Explore "Time's Revenges" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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!
-- Yes, rather should see him than not see, / If lifting a hand could seat him there / Before me in the empty chair / To-night, when my head aches indeed, / And I can neither think nor read, / Nor make these purple fingers hold / The pen; this garret's freezing cold!