Patriot Into Traitor

The poem “Patriot into Traitor” is structured around the themes of violence, death, and downfall from a high pedestal. Another underlying theme is the oscillation of human attitudes and behaviors.

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 flames, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day.

The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries.
Had I said, “Good fold, 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!
Nought man could do, have I left undone:
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.

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 writs behind;
And 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,
‘Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.

By Robert Browning

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