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 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 DEC 26 1903 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 
 CLASS ct xXc. No. 
 
 COPY B 
 
 Copyright, igoj 
 
 By The F. A. Bassette Company 
 
 Springfield, Massachusetts 
 
5 
 
INTRODUCTORT NOTE 
 
 BROWNING supplies abundant material to the 
 intelligent and judicious quoter. It is not of the 
 sort, however, that is useful — at least is much used 
 — for merely decorative purposes. Our poet is never the 
 musical and picturesque phraser of commonplace. His 
 lines are "rammed with thought" ; they are too condensed 
 and profound for the elegant trifler with poetic shreds. 
 Often a single stanza, or a brief sentence, flashes upon 
 the reader a truth that at once shocks and grips the 
 mind, suddenly widening its vision, stimulating the whole 
 intellectual movement, and making an impression that 
 endures. Many such may be culled from poems like 
 "Paracelsus" and "Sordello" and "The Ring and the 
 Book." The use of these as quotations is perilous, save 
 in the hands of a master, for they are likely so to outshine 
 and overweight their setting as to cheapen it hopelessly. 
 
 Apart from their use as quotations, excerpts from 
 Browning have a value, unequalled save by Shakespeare, 
 as stimulants to reflection or material for the elaborative 
 processes of thought. They almost invariably have the 
 effect, also, of inciting the appreciative reader to seek a 
 fuller acquaintance with this profound and illuminating 
 interpreter of life. Collections of them, therefore, are 
 always self-justifying. 
 
 R. W. L. has made in this booklet a selection that 
 is creditable to her judgment and taste. It might have 
 
INTRODUCrORr NOTE 
 
 been much enlarged, for the store at her disposal is only 
 broached, not exhausted. But, limited as it is in bulk, 
 it gives evidence of wide and discriminating reading of the 
 poet, and it contains many of his noblest and most 
 pregnant utterances. Instinctively she has chosen those 
 passages which touch directly on "daily life and duty" — 
 on the common problem of living sanely and courageously 
 and victoriously amidst the perplexities and sorrows and 
 temptations that confront every soul in this world. Here, 
 in many a line. Browning sounds his dominant note of faith 
 in God and the soul, of loyalty to the truth that is 
 revealed within, of undying cheer and unquenchable hope. 
 Thus the disciple has become the modest and welcome 
 purveyor of the treasures with which the master has 
 enriched her own thought and life. 
 
 Philip Stafford Moxom. 
 
 Springfield, Mass. 
 July 27, 1903. 
 
 10 
 
QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
Look one step onward, and secure that step 
 
 I shall arrive, — what time, what circuit first, 
 I ask not : but unless God send his hail 
 Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. 
 In some time, his good time, I shall arrive : 
 He guides me and the bird. In his good time 
 
 Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great. 
 
 Our time so brief, 't is clear if we refuse 
 
 The means so limited, the tools so rude 
 
 To execute our purpose, life will fleet, 
 
 And we shall fade, and leave our task undone. 
 
 We will be wise in time : what though our work 
 Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service. 
 Be crippled every way ? *T were little praise 
 Did full resources wait on our goodwill 
 At every turn. Let all be as it is. 
 
 13 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts ! 
 
 Love, hope, fear, faith — these make humanity ; 
 These are its sign and note and character. 
 
 So doth Thy right hand guide us through the world 
 Wherein we stumble. 
 
 *T is only when they spring to heaven that angels 
 Reveal themselves to you ; they sit all day 
 Beside you, and lie down at night by you 
 Who care not for their presence, muse or sleep, 
 And all at once they leave you, and you know them 
 
 'T is fruitless for mankind 
 
 To fret themselves with what concerns them not ; 
 They are no use that way : they should lie down 
 Content as God has made them, nor go mad 
 In thriveless cares to better what is ill. 
 
 The sorriest bat which cowers throughout noontide 
 While other birds are jocund, has one time 
 When moon and stars are blinded, and the prime 
 Of earth is his to claim, nor fined a peer. 
 
 14 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Oh ! Give yourself, excluding aught beside, 
 To the day's task ; compel your slave provide 
 Its utmost at the soonest ; turn the leaf 
 Thoroughly conned. 
 
