St. Martins Summer

By Robert Browning

No protesting, dearest! Hardly kisses even! Dont we both know how it ends? How the greenest leaf turns serest, Bluest outbreak, blankest heaven, Lovers, friends? You would build a mansion, I would weave a bower Want the heart for enterprise. Walls admit of no expansion: Trellis-work may haply flower Twice the size. What makes glad Lifes Winter? New buds, old blooms after. Sad the sighing How suspect Reams would ere mid-Autumn splinter, Rooftree scarce support a rafter, Walls lie wrecked? You are young, my princess! I am hardly older: Yet, I steal a glance behind! Dare I tell you what convinces Timid me that you, if bolder, Bold, are blind? Where we plan our dwelling Glooms a graveyard surely! Headstone, footstone moss may drape, Name, date, violets hide from spelling, But, though corpses rot obscurely, Ghosts escape. Ghosts! O breathing Beauty, Give my frank word pardon! What if I, somehow, somewhere, Pledged my soul to endless duty Many a time and oft? Be hard on Love, laid there? Nay, blame grief thats fickle, Time that proves a traitor, Chance, change, all that purpose warps, Death who spares to thrust the sickle Laid Love low, through flowers which later Shroud the corpse! And you, my winsome lady, Whisper with like frankness! Lies nothing buried long ago? Are yon, which shimmer mid the shady Where moss and violet run to rankness, Tombs or no? Who taxes you with murder? My hands are clean, or nearly! Love being mortal needs must pass. Repentance? Nothing were absurder. Enough: we felt Loves loss severely; Though now, alas! Loves corpse lies quiet therefore, Only Loves ghost plays truant, And warns us have in wholesome awe Durable mansionry; thats wherefore I weave but trellis-work, pursuant Life, to law. The solid, not the fragile, Tempts rain and hail and thunder. If bower stand firm at Autumns close, Beyond my hope, why, boughs were agile; If bower fall flat, we scarce need wonder Wreathing rose! So, truce to the protesting, So, muffled be the kisses! For, would we but avow the truth, Sober is genuine joy. No jesting! Ask else Penelope, Ulysses, Old in youth! For why should ghosts feel angered? Let all their interference Be faint march-music in the air! Up! Join the rear of us the vanguard! Up, lovers, dead to all appearance, Laggard pair! The while you clasp me closer, The while I press you deeper, As safe we chuckle, under breath, Yet all the slyer, the jocoser, So, life can boast its day, like leap-year Stolen from death! Ah me, the sudden terror! Hence quick-avaunt, avoid me, You cheat, the ghostly flesh-disguised! Nay, all the ghosts in one! Strange error! So, twas Deaths self that clipped and toyed me, Loved, and lied! Ay, dead loves are the potent! Like any cloud they used you, Mere semblance you, but substance they! Build we no mansion, weave we no tent! Mere flesh, their spirit interfused you! Hence, I say! All theirs, none yours the glamour! Theirs each low word that won me, Soft look that found me Loves, and left What else but you, the tears and clamor Thats all your very own! Undone me, Ghost-bereft!