Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Rabbi Ben EzraRobert Browning (1812–1889)
G
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith ‘A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!’
Youth sighed ‘Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?’
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned ‘Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!’
Annulling youth’s brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finish’d and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Were man but form’d to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-cramm’d beast?
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
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!
Which comforts while it mocks,—
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i’ the scale.
Whose flesh hath soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test—
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once ‘How good to live and learn?’
I see the whole design,
I, who saw Power, see now Love perfect too:
Perfect I call thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,—I trust what Thou shalt do!
Our soul in its rose-mesh
Pull’d ever to the earth, still yearns for rest:
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,—gain most, as we did best!
’Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gain’d ground upon the whole!’
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry ‘All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!’
To grant youth’s heritage,
Life’s struggle having so far reach’d its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the develop’d brute; a God though in the germ.
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplex’d,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
My gain or loss thereby;
Be the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the grey:
A whisper from the west
Shoots—‘Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day.’
Though lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
‘This rage was right i’ the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.’
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool’s true play.
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou call’st thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
Sever’d great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraign’d,
Were they, my soul disdain’d,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul believe?
Called ‘work’, must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O’er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weigh’d not as his work, yet swell’d the man’s amount:
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,—
This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,—
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
‘Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!’
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What enter’d into thee,
That was, is, and shall be:
Time’s wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure.
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impress’d.
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow,
The Master’s lips aglow!
Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel?
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I—to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily—mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as plann’d!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!