The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
Lives strangely on my thoughts, and looks, and words,
As fathoms down some nameless ocean thing
Its silent course of quietness and joy
O dearest, if indeed, I tell the past,
May’st thou forget it as a sad sick dream;
Or if it linger — my lost soul too soon
Sinks to itself, and whispers, we shall be
But closer linked — two creatures whom the earth
Bears singly — with strange feelings, unrevealed
But to each other; or two lonely things
Created by some Power, whose reign is done,
Having no part in God, or his bright world,
I am to sing; whilst ebbing day dies soft,
As a lean scholar dies, worn o’er his book,
And in the heaven stars steal out one by one,
As hunted men steal to their mountain watch.
I must not think — lest this new impulse die
In which I trust. I have no confidence,
So I will sing on — fast as fancies come
Rudely — the verse being as the mood it paints.
I strip my mind bare — whose first elements
I shall unveil — not as they struggled forth
In infancy, nor as they now exist,
That I am grown above them, and can rule them,
But in that middle stage when they were full,
Yet ere I had disposed them to my will;
And then I shall show how these elements
Produced my present state, and what it is.
I am made up of an intensest life,
Of a most clear idea of consciousness
Of self — distinct from all its qualities,
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers;
And thus far it exists, if tracked in all,
But linked in me, to self-supremacy,
Existing as a centre to all things,
Most potent to create, and rule, and call
Upon all things to minister to it;
And to a principle of restlessness
Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, all —
This is myself; and I should thus have been,
Though gifted lower than the meanest soul.
And of my powers, one springs up to save
From utter death a soul with such desires
Confined to clay — which is the only one
Which marks me — an imagination which
Has been an angel to me — coming not
In fitful visions, but beside me ever,
And never failing me; so tho’ my mind
Forgets not — not a shred of life forgets —
Yet I can take a secret pride in calling
The dark past up — to quell it regally.
A mind like this must dissipate itself,
But I have always had one lodestar; now,
As I look back, I see that I have wasted,
Or progressed as I looked toward that star —
A need, a trust, a yearning after God,
A feeling I have analysed but late,
But it existed, and was reconciled
With a neglect of all I deemed His laws,
Which yet, when seen in others, I abhorred.
I felt as one beloved, and so shut in
From fear — and thence I date my trust in signs
And omens — for I saw God everywhere;
And I can only lay it to the fruit
Of a sad aftertime that I could doubt
Even His being — having always felt
His presence — never acting from myself,
Still trusting in a hand that leads me through
All dangers; and this feeling still has fought
Against my weakest reason and resolves.
And I can love nothing — and this dull truth
Has come the last — but sense supplies a love
Encircling me and mingling with my life.
These make myself — for I have sought in vain
To trace how they were formed by circumstance,
For I still find them — turning my wild youth
Where they alone displayed themselves, converting
All objects to their use — now see their course!
They came to me in my first dawn of life,
Which passed alone with wisest ancient books,
All halo-girt with fancies of my own,
And I myself went with the tale, — a god,
Wandering after beauty — or a giant,
Standing vast in the sunset — an old hunter,
Talking with gods — or a high-crested chief,
Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos; —
I tell you, nought has ever been so clear
As the place, the time, the fashion of those lives.
I had not seen a work of lofty art,
Nor woman’s beauty, nor sweet nature’s face,
Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
On the dim clustered isles in the blue sea:
The deep groves, and white temples, and wet caves —
And nothing ever will surprise me now —
Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair.
An’ strange it is, that I who could so dream,
Should e’er have stooped to aim at aught beneath —
Aught low, or painful, but I never doubted;
So as I grew, I rudely shaped my life
To my immediate wants, yet strong beneath
Was a vague sense of power folded up —
A sense that tho’ those shadowy times were past,
Their spirit dwelt in me, and I should rule.
Then came a pause, and long restraint chained down
My soul, till it was changed. I lost myself,
And were it not that I so loathe that time,
I could recall how first I learned to turn
My mind against itself; and the effects,
In deeds for which remorse were vain, as for
The wanderings of delirious dream; yet thence
Came cunning, envy, falsehood, which so long
Have spotted me — at length I was restored,
Yet long the influence remained; and nought
But the still life I