Home ⇒ 📌Robert Browning ⇒ The Lost Mistress
The Lost Mistress
All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that today;
One day more bursts them open fully
-You know the red turns grey.
Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we,-well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign:
For each glance of that eye so bright and black,
Though I keep with heart’s endeavour,-
Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,
Though it stay in my soul for ever!-
-Yet I will but say what mere friends say,
Or only a thought stronger;
I will hold your hand but as long as all may,
Or so very little longer!
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- O'Donohue's Mistress Of all the fair months, that round the sun In light-link’d dance their circles run, Sweet May, shine thou for me; For still, when thy earliest beams arise, That youth, who beneath the blue lake lies, Sweet May, returns to me. Of all the bright haunts, where daylight leaves Its lingering smile on golden eves, […]...
- Count That Day Lost If you sit down at set of sun And count the acts that you have done, And, counting, find One self-denying deed, one word That eased the heart of him who heard, One glance most kind That fell like sunshine where it went Then you may count that day well spent. But if, through all […]...
- Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress Whoe’er she be, That not impossible she That shall command my heart and me; Where’er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye In shady leaves of destiny: Till that ripe birth Of studied fate stand forth, And teach her fair steps to our earth; Till that divine Idea take a shrine Of crystal flesh, through […]...
- Who never lost, are unprepared Who never lost, are unprepared A Coronet to find! Who never thirsted Flagons, and Cooling Tamarind! Who never climbed the weary league Can such a foot explore The purple territories On Pizarro’s shore? How many Legions overcome The Emperor will say? How many Colors taken On Revolution Day? How many Bullets bearest? Hast Thou the […]...
- 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
- To My Inconstant Mistress When thou, poor excommunicate From all the joys of love, shalt see The full reward and glorious fate Which my strong faith shall purchase me, Then curse thine own inconstancy. A fairer hand than thine shall cure That heart which thy false oaths did wound; And to my soul a soul more pure Than thine […]...
- The Time I've Lost In Wooing The time I’ve lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman’s eyes, Has been my heart’s undoing. Tho’ Wisdom oft has sought me, I scorn’d the lore she brought me, My only books Were women’s looks, And folly’s all they taught me. Her smile when Beauty granted, I hung with […]...
- 206. Song-Clarina, Mistress of my Soul CLARINDA, mistres of my soul, The measur’d time is run! The wretch beneath the dreary pole So marks his latest sun. To what dark cave of frozen night Shall poor Sylvander hie; Depriv’d of thee, his life and light, The sun of all his joy? We part-but by these precious drops, That fill thy lovely […]...
- I Have Some Friends I have some friends, some worthy friends, And worthy friends are rare: These carpet slippers on my feet, That padded leather chair; This old and shabby dressing-gown, So well the worse of wear. I have some friends, some honest friends, And honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that’s […]...
- The Irish Peasant to his Mistress Through grief and through danger thy smile hath cheer’d my way, Till hope seem’d to bud from each thorn that round me lay; The darker our fortune, the brighter our pure love burn’d, Till shame into glory, till fear into zeal was turn’d; Yes, slave as I was, in thy arms my spirit felt free, […]...
- Lost You left me with the autumn time; When the winter stripped the forest bare, Then dressed it in his spotless rime; When frosts were lurking in the air You left me here and went away. The winds were cold; you could not stay. You sought a warmer clime, until The south wind, artful maid, should […]...
- Mistress Gurton's Cat Old MISTRESS GURTON had a Cat, A Tabby, loveliest of the race, Sleek as a doe, and tame, and fat With velvet paws, and whisker’d face; The Doves of VENUS not so fair, Nor JUNO’S Peacocks half so grand As MISTRESS GURTON’S Tabby rare, The proudest of the purring band; So dignified in all her […]...
- On Mistress Nicely, a Pattern for Housekeepers She was a woman peerless in her station, With household virtues wedded to her name; Spotless in linen, grass-bleached in her fame; And pure and clear-starched in her conversation; Thence in my Castle of Imagination She dwells for evermore, the dainty dame, To keep all airy draperies from shame And all dream furnitures in preservation: […]...
- My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters SO grieves th’ adventurous merchant, when he throws All the long toil’d-for treasure his ship stows Into the angry main, to save from wrack Himself and men, as I grieve to give back These letters : yet so powerful is your sway As if you bid me die, I must obey. Go then, blest papers, […]...
- Master And Mistress As if I were composed of dust and air, The shape confronting me upon the stair (Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain On its disjunctive breast I saw it plain ) Moved through my middle flesh. I turned around, Shaken and it was marching without sound Beyond the door; and when my hand was […]...
- Lost Kitten Two men I saw reel from a bar And stumble down the street; Coarse and uncouth as workmen are, They walked with wobbly feet. I watched them, thinking sadly as I heard their hobnails clink, The only joy a toiler has Is to get drowned in drink. A kitten on a wall, A skinny, starving […]...
- To His Mistress Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny The sunshine of the Sun’s enlivening eye? Without thy light what light remains in me? Thou art my life; my way, my light’s in thee; I live, I move, and by thy beams I see. Thou art my life-if […]...
