WITH THIS RING I THEE WED

 

They had gorgeous years together, these two;

Despite age differences, it was poetry

That got them together, the revelry

Within words, that love kept anew...

 

He was steadfast, as much as inconstant

Was she, though never was she unfaithful:

Actually too sincere, indeed too truthful:

To her manifold moods forever consistent.

 

And that woman he loved, with weirdest ease,

Who wrote "Sonnets from the Portuguese",

Never in Portuguese written, but sounding

 

As if they had been -- to death she kept faith

And till his death remained Robert Browning

Forever faithful...  to his "Elizabeth"!...

 

TO CROWN A BEAUTY

 

It is hard to take for a guide a name

of a girl you never met, very certainly

a pretty girl, fresh as a rose, vainly

expecting rom life a future tame...

 

Elizabeth is her name, like a queen,

perhaps the most queenly dame of all:

before her throne fell so many a thrall,

not of her might, but for having seen

 

the beauty a queen would flaunt, and yet,

so many have not; though Queen Bess,

called the Virgin Queen, for never marrying,

 

had lovers galore, the most illustrious set

England could provide and they confess

would die if only her kindliness never sharing...