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