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How Good Is Man's Life, The Mere Living! How Fit To Employ All The Heart And The Soul And The Senses Forever In Joy!

-Robert Browning

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How Good Is Man's

Robert Browning

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How Good Is Man's Life, The Mere Living! How Fit To Employ All The Heart And The Soul And The Senses Forever In Joy!

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Imperfection Means Perfection Hid.

From The Sprinkled Isles, Lily On Lily, That O'erlace The Sea.

I Have No Little Insight Into The Feelings Of Furniture, And Treat Books And Prints With A Reasonable Consideration. How Some People Use Their Pictures, For Instance, Is A Mystery To Me; Very Revolting All The Same--portraits Obliged To Face Each Other For Ever--prints Put Together In Portfolios.

That Moment She Was Mine, Mine, Fair, Perfectly Pure And Good: I Found A Thing To Do, And All Her Hair In One Long Yellow String I Wound Three Times Her Little Throat Around, And Strangled Her. No Pain Felt She; I Am Quite Sure She Felt No Pain. As A Shut Bud That Holds A Bee, I Warily Oped Her Lids: Again Laughed The Blue Eyes Without A Stain. And I Untightened The Next Tress About Her Neck; Her Cheek Once More Blushed Bright Beneath My Burning Kiss . . .

All Service Ranks The Same With God,- With God, Whose Puppets, Best And Worst, Are We: There Is No Last Nor First.

The Ultimate, Angels' Law, Indulging Every Instinct Of The Soul There Where Law, Life, Joy, Impulse Are One Thing!

"with This Same Key Shakespeare Unlocked His Heart" Once More! Did Shakespeare? If So, The Less Shakespeare He!

Inscribe All Human Effort With One Word, Artistry's Haunting Curse, The Incomplete!

Ever Judge Of Men By Their Professions. For Though The Bright Moment Of Promising Is But A Moment, And Cannot Be Prolonged, Yet If Sincere In Its Moment's Extravagant Goodness, Why, Trust It, And Know The Man By It, I Say,- Not By His Performance; Which Is Half The World's Work, Interfere As The World Needs Must With Its Accidents And Circumstances: The Profession Was Purely The Man's Own. I Judge People By What They Might Be,- Not Are, Nor Will Be.

I Walked A Mile With Pleasure; She Chattered All The Way. But Left Me None The Wiser For All She Had To Say. I Walked A Mile With Sorrow And Ne'er A Word Said She; But Oh, The Things I Learned From Her When Sorrow Walked With Me!

But There Are Times When Patience Proves At Fault.

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!

Unless You Can Love, As The Angels May, With The Breadth Of Heaven Betwixt You; Unless You Can Dream That His Faith Is Fast, Through Behoving And Unbeloving; Unless You Can Die When The Dream Is Past- Oh, Never Call It Loving!

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.

Never The Time And The Place And The Loved One All Together.

Into The Street The Piper Stepped, Smiling First A Little Smile As If He Knew What Magic Slept In His Quiet Pipe The While. And The Piper Advanced And The Children Followed.

No! Let Me Taste The Whole Of It, Fare Like My Peers, The Heroes Of Old, Bear The Brunt, In A Minute Pay Glad Life's Arrears Of Pain, Darkness And Cold.

Day! Faster And More Fast. O'er Night's Brim, Day Boils At Last.

To Do Good Things In The World, First You Must Know Who You Are And What Gives Meaning To Your Life.

Night Conceals A World But Reveals A Universe.

In God's Good Time, Which Does Not Always Fall On Saturday When The World Looks For Wages.

Genius Has Somewhat Of The Infantine; But Of The Childish Not A Touch Or Taint.

Have You Found Your Life Distasteful? My Life Did, And Does, Smack Sweet. Was Your Youth Of Pleasure Wasteful? Mine I Saved And Hold Complete. Do Your Joys With Age Diminish? When Mine Fail Me, I'll Complain. Must In Death Your Daylight Finish? My Sun Sets To Rise Again.

And I Have Written Three Books On The Soul, Proving Absurd All Written Hitherto, And Putting Us To Ignorance Again.

The Rain Set Early In Tonight, The Sullen Wind Was Soon Awake, It Tore The Elm-tops Down For Spite, And Did Its Best To Vex The Lake: I Listened With Heart Fit To Break. When Glided In Porphyria; Straight She Shut The Cold Out And The Storm, And Kneeled And Made The Cheerless Grate Blaze Up And All The Cottage Warm.

