Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/906

 ROBERT BROWNING

XII

Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will' But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings Ere I know it next moment I dance at the King's '

��737 Earl Mertoim's Song

THERE '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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