A Likeness by Robert Browning — Read

Some people hang portraits up / In a room where they dine or sup: / And the wife clinks tea-things under, / And her cousin, he stirs his cup, / Asks, "Who was the lady, I wonder? " / "T is a daub John bought at a sale," / Quoth the wife, -- looks black as thunder. / "What a shade beneath her nose! / Snuff-taking, I suppose," -- / Adds the cousin, while John's corns ail.

Or else, there 's no wife in the case, / But the portrait 's queen of the place, / Alone 'mid the other spoils / Of youth, -- masks, gloves and foils, / And pipe-sticks, rose, cherry-tree, jasmine, / And the long whip, the tandem-lasher, / And the cast from a fist ("not, alas! mine, / But my master's, the Tipton Slasher"), / And the cards where pistol-balls mark ace, / And a satin shoe uses for cigar-case, / And the chamois-horns ("shot in the Chablais"), / And prints -- Rarey drumming on Cruiser, / And Sayers, our champion, the bruiser, / And the little edition of Rabelais: / Where a friend, with both hands in his pockets, / May saunter up close to examine it, / And remark a good deal of Jane Lamb in it, / "But the eyes are half out of their sockets; / That hair 's not so bad, where the gloss is, / But they 've made the girl's nose a proboscis: / Jane Lamb, that we danced with at Vichy! / What, is not she Jane? Then, who is she?"