Cristina
I
She should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not love her!
There are plenty...men, you call such,
I suppose...she may discover
All her soul to, if she pleases,
And yet leave much as she found them:
But I'm not so, and she knew it
When she fixed me, glancing round them.
II
What? To fix me thus meant nothing?
But I can't tell (there's my weakness)
What her look said!—no vile cant, sure,
About "need to strew the bleakness
Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed
That the sea feels"—no "strange yearning
That such souls have, most to lavish
When there's chance of least returning."
III
Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows!
But not quite so sunk that moments,
Sure tho' seldom, are denied us,
When the spirit's true endowments
Stand out plainly from its false ones,
And apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way,
To its triumph or undoing.
IV
There are flashes struck from midnights,
There are fire-flames noondays kindle,
Whereby piled-up honors perish,
Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle,
While just this or that poor impulse,
Which for once had played unstifled,
Seems the sole work of a life-time
That away the rest have trifled.
V
Doubt you if, in some such moment,
As she fixed me, she felt clearly,
Ages past the soul existed,
Here an age 'tis resting merely,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from Cavalier Tunes (1842)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
