An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry. Robert Browning

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       Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,

       Than in effecting entry for a light

       Supposed to be without. Watch narrowly

       The demonstration of a truth, its birth,

       And you trace back the effluence to its spring

       And source within us, where broods radiance vast,

       To be elicited ray by ray, as chance

       Shall favour: chance—for hitherto, your sage

       Even as he knows not how those beams are born,

       As little knows he what unlocks their fount;

       And men have oft grown old among their books

       To die, case-hardened in their ignorance,

       Whose careless youth had promised what long years

       Of unremitted labour ne’er performed:

       While, contrary, it has chanced some idle day,

       That autumn-loiterers just as fancy-free

       As the midges in the sun, have oft given vent

       To truth—produced mysteriously as cape

       Of cloud grown out of the invisible air.

       Hence, may not truth be lodged alike in all,

       The lowest as the highest? some slight film

       The interposing bar which binds it up,

       And makes the idiot, just as makes the sage

       Some film removed, the happy outlet whence

       Truth issues proudly? See this soul of ours!

       How it strives weakly in the child, is loosed

       In manhood, clogged by sickness, back compelled

       By age and waste, set free at last by death:

       Why is it, flesh enthralls it or enthrones?

       What is this flesh we have to penetrate?

       Oh, not alone when life flows still do truth

       And power emerge, but also when strange chance

       Ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture,

       When sickness breaks the body—hunger, watching,

       Excess, or languor—oftenest death’s approach—

       Peril, deep joy, or woe. One man shall crawl

       Through life, surrounded with all stirring things,

       Unmoved—and he goes mad; and from the wreck

       Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,

       You first collect how great a spirit he hid.

       Therefore set free the spirit alike in all,

       Discovering the true laws by which the flesh

       Bars in the spirit! …

      I go to gather this

       The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed

       About the world, long lost or never found.

       And why should I be sad, or lorn of hope?

       Why ever make man’s good distinct from God’s?

       Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?

       Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?

       Mine is no mad attempt to build a world

       Apart from His, like those who set themselves

       To find the nature of the spirit they bore,

       And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams

       Were only born to vanish in this life,

       Refused to fit them to this narrow sphere,

       But chose to figure forth another world

       And other frames meet for their vast desires—

       Still, all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life

       Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest!”