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Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister

I.
 
Gr-r-r—-there go, my heart’s abhorrence!
 Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
 God’s blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
 Oh, that rose has prior claims—-
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
 Hell dry you up with its flames!
 
 II.
 
At the meal we sit together:
 _Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
 Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
 Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What’s the Latin name for 'parsley’?_
 What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout?
 
 III.
 
Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished,
 Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished,
 And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
 Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps—-
Marked with L. for our initial!
 (He-he! There his lily snaps!)
 
 IV.
 
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
 Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
 Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
—-Can’t I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair’s?
 (That is, if he’d let it show!)
 
 V.
 
When he finishes refection,
 Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
 As do I, in Jesu’s praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
 Drinking watered orange-pulp—-
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
 While he drains his at one gulp.
 
 VI.
 
Oh, those melons? If he’s able
 We’re to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot’s table,
 All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
 Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!—-And I, too, at such trouble,
 Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
 
 VII.
 
There’s a great text in Galatians,
 Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
 One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
 Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
 Off to hell, a Manichee?
 
 VIII.
 
Or, my scrofulous French novel
 On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
 Hand and foot in Belial’s gripe:
If I double down its pages
 At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
 Ope a sieve and slip it in’t?
 
 IX.
 
Or, there’s Satan!—-one might venture
 Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
 As he’d miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
 We’re so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._
'St, there’s Vespers! _Plena grati
 Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r—-you swine!
Autres oeuvres par Robert Browning...



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