Bells and Pomegranates, Second Series/The Flower's Name

by Robert Browning

1. The Flower

;I
Here's the garden she walked across,
      Arm in my arm, such a short while since:
Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss
      Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!
She must have reached this shrub ere she turned,
      As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
      To feed and forget it the leaves among.

;II
Down this side of the gravel-walk
      She went while her robe's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
      To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
      I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
      But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

;III
This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,
      Stooped over, in dout, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
      It's soft meandering Spanish name:
What a name! Was it love, or praise?
      Speech half-asleep or song half-awake
I must learn SPanish, one of these days,
      Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

;IV
Roses, if I live and do well,
      I may bring her, one of these days,
To fix you fast with as fine a spell,
      Fit you each with his Spanish phrase;
But do not detain me now; for she lingers
      There, like sunshine over the ground,
And ever I see her soft white fingers
      Searching after the bud she found.

;V
Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not,
      Stay as you are and be loved for ever!
Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not:
      Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
      Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn and down they nestle—
      Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

;VI
Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
      Whither I follow her, beauties flee;
Is there no method to tell her in Spanish
      June's twice June since she breathed it with me?
Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,
      Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!
—Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces—
      Roses, you are not so fair after all!

2. Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis

 
;I
Plague take all your pedants, say I!
      He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
      Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,
      Printed on paper and bound in leather,
Last month in the white of a matin-prime
      Just when the birds sang all together.

;II
Into the garden I brought it to read,
      And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
      From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
      As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
      And then proceeded to my revenge.

;III
Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
      An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
      In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
      When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
      Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

;IV
Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
      —At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate:
Next, a handful of blosoms I plucked
      To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf,
      Half a cheese, and a bottle of CHablis;
Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf
      Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

;V
Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
      And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
      And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
      And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake;
      And up I fished his delectable treatise.

;VI
Here you have it, dry in the sun,
      With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
      And reddish streaks that wink and glister
O'er the page so beautifully yellow:
      Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks!
Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow?
      Here's one stuck in his chapter six!

;VII
How did he like it when the live creatures
      Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,
      Came in, each one, for his right of trover?
—When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face
      Made of her eggs the stately deposit
And the newt borrowewd just so much of the preface
      As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet?

;VIII
All that life and fun and romping
      All that frisking and twisting and coupling,
While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping
      And clasps were cracking and covers suppling!
As if you had carried sour John Knox
      To the play-house at Paris, Vienna or Munich,
Fastened him into a front-row box,
      And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

;IX
Come, old martyr! What torment enough is it?
      Back to my room shall you take your sweet self.
Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft sufficit!
      See the snug niche I have made on my shelf!
A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you,
      Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be Gay,
And with E. on each side, and F. right over you,
      Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day!