Explore "The Inn Album" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The youth is somehow by the lady's side. / His right-hand grasps her right-hand once again. / Both gaze on the dead body. Hers the word.
"And that was good but useless. Had I lived, / The danger was to dread: but, dying now -- / Himself would hardly become talkative, / Since talk no more means torture. Fools -- what fools / These wicked men are! Had I borne four years, / Four years of weeks and months and days and nights, / Inured me to the consciousness of life / Coiled round by his life, with the tongue to ply, -- / But that I bore about me, for prompt use / At urgent need, the thing that '_stops the mouth_' / And stays the venom? Since such need was now / Or never, -- how should use not follow need? / Bear witness for me, I withdraw from life / By virtue of the license -- warrant, say, / That blackens yet this Album -- white again, / Thanks still to my one friend who tears the page! / Now, let me write the line of supplement, / As counselled by my foe there: '_each a line! _"