Robert Browning

“Any noseMay ravage with impunity a rose.”

“As is your sort of mind,So is your sort of search:You will find what you desire.”

“What if all's appearance? Is not outside seeming real as substance inside? Both are facts, so leave me dreaming.”

“I was ever a fighter, so---one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forbore, and bade me creep past.”

“I was made and meant to look for you and wait for you and become yours forever.”

“I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier’s art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights.”

“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.”

“Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,  One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,One more devils’-triumph and sorrow for angels,  One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!”

“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!”

“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.How many a month I strove to suitThese stubborn fingers to the lute!To-day I venture all I know.She will not hear my music? So!Break the string -- fold music's wing.Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!My whole life long I learned to love. This hour my utmost art I prove And speak my passion. -- Heaven or hell? She will not give me heaven? 'Tis well! Lose who may -- I still can say, Those who win heaven, blest are they.”

“It is the glory and good of ArtThat Art remains the one way possibleOf speaking truth - to mouths like mine, at least.”

“RatsThey 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 cook's own ladles.Split open the kegs of salted sprats,Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,And even spoiled the women's chatsBy drowning their speakingWith shrieking and squeakingIn fifty different sharps and flats.”

“In this world, who can do a thing, will not;And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —And thus we half-men struggle.”

“On a day like today I am stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.”

“Paracelsus At times I almost dreamI too have spent a life the sages’ way,And tread once more familiar paths. PerchanceI perished in an arrogant self-relianceAges ago; and in that act a prayerFor one more chance went up so earnest, soInstinct with better light let in by death,That life was blotted out — not so completelyBut scattered wrecks enough of it remain,Dim memories, as now, when once more seemsThe goal in sight again.”

“grow old with me. the best is yet to be.the last of life for which the first was made.”

“How well I know what I mean to doWhen the long dark Autumn evenings come,And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?With the music of all thy voices, dumbIn life’s November too!I shall be found by the fire, suppose,O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age,While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows,And I turn the page, and I turn the page,Not verse now, only prose!”

“Each life unfulfilled, you see;It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,—been happy.”

“ Life In LoveEscape 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 lothWhile 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 boundAt me so deep in the dust and dark,No sooner the old hope goes to groundThan a new one, straight to the self-same mark,I shape me---EverRemoved!”

“One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, never doubted clouds would break, never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.”

“That moment she was mine, mine, fair,Perfectly pure and good: I foundA thing to do, and all her hairIn one long yellow string I woundThree times her little throat around,And strangled her. No pain felt she;I am quite sure she felt no pain.As a shut bud that holds a bee,I warily oped her lids: againLaughed the blue eyes without a stain.And I untightened the next tressAbout her neck; her cheek once moreBlushed bright beneath my burning kiss . . .”

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

“Smiling the boy fell dead.”

“O poder do Homem deve exceder o seu alcance. Senão, para que serviria o céu?”

“A lion may die of an ass's kick.”

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

“What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew”

“What a name! Was it love or praise?Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?I must learn Spanish, one of these days,Only for that slow sweet name's sake.”

“Just when I seemed about to learn!Where is the thread now? Off again!The old trick! Only I discern - Infinite passion, and the painOf finite hearts that yearn.”

“how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet”

“This world's no blot for us,Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good:To find its meaning is my meat and drink.”

“Love, hope, fear, faith - these make humanity; These are its sign and note and character”

“My first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eyeAskance to watch the working of his lieOn mine, and mouth scarce able to affordSuppression of the glee, that pursed and scoredIts edge, at one more victim gained thereby.”

“I.My first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eyeAskance to watch the workings of his lieOn mine, and mouth scarce able to affordSuppression of the glee, that pursed and scoredIts edge, at one more victim gained thereby.II.What else should he be set for, with his staff?What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnareAll travellers who might find him posted there,And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laughWould break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaphFor pastime in the dusty thoroughfare.III.If at his counsel I should turn asideInto that ominous tract which, all agree,Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescinglyI did turn as he pointed, neither prideNow hope rekindling at the end descried,So much as gladness that some end might be.IV.For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,What with my search drawn out through years, my hopeDwindled into a ghost not fit to copeWith that obstreperous joy success would bring,I hardly tried now to rebuke the springMy heart made, finding failure in its scope.V.As when a sick man very near to deathSeems dead indeed, and feels begin and endThe tears and takes the farewell of each friend,And hears one bit the other go, draw breathFreelier outside, ('since all is o'er,' he saithAnd the blow fallen no grieving can amend;')VI.When some discuss if near the other gravesbe room enough for this, and when a daySuits best for carrying the corpse away,With care about the banners, scarves and stavesAnd still the man hears all, and only cravesHe may not shame such tender love and stay.VII.Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writSo many times among 'The Band' to wit,The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressedTheir steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,And all the doubt was now - should I be fit?VIII.So, quiet as despair I turned from him,That hateful cripple, out of his highwayInto the path he pointed. All the dayHad been a dreary one at best, and dimWas settling to its close, yet shot one grimRed leer to see the plain catch its estray.IX.For mark! No sooner was I fairly foundPledged to the plain, after a pace or two,Than, pausing to throw backwards a last viewO'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round;Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.I might go on, naught else remained to do.X.So on I went. I think I never sawSuch starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!But cockle, spurge, according to their lawMight propagate their kind with none to awe,You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.XI.No! penury, inertness and grimace,In some strange sort, were the land's portion. 'SeeOr shut your eyes,' said Nature peevishly,It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:Tis the Last Judgement's fire must cure this placeCalcine its clods and set my prisoners free.”

