ROBERT BROWNING

Because, you spend your lives in praising;

To praise, you search the wide world over: Then why not witness, calmly gazing,

If earth holds aught speak truth above her ? Above this tress, and this, I touch But cannot praise, I love so much !

��722. Earl Mertourf s Song

THHERE's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer

• than the purest ;

And her noble heart's the noblest, yes, and her sure faith's

the surest: And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth

of lustre Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the

wild-grape cluster, Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted

marble : Then her voice's music . . . call it the well's bubbling,

the bird's warble !

And this woman says, * My days were sunless and my

nights were moonless, Parch'd the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's

outbreak tuneless, If you loved me not ! ' And I who (ah, for words of

flame ! ) adore her,

Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me, And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers

she makes me !

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