Robert Browning

“ Do all that we can to make men wise!
And if men prefer to be foolish,
Ourselves have proved horse-like not mulish:
Sent grist, a good sackful, to hopper,
And worked as the Master thought proper.
Tongue I wag, pen I ply, who am Abbot;
Stick, thou, Son, to daub-brush and dab-pot!
But, soft! I scratch hard on the scab hot?
Though cured of thy plague, there may linger
A pimple I fray with rough finger?
So soon could my homily transmute
Thy brass into gold? Why, the man's mute! ”

“ Steer us in, then, small and great!
⁠Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron! cried its chief.
Captains, give the sailor place!
⁠He is Admiral, in brief.
Still the north-wind, by God's grace!
See the noble fellow's face
As the big ship, with a bound,
Clears the entry like a hound,
Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide sea 's profound!
⁠See, safe thro' shoal and rock,
⁠How they follow in a flock,
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the ground,
⁠Not a spar that comes to grief! ”

“ When love from life-long exile comes at call.
Duty and love, one broadway, were the best—
Who doubts? But one or other was to choose.
I chose the darkling half, and wait the rest
In that new world where light and darkness fuse. ”

“ Are you cowards, fools, or rogues?
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the soundings, tell
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell
⁠'Twixt the offing here and Grève where the river disembogues?
Are you bought by English gold? Is it love the lying 's for?
⁠Morn and eve, night and day.
⁠Have I piloted your bay,
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor.
Burn the fleet and ruin France? That were worse than fifty Hogues!
⁠Sirs, they know I speak the truth! Sirs, believe me there 's a way! ”

“ Your feet, my arms convulse your shrouding robe,
My eyes, acquainted with the dust, dare probe
Your eyes above for—what, if born, would blind
Mine with redundant bliss, as flash may find
The inert nerve, sting awake the palsied limb,
Bid with life's ecstasy sense overbrim
And suck back death in the resurging joy—
Love, the love whole and sole without alloy! ”

“ Got soil i' the act—crime spawning everywhere!
Because, when all endeavour had been used
To catch the aforesaid Paolo, all in vain—
"Make perquisition" quoth our Eminence,
"Throughout his now deserted domicile!
Ransack the palace, roof and floor, to find
If haply any scrap of writing, hid
In nook or corner, may convict—who knows?—
Brother Onofrio of intelligence
With brother Paolo, as in brotherhood
Is but too likely: crime spawns everywhere!" ”

“ There stone-still stone-white stood my wife, but now
The woman who made heaven within my house.
Ay, she who faced me was my very spouse
As well as love—you are to recollect!
"Stay!" she said. "Keep at least one soul unspecked
With crime, that's spotless hitherto—your own! ”

“ Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored,
Shall the 'Formidable' here, with her twelve and eighty guns
⁠Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way,
Trust to enter where 't is ticklish for a craft of twenty tons,
⁠And with flow at full beside?
⁠Now 't is slackest ebb of tide.
⁠Reach the mooring! Rather say,
While rock stands or water runs,
Not a ship will leave the bay! ”

“ Blank where a scutcheon hung,—by, worse than all,
Each day's procession, my paraded life
Robbed and impoverished through the wanting wife
—Now that my life (which means—my work) was grown
Riches indeed! ”

“ Yet all the slyer, the jocoser,—
⁠"So, life can boast its day, like leap-year,
⁠Stolen from death!"
15.
Ah me—the sudden terror!
⁠Hence quick—avaunt, avoid me,
⁠You cheat, the ghostly flesh-disguised!
Nay, all the ghosts in one! Strange error!
⁠So, 't was Death's self that clipped and coyed me,
⁠Loved—and lied!
16.
Ay, dead loves are the potent!
⁠Like any cloud they used you,
⁠Mere semblance you, but substance they!
Build we no mansion, weave we no tent! ”

“ Yataghan, kandjar, things that rend and rip,
Gash rough, slash smooth, help hate so many ways,
Yet ever keep a beauty that betrays
Love still at work with the artificer
Throughout his quaint devising. ”

“ That have pulled so long at my flask, nor grudged
The headache that paid their pains, nor budged
From bunghole before they sighed and judged
⁠"Too rough for our taste, to-day, befits
The racy and right when the years conclude!"
⁠Out on ingratitude!
27.
Grateful or ingrate—none,
⁠No cowslip of all my fairy crew
Shall help to concoct what makes you wink,
And goes to your head till you think you think
I like them alive: the printer's ink
⁠Would sensibly tell on the perfume too. ”

“ Down whisker and beard what an overflow!
⁠Lick spilth that has trickled from classic jowls,
Sup the single scene, sip the only verse—
⁠Old wine, not new and worse!
17.
I grant you: worse by much!
⁠Renounce that new where you never gained
One glow at heart, one gleam at head,
And stick to the warrant of age instead!
No dwarf's-lap! Fatten, by giants fed!
⁠You fatten, with oceans of drink undrained?
You feed—who would choke did a cobweb smutch
⁠The Age you love so much? ”

“ Ascend, descend stairs tunneled through the stone,—
Always in silence,—till I reach the lone
Chamber sepulchred for my very own
Out of the palace-quarry. When a boy,
Here was my fortress, stronghold from annoy,
Proof-positive of ownership; in youth
I garnered up my gleanings here—uncouth
But precious relics of vain hopes, vain fears ”