 All service ranks the same with God, — 
 With God, whose puppets, best and worst, 
 Are we: there is no last nor first. 
 
 sr 
 Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven. 
 
 w 
 
 I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and no 
 
 less. 
 In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen 
 
 God 
 In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the 
 
 clod. 
 
 sr 
 
 But what if I fail of my purpose here ? 
 It is but to keep the nerves at strain, 
 
 To dry ones eyes and laugh at a fall. 
 And baffled, get up and begin again, — 
 
 So the chase takes up one's life, that 's all. 
 
 15 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 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. 
 
 In youth I looked to these very skies. 
 
 And probing their immensities, 
 
 I found God there, his visible power ; 
 
 Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 
 
 Of the power, an equal evidence 
 
 That his love, there too, was the nobler dower. 
 
 Man therefore, stands on his own stock 
 
 Of love and power as a pin-point rock : 
 
 And, looking to God who ordained divorce 
 
 Of the rock from his boundless continent, 
 
 Sees, in his power made evident. 
 
 Only excess by a million-fold 
 
 O're the power God gave man in the mould. 
 
 16 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 We die : which means to say, the whole 's removed, 
 
 Dismounted wheel by wheel, this complex gin, — 
 
 To be set up anew elsewhere, begin 
 
 A task indeed, but with a clearer clime 
 
 Than the murk lodgment of our building-time. 
 
 And God's own profound 
 Was above me, and round me the mountains, 
 
 And under, the sea. 
 And within me my heart to bear witness 
 
 What was and shall be. 
 
 This world 's no blot for us, 
 Nor blank; it means intensely, and means good: 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink. 
 
 Why stay we on the earth unless to grow ? 
 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too 
 hard. 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the 
 sky. 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard ; 
 Enough that he heard it once : we shall hear it by 
 and by. 
 
 17 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 There shall never be one lost good: What was, shall 
 live as before ; 
 The evil is null, is naught. 
 
 But deep within my heart of hearts there hid 
 
 Ever the confidence, amends for all. 
 
 That heaven repairs what wrong earth's journey did. 
 
 And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 
 For the fullness of the days ? Have we withered or 
 agonized ? 
 Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might 
 issue thence ? 
 Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should 
 be prized ? 
 
 Rejoice that man is hurled 
 
 From change to change unceasingly, 
 
 His soul's wings never furled ! 
 
 Make the low nature better by your throes! 
 Give earth yourself, go up for gain above ! 
 
 For kind 
 Calm years, exacting their accompt 
 Of pain, mature the mind. 
 
 i8 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Man might live at first 
 The animal life : but is there nothing more ? 
 In due time, let him critically learn 
 How he lives ; and, the more he gets to know 
 Of his own life's adaptabilities, 
 The more joy-giving will his life become. 
 Thus man, who has this quality, is best. 
 
 How soon a smile of God can change the world ! 
 How we are made for happiness — how work 
 Grows play, adversity a winning fight ! 
 
 Truth is the strong thing. Let man's life be true. 
 
 Narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 
 Before the unmeasured thirst for good. 
 
 If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud. 
 It is but for a time ; I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late. 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day. 
 
 Well, when the eve has its last streak 
 The night has its first star. 
 
 19 
 
QJJ OTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 I know Thee, who has kept my path, and made 
 Light for me in the darkness, tempering sorrow 
 So that it reached me like a solemn joy ; 
 It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love. 
 
 Could we by a wish 
 Have what we will and get the future now 
 Would we wish aught done undone in the past ? 
 So let us wait God's instant men call years. 
 
 w 
 The moral sense grows but by exercise 
 
 Healthy minds let bygones be. 
 
 ir 
 
 Help us to turn disaster to account. 
 
 All human plans and projects come to naught : 
 
 My life, and what I know of other lives. 
 
 Prove that : no plan nor project ! God shall care 
 
 Reflect that God, who makes the storm desist, 
 Can make an angry violent heart subside. 
 
 20 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWN ING 
 
 And, all day, I sent prayer like incense up 
 
 To God the strong, God the beneficent, 
 
 God ever mindful in all strife and strait, 
 
 Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme, 
 
 Till at the last he puts forth might and saves. 
 
 How can man love but what he yearns to help ? 
 And that which men think weakness within strength, 
 Angels know for strength. 
 
