Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister – Robert Browning

I Marked with L. for our initial! 

   (He-he! There his lily snaps!) 
Gr-r-r — there go, my heart’s abhorrence! 
   Water your damned flower-pots, do!  IV
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, 
   God’s blood, would not mine kill you! 
Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores 
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? 
   Squats outside the Convent bank 
   Oh, that rose has prior claims — 
With Sanchicha, telling stories, 
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? 
   Steeping tresses in the tank, 
   Hell dry you up with its flames! 
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, 
At the meal we sit together; 
   — Can’t I see his dead eye glow, 
II Bright as ’twere a Barbary corsair’s 4? 
   (That is, if he’d let it show!) 
 Salve tib1i! I must hear 
Wise talk of the kind of weather, 
   Sort of season, time of year:  V
Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely 
When he finishes refection5, 
      Dare we hope oak-galls2, I doubt; 
   Knife and fork he never lays 
What’s the Latin name for “parsley?” 
Cross-wise, to my recollection, 
   What’s the Greek name for Swine’s Snout? 
   As do I, in Jesu’s praise. 
III I the Trinity illustrate, 
   Drinking watered orange-pulp — 
Whew! We’ll have our platter burnished, 
In three sips the Arian6 frustrate; 
   Laid with care on our own shelf! 
   While he drains his at one gulp. 
With a fire-new spoon we’re furnished, 
   And a goblet for ourself,  VI
Rinsed like something sacrificial 
   Ere ’tis fit to touch our chaps3 — 
4
Pirate from north-west coast of Africa
1 5
“Hail to thee!” A light meal
2 6
Growths on diseased oak trees Heretical follower of the 4th century Arius, who
3
“chops” = cheeks denied the doctrine of the Trinity
 If I double down its pages 
Oh, those melons? If he’s able     At the woeful sixteenth print, 
   We’re to have a feast! so nice!  When he gathers his greengages, 
One goes to the Abbot’s table,     Ope a sieve and slip it in ’t? 
   All of us get each a slice. 
IX
How go on your flowers? None double? 
   Not one fruit-sort can you spy? 
Strange! — And I, too, at such trouble,  Or, there’s Satan! — one might venture 
   Keep them close-nipped on the sly!     Pledge one’s soul to him, yet leave 
Such a flaw in the indenture 
   As he’d miss till, past retrieve, 
VII Blasted lay that rose-acacia 
   We’re so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine 10... 
“St, there’s Vespers11! Plena gratiâ 
7
There’s a great text in Galatians , 
      Ave, Virgo12! Gr-r-r — you swine! 
   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 as can be, 
Spin him round and send him flying 
   Off to hell, a Manichee8? 

VIII

Or, my scrofulous French novel 

   On grey paper with blunt type! 
Simply glance at it, you grovel 
   Hand and foot in Belial’s9 gripe: 

7
Imaginary text
8 10
A heretic who believes that the universe reflects a Nonsense words
11
constant fight between good and evil Evening prayer
9 12
The devil’s grip “Full of grace, Hail Virgin”