An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry

Respectability.

       1.

     Dear, had the world in its caprice
       Deigned to proclaim “I know you both,
       Have recognized your plighted troth,
     Am sponsor for you:  live in peace!”—
     How many precious months and years
       Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
       Before we found it out at last,
     The world, and what it fears?

       2.

     How much of priceless life were spent
       With men that every virtue decks,
       And women models of their sex,
     Society’s true ornament,—
     Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
       Through wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
       And feel the Boulevart break again
     To warmth and light and bliss?

       3.

     I know! the world proscribes not love;
       Allows my finger to caress
       Your lips’ contour and downiness,
     Provided it supply a glove.
     The world’s good word!—the Institute!
       Guizot receives Montalembert!
       Eh?  Down the court three lampions flare:
     Put forward your best foot!

— St. 3. Guizot: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, French statesman and historian, b. 1787, d. 1874. Montalembert: Charles Forbes Rene, Comte de Montalembert, French statesman, orator, and political writer, b. 1810, d. 1870. Guizot receives Montalembert: i.e., on purely conventional grounds.