Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.
Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents.
Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup.
What Youth deemed crystal,
Age finds out was dew.
Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
He concentrated on the special souls of men; seeking God in a series of personal interviews.
The moment eternal — just that and no more —
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!
The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it.
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,—
His hundred's soon hit;
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That has the world here—should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
In the great right of an excessive wrong.
All service ranks the same with God,—
With God, whose puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.