 Be sure they sleep not whom God needs. 
 
 Because a man has shop to mind 
 
 In time and place, since flesh must live, 
 
 Needs spirit lack all life behind, 
 All stray thoughts, fancies fugitive. 
 All loves except what trade can give ? 
 
 My business is not to remake myself. 
 
 But make the absolute best of what God made. 
 
 No, when the fight begins within himself, 
 A man 's worth something. 
 
 21 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 All is as God overrules. 
 Besides, incentives come from the soul's self; 
 The rest avail not. 
 
 w 
 
 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. 
 
 I count life just a stuff 
 To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
 Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve. 
 
 Each deed thou hast done 
 
 Dies, revives, goes to work in the world. 
 
 I am grown peaceful as old age to-night. 
 I regret little, I would change still less. 
 Since there my past life lies, why alter it ? 
 
 Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what 's a heaven for ? 
 
 22 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Poor vaunt of life indeed, 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy. 
 
 sr 
 
 Then, welcome each rebufF 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough. 
 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the 
 
 throe ! 
 
 w 
 
 What I aspired to be, 
 And was not, comforts me : 
 
 A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the 
 scale. 
 
 Should not the heart beat once " How good to live and 
 learn " ? 
 
 The Future I may face now I have proved the Past. 
 
 For more is not reserved 
 
 To man, with soul just nerved 
 
 To act to-morrow what he learns to-day. 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 All I could never be, 
 
 All, men ignored in me. 
 
 This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher 
 
 shaped. 
 
 sr 
 
 Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize 
 
 to-day. 
 
 tr 
 
 He fixed thee 'mid this dance 
 Of plastic circumstance. 
 
 w 
 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, would fain arrest: 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 To give thy soul its bent. 
 
 •r 
 
 My times be in Thy hand ! 
 Perfect the cup as planned ! 
 
 How strange now looks the life he makes us lead ; 
 So free we seem, so fettered fast we are ! 
 I feel he laid the fetter : let it lie ! 
 
 God 's in his heaven : 
 All 's right with the world. 
 
 24 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 'T is not what man does which exalts him, but what man 
 would do. 
 
 sr 
 
 The common problem, yours, mine, every one'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 : a very different thing ! 
 
 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 ! 
 
 sr 
 
 Let each task present its petty good to thee. 
 
 Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise 
 From outward things. 
 
 I am 
 A man yet : I need never humble me. 
 I would have been — something, I know not what ; 
 But though I cannot soar, I do not crawl. 
 
 25 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Affirm an absolute right to have and use 
 Your energies; as though the rivers should say — 
 ''We rush to the ocean j w^hat have we to do 
 With feeding streamlets, lingering in the vales, 
 Sleeping in lazy pools ? " 
 
 Hovv^ the world is made for each of us ! 
 
 How all we perceive and know in it 
 Tends to some moment's product thus, 
 
 When a soul declares itself — to wit. 
 By its fruit, the thing it does! 
 
 My star, God's glow-worm ! Why extend 
 That loving hand of his which leads you. 
 
 Yet locks you safe from end to end 
 
 Of this dark world, unless he needs you. 
 
 Just saves your light to spend? 
 
 How should this earth's life prove my only sphere ? 
 Can I so narrow sense but that in life 
 Soul still exceeds it ?■ 
 
 And one dream came to a pale poet's sleep. 
 And he said, " I am singled out by God, 
 No sin must touch me." 
 
 26 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Then life is — to wake not sleep, 
 
 Rise and not rest, but press 
 From earth's level where blindly creep 
 
 Things perfected, more or less. 
 To the heaven's height, far and steep. 
 
 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. 
 
 At noonday in the bustle of man's work-time 
 
 Greet the unseen with a cheer ! 
 Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, 
 
 "Strive and thrive !" cry "Speed, — fight on, fare ever 
 There as here ! " 
 
 Burn and not smoulder, win by worth, 
 
 Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth ! 
 
 Let me enjoy my own conviction, 
 
 Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness. 
 
 Still spying there some dereliction 
 
 Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness ! 
 
