An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry

A Face.

     If one could have that little head of hers
     Painted upon a background of pale gold,
     Such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers!
     No shade encroaching on the matchless mould
     Of those two lips, which should be opening soft
     In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,
     For that spoils all:  but rather as if aloft
     Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff’s
     Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss
     And capture ‘twixt the lips apart for this.             {10}
     Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround,
     How it should waver, on the pale gold ground,
     Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!
     I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts
     Of heaven, his angel faces, orb on orb
     Breaking its outline, burning shades absorb:
     But these are only massed there, I should think,
     Waiting to see some wonder momently
     Grow out, stand full, fade slow against the sky
     (That’s the pale ground you’d see this sweet face by),  {20}
     All heaven, meanwhile, condensed into one eye
     Which fears to lose the wonder, should it wink.

— 1. If one could have: Oh, if one could only have, etc.

9, 10. to kiss and capture: gerundives: to be kissed and captured.

14. Correggio: Antonio Allegri da Correggio, born 1494, died 1534. “He was the first master—the Venetians notwithstanding— to take a scheme of color and chiaro-scuro as the ‘raison d’etre’ of a complete composition, and his brush, responding to the idea, blends light and shade in delicious harmony.”—Woltmann and Woermann’s ‘History of Painting’.