C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Confessions
By Robert Browning (18121889)
W
“Now that I come to die
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?”
Ah, reverend sir, not I!
Where the physic bottles stand
On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.
From a house you could descry
O’er the garden wall: is the curtain blue,
Or green to a healthy eye?
Blue above lane and wall;
And that farthest bottle labeled “Ether”
Is the house o’ertopping all.
There watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it’s improper,
My poor mind’s out of tune.
Close by the side, to dodge
Eyes in the house, two eyes except:
They styled their house “The Lodge.”
But by creeping very close,
With the good wall’s help,—their eyes might strain
And stretch themselves to O’s,
As she left the attic there,
By the rim of the bottle labeled “Ether,”
And stole from stair to stair,
We loved, sir—used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!