“ Your product is—truffles, you hunt with a pig!
⁠Since bright-and-big, when a man would dine,
Suits badly: and therefore the Koh-i-noor
⁠May sleep in mine 'neath moor!
19.
Wine, pulse in might from me!
⁠It may never emerge in must from vat,
Never fill cask nor furnish can,
Never end sweet, which strong began—
God's gift to gladden the heart of man;
⁠But spirit's at proof, I promise that!
No sparing of juice spoils what should be
⁠Fit brewage—mine for me.
20.
Man's thoughts and loves and hates! ”

“ All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,
⁠For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier
⁠Lives my friend because I love him still!"
10.
Ah, but there's a menace someone utters! ”

“ But my heart may guess
⁠Who tripped behind; and she sang perhaps:
So, the old wall throbbed, and its life's excess
⁠Died out and away in the leafy wraps.
5.
Wall upon wall are between us: life
⁠And song should away from heart to heart. ”

“ Art's the sole question in debate!
These subjects are so many lies.
We treat them with a proper scorn
When we turn lies—called gods forsooth—
To lies' fit use, now Christ is born.
Drawing and colouring are Truth. ”

“ Yet you—I loved!"
⁠The thing I pity most
In men is—action prompted by surprise
Of anger: men? nay, bulls—whose onset lies
At instance of the firework and the goad!
Once the foe prostrate,—trampling once bestowed,—
Prompt follows placability, regret,
Atonement. Trust me, blood-warmth never yet
Betokened strong will! As no leap of pulse
Pricked me, that first time, so did none convulse
My veins at this occasion for resolve. ”

“ With the whole world to see, as only strains
His strength some athlete whose prodigious gains
Of good appall him: happy to excess,—
Work freely done should balance happiness
Fully enjoyed; and, since beneath my roof
Housed she who made home heaven, in heaven's behoof
I went forth every day, and all day long
Worked for the world. ”

“ What power has logic! I, at once,
Acknowledged error in our tribe
So squeamish that, when friends ensconce
A pretty picture in its niche
To do us honor, deck our graves,
We fret and fume and have an itch
To strangle folk—ungrateful knaves!
55.
"No, sir! Be sure that—what's its style,
Your picture?—shall possess ungrudged
A place among my rank and file
Of Ledas and what not—be judged
Just as a picture! and (because
I fear me much I scarce have bought
A Titian) Master Buti's flaws
Found there, will have the laugh flaws ought!'
56. ”

“ Invasion of the foe on every hand—
The multifarious herd in bower and hall,
State-room,—rooms whatsoe'er the style, which call
On masters to be mindful that, before
Men, they must look like men and something more. ”

“ So masterfully exercise the task
Enjoined him, that he, day by day, and week
By week, and month by month, from first to last
Deserved the prize: now, punctual at his place,
Played Judge, and now, assiduous at his post,
Inquisitor—pressed cushion and scoured plank,
Early and late. Noon's fervor and night's chill,
Nought moved whom morn would, purpling, make amends! ”

“ Thus I unroll you then the manuscript.
⁠"God's justice"— (of the multiplicity
Of such communications extant still,
Recording, each, injustice done by God
In person of his Vicar-upon-earth,
Scarce one but leads off to the self-same tune) —
"God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance,
Rests never on the track until it reach
Delinquency. ”

“ As they were ever.
"Such things should so be!"
Sage our desistence!
Rough-smooth let globe be,
Mixed—man's existence!
4.
Man—wise and foolish,
Lover and scorner,
Docile and mulish—
Keep each his corner! ”

“ What did he want with comforts there?
"Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough,
So goods on sale show rich and rare!
'Sell and scud home,' be shop's affair!"
15.
What might he deal in? Gems, suppose!
Since somehow business must be done
At cost of trouble,—see, he throws
You choice of jewels, everyone.
Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun! ”

“ Safe with his friends, the Orsini, at their seat
Monte Giordano; as he left the house
He came upon the watch in wait for him
Set by the Barigel,—was caught and caged.
⁠News of which capture being, that same hour,
Conveyed to Rome, forthwith our Eminence
Commands Taverna, Governor and Judge,
To have the process in especial care,
Be, first to last, not only president
In person, but inquisitor as well,
Nor trust the bye-work to a substitute:
Bids him not, squeamish, keep the bench, but scrub
The floor of Justice, so to speak,—go try
His best in prison with the criminal ”

“ The whole of the frontage shaven sheer,
⁠The inside gaped: exposed to day,
Right and wrong and common and queer,
⁠Bare, as the palm of your hand, it lay.
6.
The owner? Oh, he had been crushed, no doubt!
⁠"Odd tables and chairs for a man of wealth! ”

“ To that Orsini House from whence it came:
Oriolo having passed as donative
To Santa Croce from their ancestors.
And no word more? By all means! Would you know
The authoritative answer, when folks urged
"What made Aldobrandini, hound-like staunch,
Hunt out of life a harmless simpleton?" ”

“ You, jack-in-the-Green, leaf-and-twiggishness
Won't save a dry thread on your priggishness!
While as for Quilp-Hop-o'-my-thumb there,
Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum there—
He'll think, as the pickle he curses,
I've discharged on his pate his own verses!
"Dwarfs are saucy," says Dickens: so, sauced in
Your own sauce
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28. ”