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Nationality In Drinks

By Robert Browning

Topics: classic

I.     My heart sank with our Claret-flask,     Just now, beneath the heavy sedges     That serve this Ponds black face for mask     And still at yonder broken edges     Of the hole, where up the bubbles glisten,     After my heart I look and listen. II.     Our laughing little flask, compelled     Thro depth to depth more bleak and shady;     As when, both arms beside her held,     Feet straightened out, some gay French lady     Is caught up from Lifes light and motion,     And dropped into Deaths silent ocean!     Up jumped Tokay on our table,     Like a pygmy castle-warder,     Dwarfish to see, but stout and able,     Arms and accoutrements all in order;     And fierce he looked North, then, wheeling South,     Blew with his bugle a challenge to Drouth,     Cocked his flap-hat with the tosspot-feather,     Twisted his thumb in his red moustache,     Jingled his huge brass spurs together,     Tightened his waist with its Buda sash,     And then, with an impudence nought could abash,     Shrugged his hump-shoulder,     To tell the beholder,     For twenty such knaves he should laugh but the bolder:     And so, with his sword-hilt gallantly jutting,     And dexter-hand on his haunch abutting,     Went the little man, Sir Ausbruch, strutting!     Heres to Nelsons memory!     Tis the second time that I, at sea,     Right off Cape Trafalgar here,     Have drunk it deep in British beer:     Nelson for ever, any time     Am I his to command in prose or rhyme!     Give me of Nelson only a touch,     And I guard it, be it little or much;     Heres one the Captain gives, and so     Down at the word, by George, shall it go!     He says that at Greenwich they show the beholder     Nelsons coat, still with tar on the shoulder,     For he used to lean with one shoulder digging,     Jigging, as it were, and zig-zag-zigging,     Up against the mizen rigging!

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"I...." by Robert Browning

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Robert Browning

About Robert Browning

Robert Browning (1812–1889) was a major English Victorian poet who perfected the dramatic monologue form. His poems—including "My Last Duchess," "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," and "Fra Lippo Lippi"—explore psychology, morality, and art through the voices of vividly drawn characters.

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