Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God,—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures.
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward,—Nature's good
And God's.
If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents.
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
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.
Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.
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.
Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest.
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there.
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.
Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup.
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.
Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!
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.