Patriot - Robert Browning

The Patriot

Robert Browning (1812–1889)

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?”

                   

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.

         

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.