Wander At Will, Day After Day,-- Wander Away, Wandering Still-- Soul That Canst Soar! Body May Slumber: Body Shall Cumber Soul-flight No More.

Death: The Grand Perhaps.

I Write From A Thorough Conviction That It Is The Duty Of Me, And With The Belief That, After Every Drawback And Shortcoming, I Do My Best, All Things Considered--that Is For Me, And, So Being, The Not Being Listened To By One Human Creature Would, I Hope, In Nowise Affect Me.

My Business Is Not To Remake Myself, But To Make The Absolute Best Of What God Made.

What A Thing Friendship Is - World Without End.

God's Justice, Tardy Though It Prove Perchance, Rests Never On The Track Until It Reach Delinquency.

One May Do Whatever One Likes. In Art, The Only Thing Is, To Make Sure That One Does Like It.

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.

What So Wild As Words Are?

In This World, Who Can Do A Thing, Will Not; And Who Would Do It, Cannot, I Perceive: Yet The Will's Somewhat — Somewhat, Too, The Power — And Thus We Half-men Struggle.

It Was Roses, Roses, All The Way, With Myrtle Mixed In My Path Like Mad.

Lost, Lost! One Moment Knelled The Woe Of Years.

Twere Too Absurd To Slight For The Hereafter The Todays Delight!

Once More On My Adventure Brave And New.

If All The World Is A Stage And Life Is Just A Play Upon It, Get Me Two Seats In The Stalls.

Tis Looking Downward Makes One Dizzy.

For I Say This Is Death And The Sole Death,- When A Man's Loss Comes To Him From His Gain, Darkness From Light, From Knowledge Ignorance, And Lack Of Love From Love Made Manifest.

All's Love, Yet All's Law.

On The Earth The Broken Arcs; In The Heaven A Perfect Round.

What's The Earth With All Its Art, Verse, Music, Worth — Compared With Love, Found, Gained, And Kept?

Wedding Anniversary

The Moment Eternal - Just That And No More - When Ecstasy's Utmost We Clutch At The Core While Cheeks Burn, Arms Open, Eyes Shut, And Lips Meet!

Earth Being So Good, Would Heaven Seem Best?

Open My Heart, And You Will See Graved Inside Of It ‘italy.'

Ambition Is Not What Man Does... But What Man Would Do.

How Very Hard It Is To Be A Christian!

Is Your Love For The Lord Sufficient To Give All Your Time And Talents To His Work?

Success In Marriage Is More Than Finding The Right Person: It Is Being The Right Person.

Measure Your Mind's Height By The Shade It Casts.

Tis Man's To Explore Up And Down, Inch By Inch, With The Taper His Reason.

I Know What I Want And What I Might Gain, And Yet, How Profitless To Know.

As Is Your Sort Of Mind, So Is Your Sort Of Search: You Will Find What You Desire.

Every One Soon Or Late Comes Round By Rome.

It's Wiser Being Good Than Bad; It's Safer Being Meek Than Fierce: It's Fitter Being Sane Than Mad.

That Great Brow And The Spirit-small Hand Propping It.

We Shall March Prospering,-not Thro' His Presence; Songs May Inspirit Us,-not From His Lyre; Deeds Will Be Done,-while He Boasts His Quiescence, Still Bidding Crouch Whom The Rest Bade Aspire.

The Best Way To Excape His Ire Is, Not To Seem Too Happy.

All June I Bound The Rose In Sheaves, Now, Rose By Rose, I Strip The Leaves.

A Minute Of Success Pays For Years Of Failure.

Oh, The Little More, And How Much It Is! And The Little Less, And What Worlds Away.

Love, Hope, Fear, Faith - These Make Humanity; These Are Its Sign And Note And Character.

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.

A Whole I Planned, Youth Shows But Half; Trust God: See All, Nor Be Afraid!

Best Is Yet To Come

As If True Pride Were Not Also Humble!

All Will Be Gay When Noontide Wakes Anew The Buttercups, The Little Children's Dower.

How Sad And Bad And Mad It Was - But Then, How It Was Sweet

We Find Great Things Are Made Of Little Things, And Little Things Go Lessening Till At Last Comes God Behind Them.

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.

What I Aspired To Be And Was Not, Comforts Me.