“XII.If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalkAbove its mates, the head was chopped, the bentsWere jealous else. What made those holes and rentsIn the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulkAll hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walkPashing their life out, with a brute's intents.XIII.As for the grass, it grew as scant as hairIn leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mudWhich underneath looked kneaded up with blood.One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,Stood stupified, however he came there:Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!XIV.Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew,With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain.And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;I never saw a brute I hated so;He must be wicked to deserve such pain.XV.I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart,As a man calls for wine before he fights,I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art:One taste of the old time sets all to rights.XVI.Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening faceBeneath its garniture of curly gold,Dear fellow, till I almost felt him foldAn arm to mine to fix me to the place,The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.XVII.Giles then, the soul of honour - there he standsFrank as ten years ago when knighted first,What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman handsPin to his breast a parchment? His own bandsRead it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!XVIII.Better this present than a past like that:Back therefore to my darkening path again!No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.Will the night send a howlet or a bat?I asked: when something on the dismal flatCame to arrest my thoughts and change their train.XIX.A sudden little river crossed my pathAs unexpected as a serpent comes.No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;This, as it frothed by, might have been a bathFor the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrathOf its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.XX.So petty yet so spiteful! All along,Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fitOf mute despair, a suicidal throng:The river which had done them all the wrong,Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.XXI.Which, while I forded - good saints, how I fearedTo set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seekFor hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!- It may have been a water-rat I speared,But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.XXII.Glad was I when I reached the other bank.Now for a better country. Vain presage!Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,Whose savage trample thus could pad the danksoil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tankOr wild cats in a red-hot iron cage -XXIII.The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque,What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?No footprint leading to that horrid mews,None out of it. Mad brewage set to workTheir brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the TurkPits for his pastime, Christians against Jews. ”

“XXIV.And more than that - a furlong on - why, there!What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reelMen's bodies out like silk? With all the airOf Tophet's tool, on earth left unawareOr brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.XXV.Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earthDesperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,Makes a thing and then mars it, till his moodChanges and off he goes!) within a rood -Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth.XXVI.Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,Now patches where some leanness of the soil'sBroke into moss, or substances like boils;Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in himLike a distorted mouth that splits its rimGaping at death, and dies while it recoils.XXVII.And just as far as ever from the end!Naught in the distance but the evening, naughtTo point my footstep further! At the thought,A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend,Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-pennedThat brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought.XXVIII.For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,Spite of the dusk, the plain had given placeAll round to mountains - with such name to graceMere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you!How to get from them was no clearer case.XXIX.Yet half I seemed to recognise some trickOf mischief happened to me, God knows when -In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, thenProgress this way. When, in the very nickOf giving up, one time more, came a clickAs when a trap shuts - you're inside the den.XXX.Burningly it came on me all at once,This was the place! those two hills on the right,Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce,Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,After a life spent training for the sight!XXXI.What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,Built of brown stone, without a counterpartIn the whole world. The tempest's mocking elfPoints to the shipman thus the unseen shelfHe strikes on, only when the timbers start.XXXII.Not see? because of night perhaps? - why dayCame back again for that! before it leftThe dying sunset kindled through a cleft:The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, -Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!'XXXIII.Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolledIncreasing like a bell. Names in my earsOf all the lost adventurers, my peers -How such a one was strong, and such was bold,And such was fortunate, yet each of oldLost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.XXXIV.There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, metTo view the last of me, a living frameFor one more picture! In a sheet of flameI saw them and I knew them all. And yetDauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”

“Love is the energy of life.”

“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”

“The year's at the springAnd day's at the morn;Morning's at seven;The hill-side's dew-pearled;The lark's on the wing;The snail's on the thorn;God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!”

“Take away love and our earth is a tomb.”

“When the fight begins within himself, a man's worth something.”

“Who hears music, feels his solitudePeopled at once.”

“One taste of the old time sets all to rights.”

“O lyric love! half angel half bird”

“Without love, our earth is a tomb”

“Days decrease, / And autumn grows, autumn in everything.”

“I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists.”

“Best be yourself, imperial, plain, and true.”

“Ignorance is not innocence but sin.”

“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,In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,Thought and feeling and soul and sense. ”