II

Ours is a great wild country:

If you climb to our castle's top,

I don't see where your eye can stop;

For when you've passed the cornfield country,

Where vineyards leave off, flocks are packed, 10

And sheep-range leads to cattle-tract,

And cattle-tract to open-chase,

And open-chase to the very base

Of the mountain where, at a funeral pace,

Round about, solemn and slow, 15

One by one, row after row,

Up and up the pine-trees go,

So, like black priests up, and so

Down the other side again

To another greater, wilder country, 20

That's one vast red drear burnt-up plain,

Branched through and through with many a vein

Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;

Look right, look left, look straight before--

Beneath they mine, above they smelt, 25

Copper-ore and iron-ore,

And forge and furnace mold and melt

And so on, more and ever more,

Till at the last, for a bounding belt,

Comes the salt sand hoar of the great seashore, 30

--And the whole is our Duke's country.

Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning · 第 90 / 300 题