Under the cover of a hundred wings
Thrown like a spread of kirtles when you’re gay 380
And play hot cockles, all the doors being shut,
Till, wholly unexpected, in there pops
The hothead husband!  Thus I scuttle off
To some safe bench behind, not letting go
The palm of her, the little lily thing
That spoke the good word for me in the nick,
Like the Prior’s niece . . .  Saint Lucy, I would say. 
And so all’s saved for me, and for the church
A pretty picture gained.  Go, six months hence! 
Your hand, sir, and good-bye:  no lights, no lights! 390
The street’s hushed, and I know my own way back,
Don’t fear me!  There’s the gray beginning.  Zooks!

NOTES

“Fra Lippo Lippi” is a dramatic monologue which incidentally conveys the whole story of the occurrence the poem starts from—­the seizure of Fra Lippo by the City Guards, past midnight, in an equivocal neighborhood—­and the lively talk that arose thereupon, outlines the character and past life of the Florentine artist-monk (1412-1469) and the subordinate personalities of the group of officers; and makes all this contribute towards the presentation of Fra Lippo as a type of the more realistic and secular artist of the Renaissance who valued flesh, and protested against the ascetic spirit which strove to isolate the soul.

7.  The Carmine:  monastery of the Del Carmine friars.

17.  Cosimo:  de’ Medici (1389-1464), Florentine statesman and patron of the arts.

23.  Pilchards:  a kind of fish.

53.  Flower o’ the broom:  of the many varieties of folk-songs in Italy that which furnished Browning with a model for Lippo’s songs is called a stornello.  The name is variously derived.  Some take it as merely short for ritornillo; others derive it from a storno, to sing against each other, because the peasants sing them at their work, and as one ends a song, another caps it with a fresh one, and so on.  These stornelli consist of three lines.  The first usually contains the name of a flower which sets the rhyme, and is five syllables long.  Then the love theme is told in two lines of eleven syllables each, agreeing by rhyme, assonance, or repetition with the first.  The first line may be looked upon as a burden set at the beginning instead of, as is more familiar to us, at the end.  There are also stornelli formed of three lines of eleven syllables without any burden.  Browning has made Lippo’s songs of only two lines, but he has strictly followed the rule of making the first line, containing the address to the flower, of five syllables.  The Tuscany versions of two of the songs used by Browning are as follows: 

“Flower of the pine!  Call me not ever happy heart again, But call me heavy heart, 0 comrades mine.”

“Flower of the broom!  Unwed thy mother keeps thee not to lose That flower from the window of the room.”