Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke
Robert Browning (18121889)Confessions
“Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labelled “Ether”
Is the house o’ertopping all.
They watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it ’s improper,
My poor mind ’s out of tune.
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house “The Lodge.”
But, by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,—their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to Oes,
As she left the attic, there,
By the rim of the bottle labelled “Ether,”
And stole from stair to stair,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!