Sonnet

1834

Eyes calm beside thee (Lady, could'st thou know!) May turn away thick with fast-gathering tears: I glance not where all gaze: thrilling and low Their passionate praises reach thee--my cheek wears Alone no wonder when thou passest by; Thy tremulous lids bent and suffused reply To the irrepressible homage which doth glow On every lip but mine: if in thine ears Their accents linger--and thou dost recall Me as I stood, still, guarded, very pale, Beside each votarist whose lighted brow Wore worship like an aureole, "O'er them all My beauty," thou wilt murmur, "did prevail Save that one only:"--Lady, could'st thou know!

It is perhaps characteristic of Browning that this early sonnet should be so irregular in its rime-scheme.

The songs in Paracelsus (1835) prove that Browning was a genuine lyrical poet: the best of them, Over the Sea Our Galleys Went, is more properly a dramatic monologue: but the song in the second act, by Aprile (who I think stands for Keats) is a pure lyric, and so are the two stanzas sung by Paracelsus in the fourth act. There are lines here which suggest something of the drowsy music of Tennyson's Lotos-Eaters, published in 1832:

.... such balsam falls Down sea-side mountain pedestals, From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, Spent with the vast and howling main, To treasure half their island-gain.