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Robert Browning - Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister
Work rating: Low

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!
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