Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Robert Browning 181289Youth and Art
BrowningRI
We lodged in a street together,
You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
You thumb’d, thrust, patted and polish’d,
Then laugh’d, “They will see, some day,
Smith made, and Gibson demolish’d.”
I chirp’d, cheep’d, trill’d and twitter’d,
“Kate Brown ’s on the boards ere long,
And Grisi’s existence embitter’d!”
Than you by a sketch in plaster;
You wanted a piece of marble,
I needed a music-master.
Chipp’d each at a crust like Hindoos,
For air, look’d out on the tiles,
For fun, watch’d each other’s windows.
Cap and blouse—nay, a bit of beard too;
Or you it, rubbing your mouth
With fingers the clay adher’d to.
Weak points in the flower-fence facing,
Was forced to put up a blind
And be safe in my corset-lacing.
If you never turn’d your eye’s tail up
As I shook upon E in alt,
Or ran the chromatic scale up:
And the boys and girls gave guesses,
And stalls in our street look’d rare
With bulrush and watercresses.
In a pellet of clay and fling it?
Why did not I put a power
Of thanks in a look, or sing it?
(And yet the memory rankles)
When models arriv’d, some minx
Tripp’d up stairs, she and her ankles.
“That foreign fellow,—who can know
How she pays, in a playful mood,
For his tuning her that piano?”
“Suppose we join hands and fortunes,
And I fetch her from over the way,
Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes?”
Nor I rasher and something over;
You’ve to settle yet Gibson’s hash,
And Grisi yet lives in clover.
I ’m queen myself at bals-parés,
I ’ve married a rich old lord,
And you ’re dubb’d knight and an R. A.
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy:
We have not sigh’d deep, laugh’d free,
Starv’d, feasted, despair’d,—been happy;
And people suppose me clever;
This could but have happen’d once,
And we miss’d it, lost it forever.