THE PATRIOT AN OLD STORY

A

ROBERT BROWNING

PATRIOT-LEADER, who perchance has saved his country from the ravages of a powerful foe, returns to his native city amidst profusion of flowers, flaming flags, the wild ringing of bells, and the mad plaudits and boundless love of his people. A year passes. He has done his best to serve the people, but the tide of public sentiment has turned against him, and today he goes cruelly bound, with forehead bleeding from the pelting stones, to the scaffold where a hostile populace exult fiend-like over his certain death. But "God shall repay," and with triumphant faith he declares, "I am safer so."

The form of the poem is dramatic monologue. In the words of one speaker, the events, the actors, the scenery, even the stage itself, are suggested. The poem does not refer to any one in particular, but it is a universal interpretation of the variableness of the popular mind with "God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."

THE PATRIOT

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 PATRIOT—AN OLD STORY 175

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
This very day, now a year is run.

reap

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, ""T is God shall repay: I am safer so."

SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES

1. What do roses and myrtle signify?

2. Supply the words omitted in the phrase like mad. 3. What pictures are given in the first two stanzas?

4. Explain "The air broke into a mist with bells."

5. What statement shows most strongly the boundless love of the people?

6. What change is intimated by the first word in the third stanza? What does the entire stanza show?

7. Why is nobody on the house-tops now?

8. Who are the only persons not in the street or hastening to the scaffold's foot?

9. Why should even the "palsied few" desire to see him in disgrace?

10. How must they have gotten to the windows?

11. What increases the dismalness of the picture?

12. Why does the rope cut his wrists "more than needs"?

13. Why can he not be sure his forehead bleeds?

14. What were the "year's misdeeds" of the patriot?

15. What is his feeling in the first line of the last stanza? 16. What wish comes to him in the second line?

17. Explain fully the question.

18. In what spirit does he say, "God might question”?

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19. What change as he declares, 'Tis God shall repay"?

20. What is his feeling in "I am safer so"?

21. At what point does his character reach its noblest develop

ment?

22. What, in general, is the character of the patriot?

23. What is the character of the people?

24. Why does Browning add "An Old Story" as the sub-title of this poem?

REFERENCES

BROWNING: Hervé Riel. Andrea Del Sarto. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

SCOTT: Patriotism.

WHITTIER: Prisoner for Debt. The Lost Occasion.

LONGFELLOW: The Cumberland.

STORY: Io Victis.

ELIOT: The Choir Invisible.

Belisarius.

SARAH PRATT: The Gift of Empty Hands.

JOHN PIERPONT: The Exile at Rest.

SIR HENRY TAYLOR: The Hero.

GEORGE WALLER THORNBURG: The Jacobite On Tower Hill.
BERNARD BARTON: Caractacus.

Crescentius.

THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN

TH

(A FABLE)

HANNAH FLAGG GOULD

HE fable is a fictitious story, or tale, commonly used to convey some useful truth, in which animals or objects are made to become the speakers and actors. People do not like to be told things; they long to discover them. Hence the poet seldom conveys truth by direct methods. His mission is to place suggestive truths before us, letting those truths impress us as they may. A poem has charm when in the conversation of two persons we catch for ourselves a truth we love and desire to live by. But its charm is increased many-fold if we discover such a truth in the imaginary conversation of two objects. The author, seeing a pebble and an acorn lying by the roadside, doubtless, with deeper insight thought of them as almost human as she imagined the life-germ in the one developing, and the cold heart of the other lying still in boastful scorn. Far beyond pebble and acorn, she saw two types of human beings, and she used this simple fable to teach us each a profound lesson she knows we will take gladly, not from her, but from the voiceless lips of the pebble and the acorn.

THE PEBBLE AND THE ACORN

"I am a Pebble! and yield to none!"
Were the swelling words of a tiny stone:
"Nor time nor seasons can alter me;

I am abiding, while ages flee.

The pelting hail and the driveling rain
Have tried to soften me, long, in vain;
And the tender dew has sought to melt
Or touch
my heart; but it was not felt.

"There's none can tell about my birth,
For I'm as old as the big, round earth.
The children of men arise, and pass
Out of the world, like blades of grass;
And many a foot on me has trod,
That's gone from sight, and under the sod!
I am a Pebble! but who art thou,

Rattling along from the restless bough?"

The Acorn was shocked at this rude salute,
And lay, for a moment, abashed and mute;
She never before had been so near
This gravelly ball, the mundane sphere;
And she felt, for a time, at a loss to know
How to answer a thing so coarse and low.

But to give reproof of a nobler sort
Than the angry look, or the keen retort,
At length, she said, in a gentle tone:
"Since it has happened that I am thrown
From the lighter element, where I grew,
Down to another so hard and new
And beside a personage so august,
Abased, I will cover my head in dust,
And quickly retire from the sight of one
Whom time, nor season, nor storm, nor sun,
Nor the gentle dew, nor the grinding heel,
Has ever subdued, or made to feel!"
And soon, in the earth, she sank away

From the comfortless spot where the Pebble lay.

But it was not long ere the soil was broke
By the peering head of an infant oak:
And, as it rose, and its branches spread,
The Pebble looked up, and wondering said: