Collected Poems

To a Fiend in the Wilderness

To a Fiend in the Wilderness

Who'd have guessed it from his lip
Or his brow's unaccustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship…?
I left his arm that night myself
For what's-his-name's, the new prose-poet
That wrote the book there, on the shelf
He was prouder than the Devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!

—Browning, Waring.