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

“Here is the Crowd, whom I with freest heart

“Offer to serve, contented for my part

“To give life up in service, — only grant

“That I do serve; if otherwise, why want

“Aught further of me? If men cannot choose

“But set aside life, why should I refuse

“The gift? I take it — I, for one, engage

“Never to falter through my pilgrimage —

“Nor end it howling that the stock or stone

“Were enviable, truly: I, for one,

“Will praise the world, you style mere anteroom

“To palace — be it so! shall I assume

“ — My foot the courtly gait, my tongue the trope,

“My mouth the smirk, before the doors fly ope

“One moment? What? with guarders row on row,

“Gay swarms of varletry that come and go,

“Pages to dice with, waiting-girls unlace

“The plackets of, pert claimants help displace,

“Heart-heavy suitors get a rank for, — laugh

“At yon sleek parasite, break his own staff

“‘Cross Beetle-brows the Usher’s shoulder, — why

“Admitted to the presence by and by,

“Should thought of having lost these make me grieve

“Among new joys I reach, for joys I leave?

“Cool citrine-crystals, fierce pyropus-stone,

“Are floor-work there! But do I let alone

“That black-eyed peasant in the vestibule

“Once and for ever? — Floor-work? No such fool!

“Rather, were heaven to forestall earth, I ‘d say

“I, is it, must be blest? Then, my own way

“Bless me! Giver firmer arm and fleeter foot,

“I ‘ll thank you: but to no mad wings transmute

“These limbs of mine — our greensward was so soft!

“Nor camp I on the thundercloud aloft:

“We feel the bliss distinctlier, having thus

“Engines subservient, not mixed up with us.

“Better move palpably through heaven: nor, freed

“Of flesh, forsooth, from space to space proceed

“‘Mid flying synods of worlds! No: in heaven’s marge

“Show Titan still, recumbent o’er his targe

“Solid with stars — the Centaur at his game,

“Made tremulously out in hoary flame!

“Life! Yet the very cup whose extreme dull

“Dregs, even, I would quaff, was dashed, at full,

“Aside so oft; the death I fly, revealed

“So oft a better life this life concealed,

“And which sage, champion, martyr, through each path

“Have hunted fearlessly — the horrid bath,

“The crippling-irons and the fiery chair.

“‘T was well for them; let me become aware

“As they, and I relinquish life, too! Let

“What masters life disclose itself! Forget

“Vain ordinances, I have one appeal —

“I feel, am what I feel, know what I feel;

“So much is truth to me. What Is, then? Since

“One object, viewed diversely, may evince

“Beauty and ugliness — this way attract,

“That way repel, — why gloze upon the fact?

“Why must a single of the sides be right?

“What bids choose this and leave the opposite?

“Where ‘s abstract Right for me? — in youth endued

“With Right still present, still to be pursued,

“Thro’ all the interchange of circles, rife

“Each with its proper law and mode of life,

“Each to be dwelt at ease in: where, to sway

“Absolute with the Kaiser, or obey

“Implicit with his serf of fluttering heart,

“Or, like a sudden thought of God’s, to start

“Up, Brutus in the presence, then go shout

“That some should pick the unstrung jewels out —

“Each, well!”

And, as in moments when the past

Gave partially enfranchisement, he cast

Himself quite through mere secondary states

Of his soul’s essence, little loves and hates,

Into the mid deep yearnings overlaid

By these; as who should pierce hill, plain, grove, glade,

And on into the very nucleus probe

That first determined there exist a globe.

As that were easiest, half the globe dissolved,

So seemed Sordello’s closing-truth evolved

By his flesh-half’s break-up; the sudden swell

Of his expanding soul showed Ill and Well,

Sorrow and Joy, Beauty and Ugliness,

Virtue and Vice, the Larger and the Less,

All qualities, in fine, recorded here,

Might be but modes of Time and this one sphere,

Urgent on these, but not of force to bind

Eternity, as Time — as Matter — Mind,

If Mind, Eternity, should choose assert

Their attributes within a Life: thus girt

With circumstance, next change beholds them cinct

Quite otherwise — with Good and Ill distinct,

Joys, sorrows, tending to a like result —

Contrived to render easy, difficult,

This or the other course of… what new bond

In place of flesh may stop their flight beyond

Its new sphere, as that course does harm or good

To its arrangements. Once this understood,

As suddenly he felt himself alone,

Quite out of Time and this world: all was known.

What made the secret of his past despair?

— Most imminent when he seemed most aware

Of his own self-sufficiency: made mad

By craving to expand the power he had,

And not new power to be expanded? — just

This made it; Soul on Matter being thrust,

Joy comes when so much Soul is wreaked in Time

On Matter: let the Soul’s attempt sublime

Matter beyond the scheme and so prevent

By more or less that deed’s accomplishment,

And Sorrow follows: Sorrow how avoid?

Let the employer match the thing employed,

Fit to the finite his infinity,

And thus proceed for ever, in degree

Changed but in kind the same, still limited

To the appointed circumstance and dead

To all beyond. A sphere is but a sphere;

Small, Great, are merely terms we bandy here;

Since to the spirit’s absoluteness all

Are like. Now, of the present sphere we call

Life, are conditions; take but this among

Many; the body was to be so long

Youthful, no longer: but, since no control

Tied to that body’s purposes his soul,

She chose to understand the body’s trade

More than the body’s self — had fain conveyed

Her boundless to the body’s bounded lot.

Hence, the soul permanent, the body not, —

Scarcely its minute for enjoying here, —

The soul must needs instruct her weak compeer,

Run o’er its capabilities and wring

A joy thence, she held worth experiencing:

Which, far from half discovered even, — lo,

The minute gone, the body’s power let go

Apportioned to that joy’s acquirement! Broke

Morning o’er earth, he yearned for all it woke —

From the volcano’s vapour-flag, winds hoist

Black o’er the spread of sea, — down to the moist

Dale’s silken barley-spikes sullied with rain,

Swayed earthwards, heavily to rise again —

The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great

To the soul’s absoluteness. Meditate

Too long on such a morning’s cluster-chord

And the whole music it was framed afford, —

The chord’s might half discovered, what should pluck

One string, his finger, was found palsy-struck.

And then no marvel if the spirit, shown

A saddest sight — the body lost alone

Through her officious proffered help, deprived

Of this and that enjoyment Fate contrived, —

Virtue, Good, Beauty, each allowed slip hence, —

Vaingloriously were fain, for recompense,

To stem the ruin even yet, protract

The body’s term, supply the power it lacked

From her infinity, compel it learn

These qualities were only Time’s concern,

And body may, with spirit helping, barred —