'tis An Awkward Thing To Play With Souls.

Oh Never Star Was Lost Here But It Rose Afar.

So, Fall Asleep Love, Loved By Me... For I Know Love, I Am Loved By Thee.

Just For A Handful Of Silver He Left Us, Just For A Riband To Stick In His Coat.

Best Be Yourself, Imperial, Plain, And True.

Shun Death, Is My Advice.

Truth Never Hurts The Teller.

Death Was Past, Life Not Come: So He Waited.

The Devil, That Old Stager, Who Leads Downward, Perhaps, But Fiddles All The Way!

Progress Is The Law Of Life: Man Is Not Man As Yet.

Days Decrease, / And Autumn Grows, Autumn In Everything.

A Minute's Success Pays The Failure Of Years.

But Little Do Or Can The Best Of Us: That Little Is Achieved Through Liberty.

Better Have Failed In The High Aim, As I, Than Vulgarly In The Low Aim Succeed As, God Be Thanked! I Do Not.

Man Partly Is And Wholly Hopes To Be.

Ignorance Is Not Innocence But Sin.

Purity And Innocence

There Is An Inmost Center In Us All, Where Truth Abides In Fullness;....and, To Know, Rather Consists In Opening Out A Way Where The Imprisoned Splendor May Escape, Then In Effecting Entry For A Light Supposed To Be Without.

Grow Old With Me. The Best Is Yet To Be. The Last Of Life For Which The First Was Made.

'tis Well Averred, A Scientific Faith's Absurd.

Positive Atheism

The Lie Was Dead And Damned, And Truth Stood Up Instead.

The Great Mind Knows The Power Of Gentleness.

For Sudden The Worst Turns The Best To The Brave, The Black Minute's At End, And The Elements' Rage, The Fiend Voices That Rave, Shall Dwindle, Shall Blend, Shall Change, Shall Become First A Peace Out Of Pain, Then A Light, Then Thy Breast, O Thou Soul Of My Soul! I Shall Clasp Thee Again, And With God Be The Rest!

The World And Life's Too Big To Pass For A Dream

Might She Have Loved Me? Just As Well She Might Have Hated, Who Can Tell!

Let Friend Trust Friends, And Love Demand Love's Like.

Boot, Saddle, To Horse, And Away!

The Sad Rhyme Of The Men Who Proudly Clung To Their First Fault, And Withered In Their Pride.

Mothers, Wives And Maids, These Be The Tools With Which Priests Manage Men.

Desire Joy And Thank God For It. Renounce It, If Need Be, For Other's Sake. That's Joy Beyond Joy.

Kiss Me As If You Made Believe You Were Not Sure This Eve, How My Face, Your Flower, Had Pursed It's Petals Up.

When Is Man Strong Until He Feels Alone?

Who Knows Most, Doubts Most.

Why Comes Temptation But For Man To Meet And Master And Make Crouch Beneath His Foot, And So Be Pedestaled In Triumph?

Graved Inside Of It, "italy".

Escape Me? Never, Beloved! While I Am I, And You Are You.

I Count Life Just A Stuff To Try The Soul's Strength On.

Be Sure That God Ne'er Dooms To Waste The Strength He Deigns Impart.

Say Not "a Small Event!" Why "small"? Costs It More Pain That This Ye Call A "great Event" Should Come To Pass From That? Untwine Me From The Mass Of Deeds Which Make Up Life, One Deed Power Shall Fall Short In Or Exceed!

T'was A Thief Said The Last Kind Word To Christ. Christ Took The Kindness And Forgave The Theft.

Out Of Your Whole Life Give But A Moment! All Of Your Life That Has Gone Before, All To Come After It, -so You Ignore, So You Make Perfect The Present, Condense, In A Rapture Of Rage, For Perfection's Endowment, Thought And Feeling And Soul And Sense.

I See My Way As Birds Their Trackless Way. I Shall Arrive,- What Time, What Circuit First, I Ask Not; But Unless God Send His Hail Or Blinding Fire-balls, Sleet Or Stifling Snow, In Some Time, His Good Time, I Shall Arrive: He Guides Me And The Bird. In His Good Time.

Never Brag, Never Bluster, Never Blush.

The Only Fault's With Time; All Men Become Good Creatures: But So Slow!

A Man In Armour Is His Armour's Slave.

