Browning's Shorter Poems: The Patriot

The Patriot

AN OLD STORY

It was roses, roses, all the way,
  With myrtle mixed in my path like mad;
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
  The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.
The air broke into a mist with bells,
  The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels--
  But give me your sun from yonder skies!"
They had answered "And afterward, what else?"                                10
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun
  To give it my loving friends to keep!
Naught man could do, have I left undone:
  And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
There's nobody on the house-tops now--
  Just a palsied few at the windows set;
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
  At the Shambles' Gate--or, better yet,
By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.                                         20
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
  A rope cuts both my wrists behind;
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
  For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.
Thus I entered, and thus I go!
  In triumphs, people have dropped down dead,
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe
  Me? "--God might question; now instead,
'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.                                         30

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