Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning: Second Series

Front Cover
Macmillan, 1884 - English poetry - 297 pages
 

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 123 - s the English at our heels ; would you have them take in tow All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and bow, For a prize to Plymouth Sound? Better run the ships aground!
Page 260 - While man knows partly but conceives beside, "Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, "And in this striving, this converting air "Into a solid he may grasp and use, "Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, "Not God's, and not the beasts': God is, they are, "Man partly is and wholly hopes to be.
Page 171 - Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides, — And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — The grand Perhaps!
Page 276 - I go in the rain, and, more than needs, A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, For they fling, whoever has a mind, Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. Thus I entered, and thus I go ! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. " Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me ? " — God might question ; now instead, 'Tis God shall repay : I am safer so.
Page 4 - Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss Hinders the hinges and makes them wince! She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned, To feed and forget it the leaves among.
Page 256 - I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ " Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee " All questions in the earth and out of it, " And has so far advanced thee to be wise.
Page 72 - Rinsed like something sacrificial Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps — Marked with L. for our initial! (He-he! There his lily snaps!) Saint, forsooth!
Page 71 - Gr-rr - there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God's blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames ! At the meal we sit together: Salve tibi!
Page 53 - Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, And laid her soiled gloves by, untied Her hat and let the damp hair fall, And, last, she sat down by my side And called me. When no voice replied, She put my arm about her waist, And made her smooth white shoulder bare And all her yellow hair displaced.
Page 274 - Run, Pheidippides, one race more ! the meed is thy due! ' Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout ! " He flung down his shield, Ran like fire once more : and the space 'twixt the Fennel-field And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs through, Till in he broke :

Bibliographic information