jpge9780486114255_i0001.jpg

    DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

    GENERAL EDITOR: STANLEY APPELBAUM

    EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: SHANE WELLER

    Copyright

    Copyright © 1993 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions.

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 1993, is a new selection of poems, reprinted from Poems of Robert Browning, published by Thomas Y. Crowell & Company, New York, in 1896; and The Poems of Robert Browning, published by Oxford University Press, London, in 1905. The Note, footnotes and the alphabetical lists of titles and first lines have been prepared specially for the present edition.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Browning, Robert, 1812—1889.

    My last duchess, and other poems / Robert Browning.

    p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

    9780486114255

    I. Title. II. Series.

    PR4202.D68 1993

    821’.8—dc20

    93-22085

    CIP

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

    Note

    ROBERT BROWNING (1812—1889) stands alongside Tennyson as one of the colossi of Victorian poetry; yet, owing partly to the formal and linguistic complexity of his work, partly to his use of rich topographical and historical detail, he achieved recognition only late in life, with the publication of the dauntingly elaborate The Ring and the Book (1868— 69), an ambitious fusion of novel, drama and epic poem. Among his most noteworthy collections of shorter verse are Dramatic Lyrics (1842), Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), Men and Women (1855) and Dramatis Personae (1864). Browning began his literary career as a dramatist, and although his plays are now little read, he is celebrated for having created the poetic form known as the dramatic monologue, among which some of his best known are My Last Duchess, Fra Lippo Lippi and Andrea del Sarto. Besides these poems, the present selection also includes many of the other high points from throughout the writers creative life, among which are the narrative children’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin; the famous attack on Wordsworth, The Lost Leader; the love poems Meeting at Night and The Last Ride Together; and the lyric Home-Thoughts from Abroad. The song from Pippa Passes, perhaps Browning’s most well-known piece of verse, is the only extract included here.

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Note

    My Last Duchess and Other Poems

    Alphabetical List of Titles

    Alphabetical List of First Lines

    My Last Duchess and Other Poems

    Song

    The year’s at the spring,

    And day’s at the morn;

    Morning’s at seven;

    The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

    The lark’s on the wing;

    The snail’s on the thorn;

    God’s in His heaven—

    All’s right with the world!

    My Last Duchess

    FERRARA

    That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

    Looking as if she were alive. I call

    That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf’s hands

    Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

    Will ’t please you sit and look at her? I said

    Frà Pandolf by design: for never read

    Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

    The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

    But to myself they turned (since none puts by

    The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

    And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

    How such a glance came there; so, not the first

    Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’t was not

    Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

    Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps

    Frà Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps

    Over my lady’s wrist too much, or Paint

    Must never hope to reproduce the faint

    Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff

    Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

    For calling up that spot of joy. She had

    A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,

    Too easily impressed; she liked whate‘er

    She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

    Sir, ’t was all one! My favour at her breast,

    The dropping of the daylight in the West,

    The bough of cherries some officious fool

    Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

    She rode with round the terrace—at! and each

    Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

    Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked

    Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

    My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

    With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

    This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

    In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will

    Quite clear to such an one, and say, "Just this

    Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

    Or there exceed the mark"—and if she let

    Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

    Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,

    —E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

    Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,

    Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

    Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

    Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

    As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

    The company below, then. I repeat,

    The Count your master’s known munificence

    Is ample warrant that no just pretence

    Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

    Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

    At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

    Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

    Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

    Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

    Incident of the French Camp

    I

    You know, we French stormed Ratisbon:

    A mile or so away

    On a little mound, Napoleon

    Stood on our storming-day;

    With neck out-thrust, you fancy how,

    Legs wide, arms locked behind,

    As if to balance the prone brow

    Oppressive with its mind.

    II

    Just as perhaps he mused "My plans

    That soar, to earth may fall,

    Let once my army-leader Lannes

    Waver at yonder watt"—

    Out ’twixt the battery-smokes there flew

    A rider, bound on bounds

    Full-galloping; nor bridle drew

    Until he reached the mound.

    III

    Then off there flung in smiling joy,

    And held himself erect

    By just his horse’s mane, a boy:

    You hardly could suspect—

    (So tight he kept his lips compressed,

    Scarce any blood came through)

    You looked twice ere you saw his breast

    Was all but shot in two.

    IV

    Well, cried he, "Emperor, by God’s grace

    We’ve got you Ratisbon!

    The Marshal’s in the market-place,

    And you’ll be there anon

    To see your flag-bird flap his vans¹

    Where I, to heart’s desire,

    Perched him!" The chief’s eye flashed; his plans

    Soared up again like fire.

    V

    The chief’s eye flashed; but presently

    Softened itself, as sheathes

    A film the mother-eagle’s eye

    When her bruised eaglet breathes.

    You’re wounded! Nay, the soldiers pride

    Touched to the quick, he said:

    I’m killed, Sire! And his chief beside,

    Smiling the boy fell dead.

    Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

    I

    Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!

    Water your damned flower-pots, do!

    If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,

    God’s blood, would not mine kill you!

    What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?

    Oh, that rose has prior claims—

    Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?

    Hell dry you up with its flames!

    II

    At the meal we sit together:

    Salve tibi!² I must hear

    Wise talk of the kind of weather,

    Sort of season, time of year:

    Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely

    Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:

    What’s the Latin name for parsley?

    What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout?³

    III

    Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,

    Laid with care on our own shelf!

    With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,

    And a goblet for ourself,

    Rinsed like something sacrificial

    Ere ’t is fit to touch our chaps—

    Marked with L for our initial!

    (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

    IV

    Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores

    Squats outside the Convent bank

    With Sanchicha, telling stories,

    Steeping tresses in the tank,

    Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse hairs,

    —Can’t I see his dead eye glow,

    Bright as ’t were a Barbary corsair’s?

    (That is, if he’d let it show!)

    V

    When he finishes refection,

    Knife and fork he never lays

    Cross-wise, to my recollection,

    As do I, in Jesu’s praise.

    I the Trinity illustrate,

    Drinking watered orange-pulp—

    In three sips the Arian⁴ frustrate;

    While he drains his at one gulp.

    VI

    Oh, those melons? If he’s able

    We’re to have a feast: so nice!

    One goes to the Abbot’s table,

    All of us get each a slice.

    How go on your flowers? None double?

    Not one fruit-sort can you spy?

    Strange!—And I, too, at such trouble

    Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

    VII

    There’s a great text in Galatians

    Once you trip on it, entails

    Twenty-nine distinct damnations

    One sure, if another fails:

    If I trip him just a-dying,

    Sure of heaven as sure can be,

    Spin him round and send him flying

    Off to hell, a Manichee?

    VIII

    Or, my scrofulous French novel

    On gray paper with blunt type!

    Simply glance at it, you grovel

    Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe:

    If I double down its pages

    At the woeful sixteenth print,

    When he gathers his greengages,

    Ope a sieve and slip it in ’t?

    IX

    Or, there’s Satan!—one might venture

    Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave

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