Robert Browning - The Ring and the Book

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A book in shape but, really, pure crude fact
Secreted from man's life when hearts beat hard,
And brains, high-blooded, ticked two centuries since.
Give it me back! The thing's restorative
I'the touch and sight.

Robert Browning
Youth means love, Vows can't change nature, priests are only men.

Robert Browning
All poetry is difficult to read,
— The sense of it is, anyhow.

Robert Browning
It is the glory and good of Art
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth,—to mouths like mine, at least.

Robert Browning
Go practise if you please
With men and women: leave a child alone
For Christ's particular love's sake!

Robert Browning
Was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.

Robert Browning
Thou at first prompting of what I call God,
And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,
Accept the obligation laid on thee.

Robert Browning
You never know what life means till you die: Even throughout life, 'tis death that makes life live, Gives it whatever the significance.

Robert Browning
Forgive me this digression — that I stand
Entranced awhile at Law's first beam, outbreak
O' the business, when the Count's good angel bade
"Put up thy sword, born enemy to the ear,
"And let Law listen to thy difference!"
And Law does listen and compose the strife,
Settle the suit, how wisely and how well!
On our Pompilia, faultless to a fault,
Law bends a brow maternally severe,
Implies the worth of perfect chastity,
By fancying the flaw she cannot find.

Robert Browning
Oh child that didst despise thy life so much
When it seemed only thine to keep or lose,
How the fine ear felt fall the first low word
"Value life, and preserve life for My sake!"

Robert Browning
The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.

Robert Browning
That's all we may expect of man, this side The grave: his good is—knowing he is bad.

Robert Browning
O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!

Robert Browning
'Twas a thief said the last kind word to Christ: Christ took the kindness and forgave the theft.

Robert Browning
Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

Robert Browning
Why comes temptation, but for man to meet
And master and make crouch beneath his foot,
And so be pedestaled in triumph?

Robert Browning
Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:
Prime nature with an added artistry —
No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say;
A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.

Robert Browning
Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of His light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.

Robert Browning
Thy rare gold ring of verse (the poet praised)
Linking our England to his Italy.

Robert Browning
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
Life's business being just the terrible choice.

Robert Browning