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

Referring to some state or life unknown… .

My selfishness is satiated not,

It wears me like a flame; my hunger for

All pleasure, howsoe’er minute, is pain;

I envy — how I envy him whose mind

Turns with its energies to some one end!

To elevate a sect, or a pursuit,

However mean — so my still baffled hopes

Seek out abstractions; I would have but one

Delight on earth, so it were wholly mine;

One rapture all my soul could fill — and this

Wild feeling places me in dream afar,

In some wide country, where the eye can see

No end to the far hills and dales bestrewn

With shining towers and dwellings. I grow mad

Wellnigh, to know not one abode but holds

Some pleasure — for my soul could grasp them all,

But must remain with this vile form. I look

With hope to age at last, which quenching much,

May let me concentrate the sparks it spares.

This restlessness of passion meets in me

A craving after knowledge: the sole proof

Of a commanding will is in that power

Repressed; for I beheld it in its dawn,

That sleepless harpy, with its budding wings,

And I considered whether I should yield

All hopes and fears, to live alone with it,

Finding a recompense in its wild eyes;

And when I found that I should perish so,

I bade its wild eyes close from me for ever; —

And I am left alone with my delights, —

So it lies in me a chained thing — still ready

To serve me, if I loose its slightest bond —

I cannot but be proud of my bright slave.

And thus I know this earth is not my sphere,

For I cannot so narrow me, but that

I still exceed it; in their elements

My love would pass my reason — but since here

Love must receive its object from this earth,

While reason will be chainless, the few truths

Caught from its wanderings have sufficed to quell

All love below; — then what must be that love

Which, with the object it demands, would quell

Reason, tho’ it soared with the seraphim?

No — what I feel may pass all human love,

Yet fall far short of what my love should be;

And yet I seem more warped in this than aught

For here myself stands out more hideously.

I can forget myself in friendship, fame,

Or liberty, or love of mighty souls.

. . . . .

But I begin to know what thing hate is —

To sicken, and to quiver, and grow white,

And I myself have furnished its first prey.

All my sad weaknesses, this wavering will,

This selfishness, this still decaying frame …

But I must never grieve while I can pass

Far from such thoughts — as now — Andromeda!

And she is with me — years roll, I shall change,

But change can touch her not — so beautiful

With her dark eyes, earnest and still, and hair

Lifted and spread by the salt-sweeping breeze;

And one red-beam, all the storm leaves in heaven,

Resting upon her eyes and face and hair,

As she awaits the snake on the wet beach,

By the dark rock, and the white wave just breaking

At her feet; quite naked and alone, — a thing

You doubt not, nor fear for, secure that God

Will come in thunder from the stars to save her.

Let it pass — I will call another change.

I will be gifted with a wond’rous soul,

Yet sunk by error to men’s sympathy,

And in the wane of life; yet only so

As to call up their fears, and there shall come

A time requiring youth’s best energies;

And straight I fling age, sorrow, sickness off,

And I rise triumphing over my decay.

. . . . .

And thus it is that I supply the chasm

‘Twixt what I am and all that I would be.

But then to know nothing — to hope for nothing —

To seize on life’s dull joys from a strange tear,

Lest, being them, all’s lost, and nought remains

. . . . .

There’s some vile juggle with my reason here —

I feel I but explain to my own loss

These impulses — they live no less the same.

Liberty! what though I despair — my blood

Rose not at a slave’s name proudlier than now,

And sympathy obscured by sophistries.

Why have not I sought refuge in myself,

But for the woes I saw and could not stay —

And love! — do I not love thee, my Pauline?

. . . . .

I cherish prejudice, lest I be left

Utterly loveless — witness this belief

In poets, tho’ sad change has come there too;

No more I leave myself to follow them:

Unconsciously I measure me by them.

Let me forget it; and I cherish most

My love of England — how her name — a word

Of her’s in a strange tongue makes my heart beat! …

. . . . .

Pauline, I could do any thing — not now —

All’s fever — but when calm shall come again —

I am prepared — I have made life my own —

I would not be content with all the change

One frame should feel — but I have gone in thought

Thro’ all conjuncture — I have lived all life

When it is most alive — where strangest fate

New shapes it past surmise — the tales of men

Bit by some curse — or in the grasp of doom

Half-visible and still increasing round,

Or crowning their wide being’s general aim… .

. . . . .

These are wild fancies, but I feel, sweet friend,

As one breathing his weakness to the ear

Of pitying angel — dear as a winter flower.

A slight flower growing alone, and offering

Its frail cup of three leaves to the cold sun,

Yet and confiding, like the triumph

Of a child — and why am I not worthy thee?

. . . . .

I can live all the life of plants, and gaze

Drowsily on the bees that flit and play,

Or bare my breast for sunbeams which will kill,

Or open in the night of sounds, to look

For the dim stars; I can mount with the bird,

Leaping airily his pyramid of leaves

And twisted boughs of some tall mountain tree,

Or rise cheerfully springing to the heavens —

Or like a fish breathe in the morning air

In the misty sun-warm water — or with flowers

And trees can smile in light at the sinking sun,

Just as the storm comes — as a girl would look

On a departing lover — most serene.

Pauline, come with me — see how I could build

A home for us, out of the world; in thought —

I am inspired — come with me, Pauline!

Night, and one single ridge of narrow path

Between the sullen river and the woods

Waving and muttering — for the moonless night

Has shaped them into images of life,

Like the upraising of the giant-ghosts,

Looking on earth to know how their sons fare.

Thou art so close by me, the roughest swell

Of wind in the tree-tops hides not the panting

Of thy soft breasts; no — we will pass to morning —

Morning — the rocks, and vallies, and old woods.

How the sun brightens in the mist, and here, —

Half in the air, like creatures of the place,

Trusting the element — living on high boughs

That swing in the wind — look at the golden spray,

Flung from the foam-sheet of the cataract,

Amid the broken rocks — shall we stay here

With the wild hawks? — no, ere the hot noon come

Dive we down — safe; — see this our new retreat

Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs,

Dark, tangled, old and green — still sloping down

To a small pool whose waters lie asleep

Amid the trailing boughs turned water plants

And tall trees overarch to keep us in,

Breaking the sunbeams into emerald shafts,

And in the dreamy water one small group