3. Robert Browning Poetry Quotes: Patriot & Pied Piper

• '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.'
• 'Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun

  To give it my loving friends to keep!

  Nought man could do, have I left undone:'
• 'At the Shambles' Gate---or, better yet,

  By the very scaffold's foot, I trow.'
• 'For they fling, whoever has a mind,

  Stones at me for my year's misdeeds.'
• '``Paid by the world, what dost thou owe

  ``Me?''---God might question; now instead,

  'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.'
•   'And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, 

  Split open the kegs of salted sprats, 

  Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, 

  And even spoiled the women's chats 

        By drowning their speaking 

        With shrieking and squeaking 

  In fifty different sharps and flats.'
• His queer long coat from heel to head 

  Was half of yellow and half of red; 

  And he himself was tall and thin, 

  With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 

  And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, 

  No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, 

  But lips where smiles went out and in —
• 'Will you give me a thousand guilders? 

  One? fifty thousand! — was the exclamation 

  Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.'
• 'And the muttering grew to a grumbling; 

  And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; 

  And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. 

  Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, 

  Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, 

  Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, 

     Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, 

  Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, 

     Families by tens and dozens, 

  Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives — 

  Followed the Piper for their lives.'
• 'Until they came to the river Weser 

  Wherein all plunged and perished 

  — Save one who, stout as Julius Caesar, 

  Swam across and lived to carry 

  (As he the manuscript he cherished)'
• 'A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue; 

  So did the Corporation too. 

  For council dinners made rare havock 

  With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock; 

  And half the money would replenish 

  Their cellar's biggest butt with Rhenish. 

  To pay this sum to a wandering fellow 

  With a gipsy coat of red and yellow!'
• 'But, as for the guilders, what we spoke 

  Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. 

  Beside, our losses have made us thrifty; 

  A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!'
• 'Of all the pleasant sights they see, 

  Which the Piper also promised me; 

  For he led us, he said, to a joyous land, 

  Joining the town and just at hand, 

  Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew, 

  And flowers put forth a fairer hue,'
• 'And I must not omit to say 

  That in Transylvania there's a tribe 

  Of alien people who ascribe 

  The outlandish ways and dress 

  On which their neighbours lay such stress'
• 'Of scores out with all men — especially pipers: 

  And, whether they pipe us from rats or from mice, 

  If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise.