Robert Browning (1812-1889). Love among the Ruins. Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. 1922. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse

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Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Love among the Ruins

By Robert Browning (1812–1889)


WHERE the quiet-colour’d end of evening smiles
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop	5
As they crop—
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
(So they say)
Of our country’s very capital, its prince
Ages since	10
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
Peace or war.

Now—the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills	15
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires	20
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest,
Twelve abreast.

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass	25
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guess’d alone,
Stock or stone—	30
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory prick’d their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold	35
Bought and sold.

Now,—the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,	40
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced	45
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
View’d the games.

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave	50
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair	55
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king look’d, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.	60

But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topp’d with temples, all the glades’
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then,	65
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,	70
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high	75
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
Oh, heart! oh, blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns	80
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest.
Love is best!

CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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