The Complete Poems of Robert Browning - 22 Poetry Collections in One Edition. Robert Browning
soon I found all faith had gone from me,
And the late glow of life — changing like clouds,
’Twas not the morn-blush widening into day,
But evening, coloured by the dying sun
While darkness is quick hastening: — I will tell
Sly state as though ‘twere none of mine — despair
Cannot come near me — thus it is with me.
Souls alter not, and mine must progress still;
And this I knew not when I flung away
My youth’s chief aims. I ne’er supposed the
Of what few I retained; for no resource
Awaits me — now behold the change of all.
I cannot chain my soul, it will not rest
In its clay prison; this most narrow sphere —
It has strange powers, and feelings, and desires,
Which I cannot account for, nor explain,
But which I stifle not, being bound to trust
All feelings equally — to hear all sides:
Yet I cannot indulge them, and they live,
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