Clive by Robert Browning — Read

I and Clive were friends -- and why not? Friends! I think you laugh, / my lad. / Clive it was gave England India, while your father gives -- egad, / England nothing but the graceless boy who lures him on to speak -- / "Well, Sir, you and Clive were comrades -- " with a tongue thrust in / your cheek! / Very true: in my eyes, your eyes, all the world's eyes, Clive was / man, / I was, am, and ever shall be -- mouse, nay, mouse of all its clan / Sorriest sample, if you take the kitchen's estimate for fame; / While the man Clive -- he fought Plassy, spoiled the clever foreign / game, / Conquered and annexed and Englished!

Never mind! As o'er my punch / (You away) I sit of evenings, -- silence, save for biscuit crunch, / Black, unbroken, -- thought grows busy, thrids each pathway of old / years, / Notes this forthright, that meander, till the long-past life appears / Like an outspread map of country plodded through, each mile and / rood, / Once, and well remembered still, -- I 'm startled in my solitude / Ever and anon by -- what 's the sudden mocking light that breaks / On me as I slap the table till no rummer-glass but shakes / While I ask -- aloud, I do believe, God help me! -- "Was it thus? / Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us -- " / (Us, -- you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be) / " -- One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see) / "Got no end of wealth and honor, -- yet I stood stock-still no less? " / -- "For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess / Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall / Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps! " Him who braves that / notice -- call / Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words, / Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says, the land 's the / Lord's: / Louts then -- what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring, / All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king? / Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before / T' other in that dark direction, though I stand forevermore / Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By and by / Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I. / Don't object "Why call him friend, then? " Power is power, my boy, / and still / Marks a man, -- God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill. / You 've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's / skin: / Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in! / True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass; / Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage -- ah, the brute he was! / Why, that Clive, -- that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving / clerk, in fine, -- / He sustained a siege in Arcot... But the world knows! Pass the / wine.