Poems of Robert Browning - From the Author's Revised Text of 1889; His Own Selections With Additions From His Latest Works #246056

My Star.<br><br>All that I know<br>Of a certain star<br>Is, it can throw<br>(Like the angled spar)<br>Now a dart of red,<br>Now a dart of blue;<br>Till my friends have said<br>They would fain see, too,<br>My star that dartles the red and the blue!<br>Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:<br>They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.<br>What matter to me if their star is a world?<br>Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.<br><br>A Face.<br><br>If one could have that little head of hers<br>Painted upon a background of pale gold,<br>Such as the Tuscan's early art prefers!<br>No shade encroaching on the matchless mold<br>Of those two lips, which should be opening soft<br>In the pure profile; not as when she laughs,<br>For that spoils all: but rather as if aloft<br>Yon hyacinth, she loves so, leaned its staff's<br>Burthen of honey-colored buds, to kiss<br>And capture 'twixt the lips apart for this.<br><br>Then her lithe neck, three fingers might surround.<br>How it should waver, on the pale gold ground,<br>Up to the fruit-shaped, perfect chin it lifts!<br>I know, Correggio loves to mass, in rifts