Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)
English poet and husband of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?
The peerless cup afloat
Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph
Swims bearing high above her head.
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"
The body sprang
At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,no!
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides,one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her!
What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up,
And be discharged, and straight wound up anew?
No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets:
May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.
Any nose
May ravage with impunity a rose.
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
Truth is within ourselves.
Progress is
The law of life: man is not Man as yet.
Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things.
The honest thief, the tender murderer,
The superstitious atheist.
Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!
The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart
Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth.
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
The ultimate, angels' law,
Indulging every instinct of the soul
There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!
For I say this is death and the sole death,
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain,
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance,
And lack of love from love made manifest.