Bloodaxe Books: FRONT PAGE. Multimedia | Apples and Snakes. Home | Apples and Snakes. The Poetry Society (Home Page) “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” Complete Text Gr-r-r — there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? Your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Summary This highly entertaining poem portrays the grumblings of a jealous monk who finds his pleasures more in the flesh than in the spirit.
Form The poem comprises nine eight-line stanzas, each rhyming ABABCDCD. Because the speaker here is talking to himself, the poem is not technically a dramatic monologue as so many of Browning’s poems are; rather, it is, as its title suggests, a “soliloquy” (even though it is a freestanding poem, and not a speech from a play). Commentary “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” explores moral hypocrisy. Perhaps most importantly, the speaker describes a bargain he would make with Satan to hurt Lawrence.