Robert Browning

But little do or can the best of us: That little is achieved through Liberty.

Wanting is—what? Summer redundant, Blueness abundant, Where is the blot?

Sky—what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!

Can we love but on condition that the thing we love must die?

Good, to forgive; Best, to forget! Living, we fret; Dying, we live.

God's justice, tardy though it prove perchance, Rests never on the track until it reach Delinquency.

"With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart" once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!

Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed,— As, God be thanked! I do not.

But how carve way i' the life that lies before, If bent on groaning ever for the past?

It's wiser being good than bad; It's safer being meek than fierce; It's fitter being sane than mad. My own hope is, a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That after Last returns the First,

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face. . . . . . . . No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

This could but have happened once,— And we missed it, lost it forever.

So may a glory from defect arise.

How sad and bad and mad it was! But then, how it was sweet!

What I aspired to be, And was not, comforts me.

Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a …

Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all.

And inasmuch as feeling, the East's gift, Is quick and transient,—comes, and lo! is gone, While Northern thought is slow and durable.

He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace.

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you, And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new!

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike,

Round and round, like a dance of snow In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go Floating the women faded for ages, Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.