At the midnight in the silence of the
sleep-time, |
When you set your fancies free, |
Will they pass to where―by
death, fools think, imprisoned― |
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you
loved so, |
―Pity me?
|
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so
mistaken! |
What had I on earth to do |
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the
unmanly? |
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I
drivel! |
―Being―who?
|
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.
|
No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s
work-time |
Greet the unseen with a cheer! |
Bid him forward, breast and back as either
should be, |
‘Strive and thrive!’ cry, ‘Speed,―fight
on, fare ever |
There as here!’
|
Robert Browning
| Classic Poems |
|
[ A Toccata of Galuppi's ] [ Epilogue to Asolando ] [ Confessions ] [ Home Thoughts from Abroad ] [ Love among the Ruins ] [ Two in the Campagna ] [ Meeting at Night ] [ Love in a Life ] [ Home Thoughts from the Sea ] [ The Lost Leader ] [ My Last Duchess ] |