The Lost Mistress: A Poem by Robert Browning

The Lost Mistress

Robert Browning

All’s over, then: does truth sound bitter

As one at first believes?

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter

About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,

I noticed that, today;

One day more bursts them open fully

– You know the red turns grey.

Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?

May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we, – well, friends the merest

Keep much that I resign:

For each glance of the eye so bright and black,

Though I keep with heart’s endeavor, –

Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back,

Though it stay in my soul for ever! –

Yet I will but say what mere friends say,

Or only a thought stronger;

I will hold your hand but as long as all may,

Or so very little longer!

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