Robert Browning

If two lives join, there is oft a scar. They are one and one, with a shadowy third; One near one is too far.

Tis Man's to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason.

I think, am sure, a brother's love exceeds_x000D_ _x000D_ All the world's loves in its unworldliness.

I dare not so honor my mere wishes and prayers as to put them for a moment beside your noble acts; but this know, I would rather submit to the worst of deaths, so far as pain goes, than have a single dog or cat tortured on the pretence of sparing me a twinge or two.

How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

How good is life, the mere living!

Where the apple reddens never pry - lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.

Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.

That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. That, has the world here-should he need the next, Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplext Seeking shall find Him.

Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!

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

O never star Was lost; here We all aspire to heaven and there is heaven Above us. If I stoop Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, It is but for a time; I press God's lamp Close to my breast; its splendor soon or late Will pierce the gloom. I shall emerge some day.

Rats They fought the dogs and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And ate the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles. Split open the kegs of salted sprats, Made nests inside men's Sunday hats, And even spoiled the women's chats By drowning their speaking With shrieking and squeaking In fifty different sharps and flats.

So, fall asleep love, loved by me... for I know love, I am loved by thee.

I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God.

Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.

You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt.

Paracelsus At times I almost dream I too have spent a life the sages’ way, And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance Ages ago; and in that act a prayer For one more chance went up so earnest, so Instinct with better light let in by death, That life was blotted out — not so completely But scattered wrecks enough of it remain, Dim memories, as now, when once more seems The goal in sight again.

Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat.

What? Was man made a wheel-work to wind up, And be discharged, and straight wound up anew? No! grown, his growth lasts; taught, he ne'er forgets: May learn a thousand things, not twice the same.

Inscribe all human effort with one word, artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!