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| I. Gr-r-r---there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims--- Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames! II. At the meal we sit together: _Salve tibi!_ I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: _Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt: What's the Latin name for ``parsley''?_ What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout? III. Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Laid with care on our own shelf! With a fire-new spoon we're furnished, And a goblet for ourself, Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--- Marked with L. for our initial! (He-he! There his lily snaps!) IV. _Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores Squats outside the Convent bank With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, ---Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's? (That is, if he'd let it show!) V. When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange-pulp--- In three sips the Arian frustrate; While he drains his at one gulp. VI. Oh, those melons? If he's able We're to have a feast! so nice! One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice. How go on your flowers? None double Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange!---And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly! VII. There's a great text in Galatians, 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 can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee? VIII. Or, my scrofulous French novel On grey paper with blunt type! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't? IX. Or, there's Satan!---one might venture Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he'd miss till, past retrieve, Blasted lay that rose-acacia We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._ 'St, there's Vespers! _Plena grati Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r---you swine! |
| Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister by: Robert Browning |
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| What is Reader Response Criticism? RRC encompasses various approaches to literature that explore and seek to explain the diversity (and often divergence) of reader's responses to literary works...They also provide us with models that aid our understanding of texts and the reading process. Adena Rosmarin, for instance, has suggested that a literary text may be likened to an incomplete work of sculpture: to see it fully, we must complete it imaginatively but also responsibly, taking into account what exists. *The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms* Page 322 |