Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browningwas an English poet and playwright whose mastery of the dramatic monologue made him one of the foremost Victorian poets. His poems are known for their irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings, and challenging vocabulary and syntax...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 May 1812
littles lasts little-things
We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last Comes God behind them.
What so wild as words are?
done innocence virtue
Go in thy native innocence, rely On what thou hast of virtue, summon all, For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.
morning england april
Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware.
might succeed comfort
For thence a paradox 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.
men strive should
I hold that a man should strive to the uttermost for his life's set prize.
death being-yourself mean
It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world; Then, going in the tire-room afterward, Because the play was done, to shift himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, And whose part he presumed to play just now. Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true!
sympathy world needs
Needs there groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy?
delight today pleasure
Twere too absurd to slight For the hereafter the todays delight!
ocean average yield
We mortals cross the ocean of this world Each in his average cabin of a life; The bests not big, the worst yields elbowroom.
men want leisure
When a man's busy, why leisure Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: 'Faith, and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy.
mad evil being-me
It's wiser being good than bad; It's safer being meek than fierce: It's fitter being sane than mad.
learning earth grows
Why stay on the earth except to grow.
hands small-hands spirit
That great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it.