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That love's dull smart distressed my heart
He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
Never suspected he.

He searched for the trace of a pictured face,...

I sang that song on Sunday,
To witch an idle while,
I sang that song on Monday,
As fittest to beguile;
I sang it as the year outwore,
And the new slid in;
I thought not what might shape before...

The stag to the east is not asleep, he does not stop from bellowing; though he is in the woods of the blackbirds, sleep is not in his mind; the hornless doe is not asleep, crying after her speckled fawn; she is going over the b...

To me not only does her soul suggest
Palms and the peace of tropic shore and wood,
But, oceaned far beyond the golden West,
The Fortunate Islands of true Womanhood.

When the heavens throb and vibrate
All along their silver veins,
To the mellow storm of music
Sweeping o'er the starry trains,
Heard by few, as erst by shepherds
On the far Chaldean plains:
...

Her strong enchantments failing,
Her towers of fear in wreck,
Her limbecks dried of poisons
And the knife at her neck,

The Queen of air and darkness
Begins to shrill and cry,...

Dear, think not that they will forget you:
If craftsmanly art should be mine
I will build up a temple, and set you
Therein as its shrine.

They may say: "Why a woman such honour?"...

My wedded life
Must every pleasure bring
On scale extensive!
If I'm your wife
I must have everything
That's most expensive -
A lady's-maid -
(My hair alone to do
I am not able) -...

I am that which began;
Out of me the years roll;
Out of me God and man;
I am equal and whole;
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul.

Before ever land was,...

The gray of the sea, and the gray of the sky,
A glimpse of the moon like a half-closed eye.
The gleam on the waves and the light on the land,
A thrill in my heart,--and--my sweetheart's hand.
...

Yes, we've been travelling, my dear,
Three months, or such a matter,
And it's a blessing to get clear
Of all the clash and clatter!
Ah! when I look the guide-book through,...

Somebody's sent a funny little valentine to me.
It's a bunch of baby-roses in a vase of filigree,
And hovering above them - just as cute as he can be -
Is a fairy Cupid tangled in a scarf of poetry.
...

The Summer lightning comes and goes
In one pale cloud above the hill,
As if within its soft repose
A burning heart were never still -
As in my bosom pulses beat
Before the coming of his feet.
...

I

Her violin! - Again begin
The dream-notes of her violin;
And dim and fair, with gold-brown hair,
I seem to see her standing there,
Soft-eyed and sweetly slender:...

Her Vivien eyes, - beware! beware!
Though they be stars, a deadly snare
They set beneath her night of hair.
Regard them not! lest, drawing near
As sages once in old Chaldee...

The wild bee reels from bough to bough
With his furry coat and his gauzy wing,
Now in a lily-cup, and now
Setting a jacinth bell a-swing,
In his wandering;
Sit closer love: it was here I trow...

Browning contributed the money he earned by this poem to the people of Paris suffering from the Franco-Prussian War. Herv' Riel appeared in the Cornhill Magazine for March, 1871, and the publisher, Mr. George Smith, paid one hu...

In some strange place
Of long-lost lands he finds her waiting face -
Comes marveling upon it, unaware,
Set moonwise in the midnight of her hair.

The Scorpion is as black as soot,
He dearly loves to bite;
He is a most unpleasant brute
To find in bed at night.

He's gone to England for a wife
Among the ladies there;
And yet I know a lass he deemed
The rarest of the rare.
He's gone to England for a wife;
And rich and proud is he....