Robert Browning

"Das Beste ist doch das Letzte im Leben, denn dafür wird alles gemacht. In Gottes Hand ist unsere Zeit."

"Jede Freude ist ein Gewinn und bleibt es, auch wenn er noch so klein ist."

"Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles, Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats."

"So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men — especially pipers! And, whether they pipe us from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise!"

"Kiss me as if you made believe You were not sure, this eve, How my face, your flower, had pursed It's petals up."

"The lie was dead And damned, and truth stood up instead."

"Over my head his arm he flung Against the world."

"There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest."

"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."

"I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be."

"Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride."

"It is so horrible, I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus"

"Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?"

"We loved, sir — used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was — But then, how it was sweet!"

"Who hears music feels his solitude Peopled at once."

"Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there."

"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."

"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."

"Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!"

"What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew."

"A minute's success pays the failure of years."

"All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee: All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem: In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea: Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —"

"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!"

"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."

"Strive and thrive!"

"Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay."

"That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were."

"Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart."

"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."

"Truth is within ourselves."

"God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations."

"Strange secrets are let out by Death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world."

"Error has no end."

"The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride."

"Every joy is gain And gain is gain, however small."

"Jove strikes the Titans down Not when they set about their mountain-piling But when another rock would crown the work."

"The peerless cup afloat Of the lake-lily is an urn some nymph Swims bearing high above her head."

"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."

"Progress is The law of life: man is not Man as yet."

"But, gathering in its ancient market-place, Talked group with restless group ; and not a face But wrath made livid, for among them were Death's staunch purveyors, such as have in care To feast him. Fear had long since taken root In every breast, and now these crushed its fruit, The ripe hate, like a wine: to note the way It worked while each grew drunk ! men grave and grey Stood, with shut eyelids, rocking to and fro. Letting the silent luxury trickle slow About the hollows where a heart should be; But the young gulped with a delirious glee Some foretaste of their first debauch in blood At the fierce news"

"over zealous in the feat And stumbling on a peril unaware. Was captive, "trammelled in his proper snare," They phrase it, "taken by his own intrigue""

"The hill-cat boasts some cunning of her own, Some stealthy tricks to better beasts unknown That quick with prey enough her hunger blunts And feeds her fat while gaunt the lion hunts."

"[...]his back is fairly turned? The pair of goodly palaces are burned, The gardens ravaged, and your Guelf is drunk A week with joy ; the next, his laughter sunk In sobs of blood, for he found, some strange way, Old Salinguerra back again; I say Old Salinguerra in the town once more Uprooting, overturning, flame before Blood fetlock-high beneath him; Azzo fled; Who scaped the carnage followed; then the dead Were pushed aside from Salinguerra's throne. He ruled once more Ferrara, all alone. Till Azzo, stunned awhile, revived, would pounce; Coupled with Boniface, like lynx and ounce."

"So men believe And worship what they know not, nor receive Delight from."

"Have they fancies — slow, perchance, Not at their beck, which indistinctly glance Until by song each floating part be linked To each, and all grow palpable, distinct? He pondered this."

"Deeds let escape are never to be done."

"Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ In unexpanded infancy"

"Any nose May ravage with impunity a rose."

"Say not "a small event!" Why "small"? Costs it more pain that this ye call A "great event" should come to pass From that? Untwine me from the mass Of deeds which make up life, one deed Power shall fall short in or exceed!"

"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!"

"Some unsuspected isle in the far seas,— Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas."

"In the morning of the world, When earth was nigher heaven than now."

"All service ranks the same with God,— With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we: there is no last nor first."

"When is man strong until he feels alone?"

"The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth."

"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.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends— The man of men, the spirit of all flesh, The fiery centre of an earthly world!"

"What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold:"

"Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf."

"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!"

"God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are his children, one family here."

"How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses Forever in joy!"

"'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!"

"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."

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?"

"Take away love, and our earth is a tomb!"

"If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents."

"You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls."

"I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on."

"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?"

"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."

