Robert Browning - The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition

For the water’s play, but the water head —

How can he multiply or reduce it?

As easy create it, as cause it to cease:

He may profit by it, or abuse it;

But ’tis not a thing to bear increase

As power will: be love less or more

In the heart of man, he keeps it shut

Or opes it wide as he pleases, but

Love’s sum remains what it was before.

So, gazing up, in my youth, at love

As seen through power, ever above

All modes which make it manifest,

My soul brought all to a single test —

That He, the Eternal First and Last,

Who, in His power, had so surpassed

All man conceives of what is might, —

Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,

— Would prove as infinitely good;

Would never, my soul understood,

With power to work all love desires,

Bestow e’en less than man requires:

That He who endlessly was teaching,

Above my spirit’s utmost reaching,

What love can do in the leaf or stone,

(So that to master this alone,

This done in the stone or leaf for me,

I must go on learning endlessly)

Would never need that I, in turn,

Should point him out a defect unheeded,

And show that God had yet to learn

What the meanest human creature needed, —

— Not life, to wit, for a few short years,

Tracking His way through doubts and fears,

While the stupid earth on which I stay

Suffers no change, but passive adds

Its myriad years to myriads,

Though I, He gave it to, decay,

Seeing death come and choose about me,

And my dearest ones depart without me.

No! love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,

Shall arise, made perfect, from death’s repose of it!

And I shall behold Thee, face to face,

O God, and in Thy light retrace

How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!

Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now,

I shall find as able to satiate

The love, Thy gift, as my spirit’s wonder

Thou art able to quicken and sublimate,

Was this sky of Thine, that I now walk under,

And glory in Thee as thus I gaze,

— Thus, thus! oh, let men keep their ways

Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine —

Be this my way! And this is mine!

VI.

For lo, what think you? suddenly

The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky

Received at once the full fruition

Of the moon’s consummate apparition.

The black cloud-barricade was riven,

Ruined beneath her feet, and driven

Deep in the west; while, bare and breathless,

North and south and east lay ready

For a glorious Thing, that, dauntless, deathless,

Sprang across them, and stood steady.

’Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect,

From heaven to heaven extending, perfect

As the mother-moon’s self, full in face.

It rose, distinctly at the base

With its seven proper colours chorded,

Which still, in the rising, were compressed,

Until at last they coalesced,

And supreme the spectral creature lorded

In a triumph of whitest white, —

Above which intervened the night.

But above night too, like the next,

The second of a wondrous sequence,

Reaching in rare and rarer frequence,

Till the heaven of heavens be circumflext,

Another rainbow rose, a mightier,

Fainter, flushier, and flightier, —

Rapture dying along its verge!

Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,

WHOSE, from the straining topmost dark,

On to the keystone of that arc?

VII.

This sight was shown me, there and then, —

Me, one out of a world of men,

Singled forth, as the chance might hap

To another, if in a thunderclap

Where I heard noise, and you saw flame,

Some one man knew God called his name.

For me, I think I said, “Appear!

“Good were it to be ever here.

“If Thou wilt, let me build to Thee

“Service-tabernacles Three,

“Where, for ever in Thy presence,

“In extatic acquiescence,

“Far alike from thriftless learning

“And ignorance’s undiscerning,

“ I may worship and remain!”

Thus, at the show above me, gazing

With upturned eyes, I felt my brain

Glutted with the glory, blazing

Throughout its whole mass, over and under,

Until at length it burst asunder,

And out of it bodily there streamed

The too-much glory, as it seemed,

Passing from out me to the ground,

Then palely serpentining round

Into the dark with mazy error.

VIII.

All at once I looked up with terror.

He was there.

He Himself with His human air,

On the narrow pathway, just before:

I saw the back of Him, no more —

He had left the chapel, then, as I.

I forgot all about the sky.

No face: only the sight

Of a sweepy Garment, vast and white,

With a hem that I could recognise.

I felt terror, no surprise:

My mind filled with the cataract,

At one bound, of the mighty fact.

I remembered, He did say

Doubtless, that, to this world’s end,

Where two or three should meet and pray,

He would be in the midst, their Friend:

Certainly He was there with them.

And my pulses leaped for joy

Of the golden thought without alloy,

That I saw His very Vesture’s hem.

Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear

With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear,

And I hastened, cried out while I pressed

To the salvation of the Vest,

“But not so, Lord! It cannot be

“That Thou, indeed, art leaving me —

“Me, that have despised Thy friends.

“Did my heart make no amends?

“Thou art the Love of God — above

“His Power, didst hear me place His Love,

“And that was leaving the world for Thee!

“Therefore Thou must not turn from me

“As if I had chosen the other part.

“Folly and pride o’ercame my heart.

“Our best is bad, nor bears Thy test

“Still it should be our very best.

“I thought it best that Thou, the Spirit,

“Be worshipped in spirit and in truth,

“And in beauty, as even we require it —

“Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth,

“I left but now, as scarcely fitted

“For Thee: I knew not what I pitied:

“But, all I felt there, right or wrong,

“What is it to Thee, who curest sinning?

“Am I not weak as Thou art strong?

“I have looked to Thee from the beginning,

“Straight up to Thee through all the world

“Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled

“To nothingness on either side:

“And since the time Thou wast descried,

“Spite of the weak heart, so have I

“Lived ever, and so fain would die,

“Living and dying, Thee before!

“But if Thou leavest me — ”

IX.

Less or more,

I suppose that I spoke thus.

When, — have mercy, Lord, on us!

The whole Face turned upon me full.

And I spread myself beneath it,

As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it

In the cleansing sun, his wool, —

Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness

Some defiled, discoloured web —

So lay I, saturate with brightness.

And when the flood appeared to ebb,

Lo, I was walking, light and swift,

With my senses settling fast and steadying,

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift

Of the Vesture’s amplitude, still eddying

On, just before me, still to be followed,

As it carried me after with its motion:

What shall I say? — as a path were hollowed

And a man went weltering through the ocean,