White Witchcraft

If you and I could change to beasts, what beast should either be?
Shall you and I play Jove for once? Turn fox then, I decree!
Shy wild sweet stealer of the grapes! Now do your worst on me!

And thus you think to spite your friend, turned loathsome? What, a toad?
So, all men shrink and shun me! Dear men, pursue your road!
Leave but my crevice in the stone, a reptiles fit abode

Now say your worst, Canidia! Hes loathsome, I allow:
There may or may not lurk a pearl beneath his puckered brow:
But see his eyes that follow mine, love lasts there, anyhow.

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His work was initially harshly criticized, but he gained recognition later in life. He is best known for works such as "The Ring and the Book" and "Men and Women" which exhibit his deep understanding of human character and psychological insight.

Robert Browning

Through The Metidja To Abd-El-Kadr

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

How It Strikes A Contemporary

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

Saul

Robert Browning, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

A Light Woman

I.

So far as our story approaches the end,
Which do you pity the most of us three?
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
With her wanton eyes, or me?

II.

My friend was already too good to lose,
And seemed in the way of improvement yet,
When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose
And over him drew her net.

III.

When I saw him tangled in her toils,
A shame, said I, if she adds just him
To her nine-and-ninety other spoils,
The hundredth for a whim!

IV.

And before my friend be wholly hers,
How easy to prove to him, I said,
An eagles the game her pride prefers,
Though she snaps at a wren instead!

V.

So, I gave her eyes my own eyes to take,
My hand sought hers as in earnest n...

Robert Browning

Times Revenges

Ive a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me;
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you dont admire my books:
He does himself though, and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just turn quietly,
Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand
Till I found him, come from his foreign land
To be my nurse in this poor place,
And make my broth and wash my face,
And light my fire and, all the while,
Bear with his old good-humoured smile
That I told him Better have kept away
Than come and kill me, night and day,
With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,
The creaking of his clumsy boots.

Robert Browning

Instans Tyrannus

I.
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.

II.
I struck him, he grovelled of course,
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate:
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse.

III.
Were the object less mean, would he stand
At the swing of my hand!
For obscurity helps him and blots
The hole where he squats.
So, I set my five wits on the stretch
To inveigle the wretch.
All in vain! Gold and jewels I threw,
Still he couched there perdue;
I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagons best spilth,
Still he kept to his filth.
...

Robert Browning

Pisgah-Sights

I
Over the ball of it,
Peering and prying,
How I see all of it,
Life there, outlying!
Roughness and smoothness,
Shine and defilement,
Grace and uncouthness:
One reconcilement.

Orbed as appointed,
Sister with brother
Joins, neer disjointed
One from the other.
Alls lend-and-borrow;
Good, see, wants evil,
Joy demands sorrow,
Angel weds devil!

Which things must, why be?
Vain our endeavor!
So shall things aye be
As they were ever.
Such things should so be!
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed, mans existence!

Man, wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish,
Keep each his corner!
Honey yet gall of it!
Theres the life lying,
And I see all ...

Robert Browning

The Witch.

She gropes and hobbies, where the dropsied rocks
Are hairy with the lichens and the twist
Of knotted wolf's-bane, mumbling in the mist,
Hawk-nosed and wrinkle-eyed with scrawny locks.
At her bent back the sick-faced moonlight mocks,
Like some lewd evil whom the Fiend hath kissed;
Thrice at her feet the slipping serpent hissed,
And thrice the owl called to the forest fox.
What sabboth brew dost now intend? What root
Dost seek for, seal for what satanic spell
Of incantations and demoniac fire?
From thy rude hut, hill-huddled in the brier,
What dark familiar points thy sure pursuit,
With burning eyes, gaunt with the glow of Hell?

Madison Julius Cawein

A Lovers Quarrel

I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last nights rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Loves away!
Id as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermits cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go,
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We...

Robert Browning