A Pretty Woman
by Robert Browning
English poet and dramatist, whose most ambitious work was The Ring and the Book (1868-69): a verse narrative in ten parts based on a real murder trial conducted in Florence. He also wrote and published Pauline (1833), Paracelsus (1835), Sordello (1840) and Strafford (1837), a play that ran for only five nights. Two other plays A Blot in the Scutcheon (1843) and Colombe's Birthday (1843), were also performed briefly in 1843 and 1853, after which Browning wrote mainly dramatic poetry. He published a series of eight volumes of verse, under the title Bells and Pomegranates, between 1841 and 1846. After his marriage to the poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1846, Browning's most important works, along with The Ring and the Book, were Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850), an exploration of worship; a volume of fifty poems entitled Men and Women (1850) and Dramatis Personae (1854). The influence of his handling of diction and the monologue form is perhaps to be noted in such twentieth century poets as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
A Pretty Woman
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I That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers, II To think men cannot take you, Sweet, III You like us for a glance, you know - IV And in turn we make you ours, we say - V All's our own, to make the most of, Sweet - VI But for loving, why, you would not, Sweet, VII So, we leave the sweet face fondly there - VIII And while the face lies quiet there, IX As, -why must one, for the love forgone, X Why with beauty, needs there money be - XI May not liking be so simple-sweet, XII Is the creature too imperfect, say? XIII Or is it of its kind, perhaps, XIV Shall we burn up, tread that face at once XV Or else kiss away one's soul on her? XVI Thus the craftsman thinks to grace the rose, - XVII Rosy rubies make its cup more rose, XVIII Then, how grace a rose? I know a way! |