Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
When is man strong until he feels alone?
Jove strikes the Titans down
Not when they set about their mountain-piling
But when another rock would crown the work.
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men.
Who hears music feels his solitude
Peopled at once.
I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.
Other heights in other lives, God willing.
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.
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
It's petals up.
He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away: he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and metaphysics: like the Jongleurs de Dieu of St. Francis. He may be said to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to climb there with a rope ladder.
I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
Oh their Rafael of the dear Madonnas,
Oh their Dante of the dread Inferno,
Wrote one song—and in my brain I sing it;
Drew one angel—borne, see, on my bosom!
The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
We loved, sir — used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was —
But then, how it was sweet!
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"
The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.
You should not take a fellow eight years old
And make him swear to never kiss the girls.
Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.
Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.