Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
Lifes business being just the terrible choice.
A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas.
Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:
Prime nature with an added artistry
No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say;
A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.
Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.
I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I save and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
Deeds let escape are never to be done.
Lofty designs must close in like effects.
He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: with the world, each gift
Of God and man, reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance,
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.
It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,to mouths like mine, at least.
Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!
O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Strange secrets are let out by Death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.
Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
That we devote ourselves to God, is seen
In living just as though no God there were.
Rafael made a century of sonnets.