Robert Browning

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.

The best is yet to be.

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

Forgive me. I am shy by nature: — & by position & experience, . . . by having had my nerves shaken to excess, & by leading a life of such seclusion, . . . by these things together & by others besides, I have appeared shy & ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful.You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, . . . surely!

smoke comes first:
Once let smoke rise untroubled, we descry
Clearlier what tongues of flame may spire and spit
To eye and ear, each with appropriate tinge
According to its food, or pure or foul.

Grime is grace
To whoso gropes amid the dung for gold.

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

With mortals much must go, but something stays;
Nothing will stay of our so happy selves.

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

Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declin'd, one more foot-path ontrod,
One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!

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.

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.'"

Life In Love

Escape me?
Never — -
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again, — -
So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me — -
Ever
Removed!

My whole life long I learn'd to love,
This hour my utmost art I prove.
And speak my passion — — heaven or hell?
She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well!

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