Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
France: Vols. IX–X. 1876–79.
The Morgue
By Robert Browning (18121889)N
I passed through Paris, stopped a day
To see the baptism of your Prince;
Saw, made my bow, and went my way:
Walking the heat and headache off,
I took the Seine-side, you surmise,
Thought of the Congress, Gortschakoff,
Cavour’s appeal and Buol’s replies,
So sauntered till—what met my eyes?
The dead-house where you show your drowned:
Petrarch’s Vaucluse makes proud the Sorgue,
Your Morgue has made the Seine renowned.
One pays one’s debt in such a case;
I plucked up heart and entered,—stalked,
Keeping a tolerable face
Compared with some whose cheeks were chalked:
Let them! No Briton ’s to be balked!
A screen of glass, we ’re thankful for;
Last, the sight’s self, the sermon’s text,
The three men who did most abhor
Their life in Paris yesterday,
So killed themselves: and now, enthroned
Each on his copper couch, they lay
Fronting me, waiting to be owned.
I thought, and think, their sin ’s atoned.
The reverence struck me; o’er each head
Religiously was hung its hat,
Each coat dripped by the owner’s bed,
Sacred from touch: each had his berth,
His bounds, his proper place of rest,
Who last night tenanted on earth
Some arch, where twelve such slept abreast,—
Unless the plain asphalte seemed best.
You wanted to be Buonaparte
And have the Tuileries for toy,
And could not, so it broke your heart?
You, old one by his side, I judge,
Were, red as blood, a socialist,
A leveller! Does the Empire grudge
You ’ve gained what no Republic missed?
Be quiet, and unclench your fist!
Or black,—poor fellow that is blue!
What fancy was it turned your brain?
O, women were the prize for you!
Money gets women, cards and dice
Get money, and ill-luck gets just
The copper couch and one clear nice
Cool squirt of water o’er your bust,
The right thing to extinguish lust!
It ’s safer being meek than fierce:
It ’s fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is, a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can’t end worst,
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.