But What If I Fail Of My Purpose Here? It Is But To Keep The Nerves At Strain, To Dry One's Eyes And Laugh At A Fall, And Baffled, Get Up And Begin Again.

They Are Perfect; How Else?-they Shall Never Change: We Are Faulty; Why Not?-we Have Time In Store.

Of Power Does Man Possess No Particle: Of Knowledge-just So Much As Show That Still It Ends In Ignorance On Every Side.

There Is No Truer Truth Obtainable By Man Than Comes Of Music

Youth Means Love, Vows Can't Change Nature, Priests Are Only Men.

I Am Grown Peaceful As Old Age Tonight.

Truth Is Within Ourselves. There Is An Inmost Center In Us All, Where The Truth Abides In Fullness.

For The Preacher's Merit Or Demerit, It Were To Be Wished That The Flaws Were Fewer In The Earthen Vessel, Holding Treasure, But The Main Thing Is, Does It Hold Good Measure Heaven Soon Sets Right All Other Matters!

God Is The Perfect Poet.

My Sun Sets To Rise Again.

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.

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.

One Wise Man's Verdict Outweighs All The Fools'.

Thought Is The Soul Of Act.

Who Hears Music Feels His Solitude Peopled At Once.

Inspirational Music

I Trust In Nature For The Stable Laws Of Beauty And Utility. Spring Shall Plant And Autumn Garner To The End Of Time. I Trust In God,-the Right Shall Be The Right And Other Than The Wrong, While He Endures. I Trust In My Own Soul, That Can Perceive The Outward And The Inward,-nature's Good And God's.

My Care Is For Myself; Myself Am Whole And Sole Reality.

In Heaven I Yearn For Knowledge, Account All Else Inanity; On Earth I Confess An Itch For The Praise Of Fools - That's Vanity

White Shall Not Neutralize The Black, Nor Good Compensate Bad In Man, Absolve Him So; Life's Business Being Just The Terrible Choice.

Generations Pass While Some Tree Stands, And Old Families Last Not Three Oaks.

Most Progress Is Most Failure.

And Let Them Pass, As They Will Too Soon, With The Bean-flowers' Boon, And The Blackbird's Tune, And May, And June!

Grow Old With Me! The Best Is Yet To Be.

Good To Forgive, Best To Forget.

How He Lies In His Rights Of A Man! Death Has Done All Death Can. And Absorbed In The New Life He Leads, He Recks Not, He Heeds Nor His Wrong Nor My Vengeance; Both Strike On His Senses Alike, And Are Lost In The Solemn And Strange Surprise Of The Change.

A Man In Armor Is His Armor's Slave.

Stand Still, True Poet That You Are! I Know You; Let Me Try And Draw You. Some Night You'll Fail Us: When Afar You Rise, Remember One Man Saw You, Knew You, And Named A Star!

If Two Lives Join, There Is Oft A Scar. They Are One And One, With A Shadowy Third; One Near One Is Too Far.

But Facts Are Facts And Flinch Not.

God Is In His Heaven, All's Right With The World.

Love Is Energy Of Life.

Self Improvement

The Aim, If Reached Or Not, Makes Great The Life: Try To Be Shakespeare, Leave The Rest To Fate!

One And All We Lend An Ear-nay, Science Takes Thereto- Encourages The Meanest Who Has Racked Nature Until He Gains From Her Some Fact, To State What Truth Is From His Point Of View, Mere Pin-point Though It Be: Since Many Such Conduce To Make A Whole, She Bids Our Friend Come Forward Unabashed And Haply Lend His Little Life-experience To Our Much Of Modern Knowledge.

The Sea Heaves Up, Hangs Loaded O'er The Land, Breaks There, And Buries Its Tumultuous Strength.

What's Come To Perfection Perishes. Things Learned On Earth We Shall Practice In Heaven; Works Done Least Rapidly Art Most Cherishes.

If Thou Tastest A Crust Of Bread, Thou Tastest All The Stars And All The Heavens.

Truth Is Truth Howe'er It Strike.

Earth Is Crammed With Heavens.

There Is Nothing So Unpardonable As To Consent To A Senseless, Aimless, Purposeless Life.

No, When The Fight Begins Within Himself, / A Man's Worth Something.

Stung By The Splendour Of A Sudden Thought.

The Common Problem, Yours, Mine, Everyone's Is ? Not To Fancy What Were Fair In Life Provided It Could Be ? But, Finding First What May Be, Then Find How To Make It Fair Up To Our Means.