"Italy, my Italy! Queen Mary's saying serves for me (When fortune's malice Lost her Calais): "Open my heart, and you will see Graved inside of it ‘Italy.'""

"Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist."

"When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something."

"He said true things, but called them by the wrong names."

"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 here—should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This throws himself on God, and unperplexed Seeking shall find him."

"Lofty designs must close in like effects."

"Rafael made a century of sonnets."

"Other heights in other lives, God willing."

"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!"

"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!"

"Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought."

"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."

"The body sprang At once to the height, and stayed; but the soul,—no!"

"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."

"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."

"The ultimate, angels' law, Indulging every instinct of the soul There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing!"

"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!""

"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."

"Let us cry, "All good things Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!""

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup."

"Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men."

"So, take, and use thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

"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."

"A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard, And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since. Give it me back! The thing's restorative I'the touch and sight."

"A ring without a posy, and that ring mine?"

"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!"

"Go practise if you please With men and women: leave a child alone For Christ's particular love's sake!"

"In the great right of an excessive wrong."

"Was never evening yet But seemed far beautifuller than its day."

"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."

"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!""

"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?""

"The curious crime, the fine Felicity and flower of wickedness."

"Why comes temptation, but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph?"

"White shall not neutralize the black, nor good Compensate bad in man, absolve him so: Life's business being just the terrible choice."

"Inscribe all human effort with one word, Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!"

"It is the glory and good of Art That Art remains the one way possible Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least."

"Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised) Linking our England to his Italy."

"The sprinkled isles, Lily on lily, that o'erlace the sea."

"And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again."

"Just my vengeance complete, The man sprang to his feet, Stood erect, caught at God's skirts, and prayed! So, I was afraid!"

"Oh never star Was lost here but it rose afar."

"When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?"

"The sin I impute to each frustrute ghost Is—the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say."

"Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years."

"Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat."

"We shall march prospering,—not thro' his presence; Songs may inspirit us,—not from his lyre; Deeds will be done,—while he boasts his quiescence, Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire."

"They are perfect; how else?—they shall never change: We are faulty; why not?—we have time in store."

"What's come to perfection perishes. Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven; Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes."

"O woman-country! wooed not wed, Loved all the more by earth's male-lands, Laid to their hearts instead."

"That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it."

"If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far."

"Only I discern Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

"Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go Floating the women faded for ages, Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages."

"How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change."

"Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new!"

"He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace."

"And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable."

"A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all."

"Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?"

"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."

"Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!"

"What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me."

"How sad and bad and mad it was! But then, how it was sweet!"

"So may a glory from defect arise."

"This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever."

"Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face. . . . . . . . No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears"

"It's wiser being good than bad; It's safer being meek than fierce; It's fitter being sane than mad. My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That after Last returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once prove accurst."

"But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?"

"Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,— As, God be thanked! I do not."

""With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart" once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!"

"God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach"

"Good, to forgive; Best, to forget! Living, we fret; Dying, we live."

"Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?"

"Sky—what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!"

"Wanting is—what? Summer redundant, Blueness abundant, Where is the blot?"

"But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty."

"There is no truer truth obtainable By Man than comes of music."

"Love is energy of life."

"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."

"Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked."

"He concentrated on the special souls of men; seeking God in a series of personal interviews."

"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."

"If Browning were less difficult to read, he would surely be the dominant poet in this century. I feel the ecstasy with which he exclaims, “Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth this autumn morning!" And how he sets my brain going when he says, because there is imperfection, there must be perfection; completeness must come of incompleteness; failure is an evidence of triumph for the fulness of the days. Yes, discord is, that harmony may be; pain destroys, that health may renew; perhaps I am deaf and blind that others likewise afflicted may see and hear with a more perfect sense! From Browning I learn that there is no lost good, and that makes it easier for me to go at life, right or wrong, do the best I know, and fear not. My heart responds proudly to his exhortation to pay gladly life's debt of pain, darkness and cold. Lift up your burden, it is God's gift, bear it nobly."