How Robert Browning Might Have Written
Do you not see? (Ay, off swings my trick again.)
“ By all Rome’s cassocks, I have eyes! ” you say.
Good Wink-eye! Look then: — mirror framed below! —
So! Well enough for you, — for me, poor churl,
I need not scourge my port-beclouded brain
(Ill-omened port) to point the vista home.
So, win or lose, I — solus — up-perched there,
A-squat within the window’s mullioned frame
Fused (whack! whang!) by smithcraft of some Florentine.
— You ’re with me yet? Troll me no lies, I pray! —
I gazed me down upon the rubble pave
Muddy, but a-sweetening in the April sun
Which shines (How know I ? — God save the mark — I guessed)
Spring-wise upon these cobbles “ ad infinitum ”
(Meaning “ forever ” in the Briton’s vernacular). Then, with a tilt o’ the eyelid, on buttress point
I glimpsed (Mark you the vista well, my friend!)
Two Spring-sprung pigeons, — carrier, belike.
So, gazing starward, whisked along my veins
The call of Spring. — (Think you I babble, sir ?)
“ By all Rome’s cassocks, I have eyes! ” you say.
Good Wink-eye! Look then: — mirror framed below! —
So! Well enough for you, — for me, poor churl,
I need not scourge my port-beclouded brain
(Ill-omened port) to point the vista home.
So, win or lose, I — solus — up-perched there,
A-squat within the window’s mullioned frame
Fused (whack! whang!) by smithcraft of some Florentine.
— You ’re with me yet? Troll me no lies, I pray! —
I gazed me down upon the rubble pave
Muddy, but a-sweetening in the April sun
Which shines (How know I ? — God save the mark — I guessed)
Spring-wise upon these cobbles “ ad infinitum ”
(Meaning “ forever ” in the Briton’s vernacular). Then, with a tilt o’ the eyelid, on buttress point
I glimpsed (Mark you the vista well, my friend!)
Two Spring-sprung pigeons, — carrier, belike.
So, gazing starward, whisked along my veins
The call of Spring. — (Think you I babble, sir ?)