Song

Song I. Nay but you, who do not love her, Is she not pure gold, my mistress? Holds earth aught---speak truth---above her? Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, And this last fairest tress of all, So fair, see, ere I let it fall? II. Because, you spend your lives in praising; To praise, you search the wide world over: Then why not witness, calmly gazing, If earth holds aught---speak truth---above her? Above this tress, and this, I touch But cannot praise, I love so much! Robert Browning "Song" is yet another poem divided into two "stanza chapters". Both stanzas are relatively short (six verses each). This is also another one of Browning's love poems. The rhyme scheme is also very interesting: A-B-A-B-C-C. It is as though the two C's together conclude each stanza. Another peculiar aspect is that the first stanza ends with a question mark, while the second stanza is concluded with an exclamation mark. The first stanza asks a question, and the second stanza answers it with a very powerful tone. This way of ending a poem with an exclamation is typical of Browning's. The idea of this poem is a song about the speaker's love. The speaker is talking to his misress, and asks if his loce is beautiful;he also states that she is fair and is afraid of losing her . The speaker also in the second stanza criticizes his mistress, for she spends her lifetime praising peopel and searching for love.The speaker instead is unable to praise, for he already loves and doesn't need to praise other people. Browning could have written his love peoms to Elizabeth Barrett, his love