Time's Revenges by Robert Browning
A writer suffering a headache in a freezing garret imagines how a devoted friend overseas would come to nurse him despite his complaints. He contrasts this friendship with his consuming love for a woman who, he says, would have him burned if it secured her an invitation to a fashionable ball.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Dramatic Monologue · 740 words
First lines
I've a Friend, over the sea; / I like him, but he loves me. / It all grew out of the books I write; / They find such favor in his sight / That he slaughters you with savage looks / Because you don't admire my books. / He does himself though, -- and if some vein / Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain, / To-morrow month, if I lived to try, / Round should I just turn quietly, / Or out of the bedclothes stretch my hand / Till I found him, come from his foreign land / To be my nurse in this poor place, / And make my broth and wash my face / And light my fire and, all the while, / Bear with his old good-humored smile / That I told him "Better have kept away / Than come and kill me, night and day, / With, worse than fever throbs and shoots, / The creaking of his clumsy boots. " / I am as sure that this he would do, / As that Saint Paul's is striking two. / And I think I rather... woe is me!
Genres
- Dramatic Monologue — A writer speaks in the first person, revealing his unequal attachments through imagined acts of care, declarations of passion, and accusations against his beloved.
Tags
friendship · unrequited love · obsession · self-sacrifice · illness
What this Textopian page supports
Time's Revenges is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Browning, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Browning
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Dramatic Monologue
- Length: 740 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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