The Inn Album by Robert Browning — Read

She, face, form, bearing, one / Superb composure --

"He has told you all? / Yes, he has told you all, your silence says -- / What gives him, as he thinks, the mastery / Over my body and my soul! -- has told / That instance, even, of their servitude / He now exacts of me? A silent blush! / That 's well, though better would white ignorance / Beseem your brow, undesecrate before -- / Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last / -- Hideously learned as I seemed so late -- / What sin may swell to. Yes, -- I needed learn / That, when my prophet's rod became the snake / I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up / -- Incorporate whatever serpentine / Falsehood and treason and unmanliness / Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell, / And so beginning, ends no otherwise / The Adversary! I was ignorant, / Blameworthy -- if you will; but blame I take / Nowise upon me as I ask myself / -- _You_ -- how can you, whose soul I seemed to read / The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep, / Even with him for consort? I revolve / Much memory, pry into the looks and words / Of that day's walk beneath the College wall, / And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams / Only pure marble through my dusky past, / A dubious cranny where such poison-seed / Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day / This dread ingredient for the cup I drink. / Do not I recognize and honor truth / In seeming? -- take your truth, and for return, / Give you my truth, a no less precious gift? / You loved me: I believed you. I replied / -- How could I other? -- '_I was not my own_,' / No longer had the eyes to see, the ears / To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul / Now were another's. My own right in me, / For well or ill, consigned away -- my face / Fronted the honest path, deflection whence / Had shamed me in the furtive backward look / At the late bargain -- fit such chapman's phrase! -- / As though -- less hasty and more provident -- / Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me / The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true, / I spared you -- as I knew you then -- one more / Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best / Buried away forever. Take it now, / Its power to pain is past! Four years -- that day -- / Those limes that make the College avenue! / I would that -- friend and foe -- by miracle, / I had, that moment, seen into the heart / Of either, as I now am taught to see! / I do believe I should have straight assumed / My proper function, and sustained a soul, / -- Nor aimed at being just sustained myself / By some man's soul -- the weaker woman's-want! / So had I missed the momentary thrill / Of finding me in presence of a god, / But gained the god's own feeling when he gives / Such thrill to what turns life from death before. / '_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book: / You would have yielded up your soul to me / -- Not to the false god who has burned its clay / In his own image. I had shed my love / Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence, / Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun / That drinks and then disperses. Both of us / Blameworthy, -- I first meet my punishment -- / And not so hard to bear. I breathe again! / Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy / At last I struggle -- uncontaminate: / Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast / That 's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once? / Then take love's last and best return! I think, / Womanliness means only motherhood; / All love begins and ends there, -- roams enough, / But, having run the circle, rests at home. / Why is your expiation yet to make? / Pull shame with your own hands from your own head / Now, -- never wait the slow envelopment / Submitted to by unelastic age! / One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake / Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied. / Your heart retains its vital warmth -- or why / That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood! / Break from beneath this icy premature / Captivity of wickedness -- I warn / Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here! / This May breaks all to bud -- no winter now! / Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more! / I am past sin now, so shall you become! / Meanwhile I testify that, lying once, / My foe lied ever, most lied last of all. / He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep / The wicked counsel, -- and assent might seem; / But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks / The idle dream-pact. You would die -- not dare / Confirm your dream-resolve, -- nay, find the word / That fits the deed to bear the light of day! / Say I have justly judged you! then farewell / To blushing -- nay, it ends in smiles, not tears! / Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"