Two in the Campagna
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.

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Two in the Campagna
by Robert Browning

I wonder how you feel to-day
As I have felt since, hand in hand,
We sat down on the grass, to stray
In spirit better through the land,
This morn of Rome and May?

For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
(Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path) for rhymes
To catch at and let go.

Help me to hold it! First it left
The yellow fennel, run to seed
There, branching from the brickwork's cleft,
Some old tomb's ruin: yonder weed
Took up the floating weft,

Where one small orange cup amassed
Five beetles, -blind and green they grope
Among the honey meal: and last,
Everywhere on the grassy slope
O traced it. Hold it fast!

The champaign with its endless fleece
Of feathery grasses everywhere!
Silence and passion, joy and peace,
An everlasting wash of air-
Rome's ghost since her decease.

Such life here, through such lengths of hours,
Such miracles performed in play,
Such primal naked forms of flowers,
Such letting nature have her way
While heaven looks from its towers!

How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
I would that you were all to me,
You that are just so much, no more.
Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!
Where does the fault lie? What the core
O' the wound, since wound must be?

I would I could adopt your will,
See with your eyes, and set my heart
Beating by yours, and drink my fill
At your soul's springs, - your part my part
In life, for good and ill.

No. I yearn upward, touch you close,
Then stand away. I kiss your cheek,
Catch your soul's warmth, - I pluck the rose
And love it more than tongue can speak-
Then the good minute goes.

Already how am I so far
Our of that minute? Must I go
Still like the thistle-ball, no bar,
Onward, whenever light winds blow,
Fixed by no friendly star?

Just when I seemed about to learn!
Where is the thread now? Off again!
The Old trick! Only I discern-
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn.

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Two in the Campagna by Robert Browning