Robert Browning

The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.

Strange secrets are let out by Death Who blabs so oft the follies of this world.

God is the perfect poet, Who in his person acts his own creations.

Truth is within ourselves.

I see my way as birds their trackless way. I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first, I ask not; but unless God send his hail Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow, In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: He guides me and …

Be sure that God Ne'er dooms to waste the strength he deigns impart.

That we devote ourselves to God, is seen In living just as though no God there were.

Autumn wins you best by this its mute Appeal to sympathy for its decay.

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

The moment eternal — just that and no more — When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

A minute's success pays the failure of years.

What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!

I find earth not gray but rosy; Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

Have you found your life distasteful? My life did and does smack sweet. Was your youth of pleasure wasteful? Mine I save and hold complete. Do your joys with age diminish? When mine fail me, I'll complain.

Womanliness means only motherhood; All love begins and ends there.

Who hears music feels his solitude Peopled at once.

We loved, sir — used to meet: How sad and bad and mad it was — But then, how it was sweet!

Fail I alone, in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?

It is so horrible, I dare at times imagine to my need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus

Sing, riding's a joy! For me I ride.

I judge people by what they might be,—not are, nor will be.

I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. I trust in God,—the right shall be the right And other than the wrong, while he endures. I trust in my own soul, that can …

Oh, to be in England, Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf, Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf