Explore "The Inn Album" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Occupied by the elm; and, as its shade / Has crept clock-hand-wise till it ticks at fern / Five inches further to the South, -- the door / Opens abruptly, some one enters sharp, / The elder man returned to wait the youth: / Never observes the room's new occupant, / Throws hat on table, stoops quick, elbow propped / Over the Album wide there, bends down brow / A cogitative minute, whistles shrill, / Then, -- with a cheery-hopeless laugh-and-lose / Air of defiance to fate visibly / Casting the toils about him -- mouths once more / '_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot! _' / Then clasps-to cover, sends book spinning off / T' other side table, looks up, starts erect / Full-face with her who -- roused from that abstruse / Question '_Will next tick tip the fern or no? _' -- / Fronts him as fully.
All her languor breaks, / Away withers at once the weariness / From the black-blooded brow, anger and hate / Convulse. Speech follows slowlier, but at last --