Frasi di Robert Browning

„L'ignoranza non è innocenza, ma peccato.“

—  Robert Browning

da L'album della locanda

„Il progresso è la legge della vita; l'uomo non è ancora uomo.“

—  Robert Browning

da Paracelso

„Who hears music feels his solitude
Peopled at once.“

—  Robert Browning

Balaustion's Adventure, line 323 (1871).
Origine: The complete poetical works of Browning

„Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!“

—  Robert Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra

Origine: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 121.
Contesto: Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

„All the breath and the bloom of the year in the bag of one bee:
All the wonder and wealth of the mine in the heart of one gem:
In the core of one pearl all the shade and the shine of the sea:
Breath and bloom, shade and shine, — wonder, wealth, and — how far above them —
: Truth, that's brighter than gem,
: Trust, that's purer than pearl, —
Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe, — all were for me
: In the kiss of one girl.
:* "Summum Bonum" (1889).“

—  Robert Browning

„My sun sets to rise again.“

—  Robert Browning

„Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.“

—  Robert Browning

„Inscribe all human effort with one word“

—  Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book

Book XI, line 1560.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Contesto: Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!

„Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy“

—  Robert Browning, libro Sordello

Book the Third
Sordello (1840)

„Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!“

—  Robert Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra

Origine: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 12.
Contesto: Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.

„God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!“

—  Robert Browning, Pippa Passes

Part I, line 221.
Pippa Passes (1841)
Contesto: The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-side's dew-pearl'd;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!

„He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.“

—  Robert Browning, Colombe's Birthday

Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Contesto: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p

„A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.“

—  Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book

Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Contesto: Gold as it was, is, shall be evermore:
Prime nature with an added artistry —
No carat lost, and you have gained a ring.
What of it? 'T is a figure, a symbol, say;
A thing's sign: now for the thing signified.

„I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.“

—  Robert Browning

"At the 'Mermaid'"(1876).
Contesto: I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

„Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there“

—  Robert Browning

"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", line 1.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)
Contesto: Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf.

„Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.“

—  Robert Browning, Paracelsus

Part 1.
Paracelsus (1835)

„Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!“

—  Robert Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra

Origine: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 121.
Contesto: Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, I that: whom shall my soul believe?

„Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.“

—  Robert Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra

Origine: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 142.
Contesto: All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

„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.“

—  Robert Browning, Men and Women

"A Grammarian's Funeral", line 115.
Men and Women (1855)
Contesto: 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 unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.