Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
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.
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 hereshould 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.
Never the time and the place
And the loved one all together!
Progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are;
Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
What wonder if the novel claim had clashed
With old requirement, seemed to supersede
Too much the customary law? But, brave,
Thou at first prompting of what I call God,
And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,
Accept the obligation laid on thee,
Mother elect, to save the unborn child,
As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living: didst resist
Anticipate the office that is mine
And with his own sword stay the upraised arm,
The endeavour of the wicked, and defend
Him who, again in my default, was there
For visible providence: one less true than thou
To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right,
Approved less far in all docility
To all instruction, how had such an one
Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?"
Forgive me this digression that I stand
Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak
O' the business, when the Count's good angel bade
"Put up thy sword, born enemy to the ear,
"And let Law listen to thy difference!"
And Law does listen and compose the strife,
Settle the suit, how wisely and how well!
On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,
Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
By fancying the flaw she cannot find.
Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.
Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world.