PATRIOT INTO TRAITOR BY ROBERT BROWNING

6. PATRIOT INTO TRAITOR

(Robert Browning) 

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 flames, 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 fold, 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!
Nought 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 writs behind;
And 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.