Life poems
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From Paracelsus
© Robert Browning
ITRUTH is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whateer you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Saul
© Robert Browning
``Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's child with his dew
``On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still living and blue
``Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild beat
``Were now raging to torture the desert!''
The Boy And the Angel
© Robert Browning
Morning, evening, noon and night,
``Praise God!; sang Theocrite.Then to his poor trade he turned,
Whereby the daily meal was earned.Hard he laboured, long and well;
O'er his work the boy's curls fell.But ever, at each period,
Evelyn Hope
© Robert Browning
I.Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Verse-Making Was Least of My Virtues
© Robert Browning
Verse-making was least of my virtues: I viewed with despair
Wealth that never yet was but might be--all that verse-making were
If the life would but lengthen to wish, let the mind be laid bare.
So I said, "To do little is bad, to do nothing is worse"--
And made verse.
Andrea del Sarto
© Robert Browning
But do not let us quarrel any more,
No, my Lucrezia; bear with me for once:
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn your face, but does it bring your heart?
Fra Lippo Lippi
© Robert Browning
I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave!
You need not clap your torches to my face.
Zooks, what's to blame? you think you see a monk!
What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds,
By The Fire-Side
© Robert Browning
How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn-evenings come:
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices, dumb
In life's November too!
Caliban upon Setebos or, Natural Theology in the Island
© Robert Browning
'Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
In Three Days
© Robert Browning
I.So, I shall see her in three days
And just one night, but nights are short,
Then two long hours, and that is morn.
See how I come, unchanged, unworn!
One Way Of Love
© Robert Browning
All June I bound the rose in sheaves.
Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves
And strew them where Pauline may pass.
She will not turn aside? Alas!
Let them lie. Suppose they die?
The chance was they might take her eye.
Now!
© Robert Browning
Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, -- so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
A Grammarian's Funeral
© Robert Browning
SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came
© Robert Browning
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.
Bishop Blougram's Apology
© Robert Browning
So, you despise me, Mr. Gigadibs.
No deprecation,--nay, I beg you, sir!
Beside 't is our engagement: don't you know,
I promised, if you'd watch a dinner out,
We'd see truth dawn together?--truth that peeps
Over the glasses' edge when dinner's done,
The Last Ride Together
© Robert Browning
I.I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
A Lovers' Quarrel
© Robert Browning
I.Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
Overhead The Tree-Tops Meet
© Robert Browning
Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
There was nought above me, and nought below,
My childhood had not learned to know:
The Englishman In Italy
© Robert Browning
(PIANO DI SORRENTO.)Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
