The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

Not see? because of night perhaps?�why, day Came back again for that! before it left, The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:

190 The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay� "Now stab and end the creature�to the heft!"5

33 Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears

195 Of all the lost adventurers my peers� How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old

Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

34 There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met 200 To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! in a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn6 to my lips I set,

And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

1852 1855

Fra Lippo Lippi1

I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave! You need not clap your torches to my face.

4. Cf. Psalm 14.1: "The fool hath said in his heart. mean a kind of trumpet or horn. Browning fol- There is no God." lowed Chatterton's example, although the original 5. Handle of dagger or sword. meaning would also be relevant here. 6. The war cry or slogan of a clan about to engage 1. This monologue portrays the dawn of the in battle (Scottish). In 1770, however, the poet Renaissance in Italy at a point when the medieval Thomas Chatterton was misled into using it to attitude toward life and art was about to be dis

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1272 / ROBERT BROWNING

Zooks,2 what's to blame? you think you see a monk! What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, 5 And here you catch me at an alley's end Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar? The Carmine's3 my cloister: hunt it up, Do�harry out, if you must show your zeal, Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, 10 And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company! Aha, you know your betters! Then, you'll take Your hand away that's fiddling on my throat, And please to know me likewise. Who am I? 15 Why, one, sir, who is lodging with a friend Three streets off�he's a certain . . . how d'ye call? Master�a . . . Cosimo of the Medici,4 I' the house that caps the corner. Boh! you were best! Remember and tell me, the day you're hanged, 20 How you affected such a gullet's gripe!5 But you,6 sir, it concerns you that your knaves Pick up a manner nor discredit you: Zooks, are we pilchards,0 that they sweep the streets small fish And count fair prize what comes into this net? 25 He's Judas to a tittle, that man is!7 Just such a face! Why, sir, you make amends. Lord, I'm not angry! Bid your hangdogs go Drink out this quarter-florin8 to the health Of the munificent House that harbors me 30 (And many more beside, lads! more beside!) And all's come square again. I'd like his face� His, elbowing on his comrade in the door With the pike and lantern�for the slave that holds John Baptist's head a-dangle by the hair 35 With one hand ("Look you, now," as who should say) And his weapon in the other, yet unwiped! It's not your chance to have a bit of chalk, A wood-coal� or the like? or you should see! piece of charcoal Yes, I'm the painter, since you style me so. 40 What, brother Lippo's doings, up and down, You know them and they take you? like enough! I saw the proper twinkle in your eye� 'Tell you, I liked your looks at very first. Let's sit and set things straight now, hip to haunch.

placed by a fresh appreciation of earthly pleasures. It was from Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1550) that Browning derived most of his information about the life of the Florentine painter and friar Lippo Lippi (1406-1469), but the theory of art propounded by Lippi in the poem was developed by the poet.

2. A shortened version of Gadzooles, a mild oath now obscure in meaning but perhaps resembling a phrase still in use: "God's truth." 3. Santa Maria del Carmine, a church and cloister of the Carmelite order of friars to which Lippi belonged.

4. Lippi's patron, a banker and virtual ruler of Florence (1389-1464). 5. I.e., how you had the arrogance to choke the gullet of someone with my connections. 6. The officer in charge of the patrol of policemen or watchmen. 7. I.e., one of the watchmen has a face that would serve as a model for a painting of Judas. "To a tittle": to a tee; absolutely. 8. I.e., buy a drink worth a quarter of a florin (the florin was a gold coin first minted in Florence).

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