Robert Browning

(1812 - 1889)

Rabbi Ben Ezra

• Grow old along with me!
  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!''

• Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
  Not for such hopes and fears
  Annulling youth's brief years,
  Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
  Rather I prize the doubt
  Low kinds exist without,
  Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
  Poor vaunt of life indeed,
  Were man but formed to feed
  On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
  Such feasting ended, then
  As sure an end to men;

• Let us cry, "All good things
  Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

• Be there, for once and all,
  Severed great minds from small,
  Announced to each his station in the Past!

• Was I, the world arraigned,
  Were they, my soul disdained,
  Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
  Now, who shall arbitrate?
  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, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

• All instincts immature,
  All purposes unsure,
  That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
  Thoughts hardly to be packed
  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.

• Fool! All that is, at all,
  Lasts ever, past recall;
  Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
  What entered into thee,
  That was, is, and shall be:
  Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

• Look not thou down but up!
  To uses of a cup

• Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?
  But I need, now as then,
  Thee, God, who mouldest men;

• So, take, and use thy work:
  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 planned!
  Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!