- Sweet, to have had them lost Sweet, to have had them lost For news that they be saved The nearer they departed Us The nearer they, restored, Shall stand to Our Right Hand Most precious and the Dead Next precious Those that rose to go Then thought of Us, and stayed....
- The Little House of Lost Play (Mar Vanwa Tyalieva) We knew that land once, You and I, And once we wandered there In the long days now long gone by, A dark child and a fair. Was it on the paths of firelight thought In winter cold and white, Or in the blue-spun twilit hours Of little early tucked-up beds In drowsy summer night, […]...
- Keepe On Your Maske (Version for his Mistress) Keepe on your maske and hide your eye For in beholding you I dye. Your fatall beauty Gorgon-like Dead with astonishment doth strike. Your piercing eyes that now I see Are worse than Basilisks to me. Shut from mine eyes those hills of snow, Their melting vally do not shew: Those azure paths lead to […]...
- Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
- Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
- Elegy XVI: On His Mistress By our first strange and fatal interview, By all desires which thereof did ensue, By our long starving hopes, by that remorse Which my words’ masculine persuasive force Begot in thee, and by the memory Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatened me, I calmly beg: but by thy father’s wrath, By all pains, which […]...
- A Lost Angel When first we met she seemed so white I feared her; As one might near a spirit bright I neared her; An angel pure from heaven above I dreamed her, And far too good for human love I deemed her. A spirit free from mortal taint I thought her, And incense as unto a saint […]...
- The Little Girl Lost In futurity I prophesy see. That the earth from sleep. (Grave the sentence deep) Shall arise and seek For her maker meek: And the desart wild Become a garden mild. In the southern clime, Where the summers prime Never fades away; Lovely Lyca lay. Seven summers old Lovely Lyca told, She had wandered long. Hearing […]...
- The Lost Leader Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat – Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How […]...
- Lost in the Prairie In one of fhe States of America, some years ago, There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow, Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen, Who had finished their day’s work – nine or ten of them. The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp, And with the thick falling […]...
- Paradise Lost: Book 01 Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd […]...
- The New Mistress “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. “I will go where I […]...
- Paradise Lost: Book 04 O, for that warning voice, which he, who saw The Apocalypse, heard cry in Heaven aloud, Then when the Dragon, put to second rout, Came furious down to be revenged on men, Woe to the inhabitants on earth! that now, While time was, our first parents had been warned The coming of their secret foe, […]...
- To His Coy Mistress Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness Lady were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long Loves Day. Thou by the Indian Ganges side. Should’st Rubies find: I by the Tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood: […]...
- The Mistress An age in her embraces passed Would seem a winter’s day; When life and light, with envious haste, Are torn and snatched away. But, oh! how slowly minutes roll. When absent from her eyes That feed my love, which is my soul, It languishes and dies. For then no more a soul but shade It […]...
- Dutch Mistress A hotel in whose ledgers departures are more prominent than arrivals. With wet Koh-i-noors the October rain Strokes what’s left of the naked brain. In this country laid flat for the sake of rivers, Beer smells of Germany and the seaguls are In the air like a page’s soiled corners. Morning enters the premises with […]...
- A Cruel Mistress We read of kings and gods that kindly took A pitcher fill’d with water from the brook ; But I have daily tender’d without thanks Rivers of tears that overflow their banks. A slaughter’d bull will appease angry Jove, A horse the Sun, a lamb the god of love, But she disdains the spotless sacrifice […]...
- A Divine Mistress In Nature’s pieces still I see Some error that might mended be; Something my wish could still remove, Alter or add; but my fair love Was fram’d by hands far more divine, For she hath every beauteous line: Yet I had been far happier, Had Nature, that made me, made her. Then likeness might (that […]...
- A Lover To His Mistress Ile tell you how the Rose did first grow redde, And whence the Lilly whitenesse borrowed: You blusht, and then the Rose with redde was dight: The Lillies kissde your hands, and so came white: Before that time each Rose had but a stayne, The Lilly nought but palenesse did containe: You have the native […]...
- What Kind Of Mistress He Would Have Be the mistress of my choice, Clean in manners, clear in voice; Be she witty, more than wise, Pure enough, though not precise; Be she showing in her dress, Like a civil wilderness, That the curious may detect Order in a sweet neglect; Be she rolling in her eye, Tempting all the passers by; And […]...
- A MEDITATION FOR HIS MISTRESS You are a Tulip seen to-day, But, Dearest, of so short a stay, That where you grew, scarce man can say. You are a lovely July-flower; Yet one rude wind, or ruffling shower, Will force you hence, and in an hour. You are a sparkling Rose i’th’ bud, Yet lost, ere that chaste flesh and […]...
- Paradise Lost: Book 08 The Angel ended, and in Adam’s ear So charming left his voice, that he a while Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear; Then, as new waked, thus gratefully replied. What thanks sufficient, or what recompence Equal, have I to render thee, divine Historian, who thus largely hast allayed The thirst I had […]...
- Paradise Lost: Book 12 As one who in his journey bates at noon, Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored, If Adam aught perhaps might interpose; Then, with transition sweet, new speech resumes. Thus thou hast seen one world begin, and end; And Man, as from a second stock, proceed. […]...