All We Have Gained Then By Our Unbelief Is A Life Of Doubt Diversified By Faith, For One Of Faith Diversified By Doubt: We Called The Chess-board White-we Call It Black.

I Have Lived, And Seen God's Hand Thro A Life Time, And All Was For The Best.

Our Aspirations Are Our Responsibilities.

If You Get Simple Beauty And Naught Else, You Get About The Best Thing God Invents.

You Should Not Take A Fellow Eight Years Old And Make Him Swear To Never Kiss The Girls.

Must In Death Your Daylight Finish? My Sun Sets To Rise Again.

Man Seeks His Own Good At The Whole World's Cost.

A Face To Lose Youth For, To Occupy Age With The Dream Of, Meet Death With.

Truth That Peeps Over The Glass's Edge When Dinner's Done.

The Candid Incline To Surmise Of Late That The Christian Faith Proves False.

Motherhood: All Love Begins And Ends There.

O Woman-country! Wooed Not Wed, Loved All The More By Earth's Male-lands, Laid To Their Hearts Instead.

He Who Did Well In War Just Earns The Right, To Begin Doing Well In Peace.

Who Knows Most, Doubts Most; Entertaining Hope Means Recognizing Fear.

I Hold That A Man Should Strive To The Uttermost For His Life's Set Prize.

Things Are Where Things Are, And, As Fate Has Willed, So Shall They Be Fulfilled.

The Great Beacon Light God Sets In All, The Conscience Of Each Bosom.

The Trouble That Most Of Us Find With The Modern Matched Sets Of Clubs Is That They Don't Really Seem To Know Any More About The Game Than The Old Ones Did.

That We Devote Ourselves To God, Is Seen In Living Just As Though No God There Were.

Earth Changes, But Thy Soul And God Stand Sure.

Go In Thy Native Innocence, Rely On What Thou Hast Of Virtue, Summon All, For God Towards Thee Hath Done His Part, Do Thine.

I Know A Mount, The Gracious Sun Perceives First When He Visits, Last, Too, When He Leaves The World; And, Vainly Favored, It Repays The Day-long Glory Of His Steadfast Gaze By No Change Of Its Large Calm Front Of Snow.

This Could But Have Happened Once,- And We Missed It, Lost It Forever.

I Was Made And Meant To Look For You And Wait For You And Become Yours Forever.

I Show You Doubt, To Prove That Faith Exists.

We Mortals Cross The Ocean Of This World Each In His Average Cabin Of A Life; The Bests Not Big, The Worst Yields Elbowroom.

Heart, Fear Nothing, For, Heart, Thou Shalt Find Her- Next Time, Herself!-not The Trouble Behind Her

God Is The Perfect Poet, Who In His Person Acts His Own Creations.

Mid The Sharp, Short Emerald Wheat, Scarce Risen Three Fingers Well, The Wild Tulip At The End Of Its Tube, Blows Out Its Great Red Bell, Like A Thin Clear Bubble Of Blood, For The Children To Pick And Sell.

Go Practice If You Please With Men And Women: Leave A Child Alone For Christ's Particular Love's Sake!

That's The Wise Thrush; He Sings Each Song Twice Over, Lest You Should Think He Never Could Recapture The First Fine Careless Rapture!

Fail I Alone, In Words And Deeds? Why, All Men Strive And Who Succeeds?

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.

Where The Heart Lies, Let The Brain Lie Also.

Needs There Groan A World In Anguish Just To Teach Us Sympathy?

Ah, Love, - You Are My Unutterable Blessing.....i Am In Full Sunshine Now.

I Want To Know A Butcher Paints, A Baker Rhymes For His Pursuit, Candlestick-maker Much Acquaints His Soul With Song, Or, Haply Mute, Blows Out His Brains Upon The Flute.

The Body Sprang At Once To The Height, And Stayed; But The Soul,-no!

Was There Nought Better Than To Enjoy? No Feat Which, Done, Would Make Time Break, And Let Us Pent-up Creatures Through Into Eternity, Our Due? No Forcing Earth Teach Heaven's Employ?

Pippa's Song The Year's At The Spring The Day's At The Morn Morning's At Seven, The Hill Side's Dew-pearled The Lark's On The Wing The Snail's On The Thorn God's In His Heaven- All's Right With The World

Praise Is Deeper Than The Lips

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