 27 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 God, whose pleasure brought 
 Man into being, stands away 
 As it were a handbreadth ofF, to give 
 Room for the newly-made to live,' 
 And look at him from a place apart, 
 And use his gifts of brain and heart, 
 Given, indeed, but to keep forever. 
 
 Have I been sure this, Christmas-Eve, 
 God's own hand did the rainbow weave, 
 Whereby the truth from heaven slid 
 Into my soul ? 
 
 What is left for us, save, in growth 
 Of soul, to rise up, far past both. 
 From the gift looking to the giver, 
 And from the cistern to the river, 
 And from the finite to infinity. 
 And from man's dust to God's divinity? 
 
 The truth in God's breast 
 Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 
 Though he is so bright and we so dim. 
 We are made in his image to witness him. 
 
 28 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNI NG 
 
 So plain is it that, all the more 
 
 A dispensation's merciful, 
 
 More pettishly we try and cull 
 
 Briers, thistles, from our private plot, 
 
 To mar God's ground where thorns are not! 
 
 While, when the scene of life shall shift, 
 And the gay heart be taught to ache, 
 As sorrows and privations take 
 The place of joy, — the thing that seems 
 Mere misery, under human schemes, 
 Becomes, regarded by the light 
 Of love, as very near or quite 
 As good a gift as joy before. 
 
 But shall we award 
 Less honor to the hull which, dogged 
 By storms, a mere wreck, waterclogged. 
 Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone 
 And stanchions going, yet bears on, — 
 Than to mere lifeboats, built to save. 
 And triumph o'er the breaking wave ? 
 
 No matter what the object of a life, 
 Small work or large, — the making thrive a shop, 
 Or seeing that an empire take no harm, — 
 There are known fruits to judge obedience by. 
 
 29 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 And so I live, you see, 
 Go through the world, try, prove, reject. 
 Prefer, still struggling to effect 
 My warfare ; happy that I can 
 Be crossed and thwarted as a man. 
 Not left in God's contempt apart. 
 With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart. 
 Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. 
 
 I find advance i' the main, and notably 
 The Present an improvement on the Past, 
 And promise for the Future — which shall prove 
 Only the Present with its rough made smooth, 
 Its indistinctness emphasized. 
 
 Learn, my gifted friend, 
 There are two things i' the world, still wiser folk 
 Accept — intelligence and sympathy. 
 
 King, all the better he was cobbler once, 
 
 He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes 
 
 Life to who sweeps the doorway. 
 
 Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit be thine. 
 
 30 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 I like the thought he should have lodged me once 
 r the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement, 
 The mansion and the palace; made me learn 
 The feel o' the first, before I found myself 
 Loftier i' the last, not more emancipate; 
 From first to last of lodging, I was I, 
 And not at all the place that harbored me. 
 
 Hear the truth, and bear the truth, 
 And bring the truth to bear on all you are 
 And do, assured that only good comes thence 
 Whate'er the shape good take ! 
 
 Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift, 
 That I doubt his own love can compete with it ? 
 
 I believe it ! 'T is thou, God, that givest, 't is I who 
 
 receive : 
 In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe. 
 
 sr 
 
 He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest shall 
 
 stand the most weak. 
 'T is the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh, 
 
 that I seek 
 In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. 
 
 31 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest to 
 
 make sure; 
 By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified bliss, 
 And the next world's reward and repose, by the struggles 
 
 in this. 
 
 w 
 
 The rose will bloom when the storm is passed. 
 
 That what began best, can't end worst. 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst. 
 
 Live long and happy, and in that thought die ; 
 Glad for what was. 
 
 Nay, got foretaste too 
 Of better life beginning where this ends. 
 
 No work begun shall ever pause for death ! 
 
 'T is Venice, and 't is Life — as good you sought 
 To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone 
 Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone, 
 As hinder Life the evil with the good 
 Which make up Living, rightly understood. 
 
 32 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROW NING 
 
 And here where your praise might yield returns, 
 And a handsome word or two give help. 
 
 IT 
 
 'T is looking downward that makes one dizzy. 
 
 sr 
 
 A world, as God has made it ! All is beauty : 
 And knowing this, is love, and love is duty. 
 
 God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
 And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake. 
 As midway help till he reach fact indeed. 
 
 Man is not God but hath God's end to serve, 
 A master to obey, a course to take. 
 Somewhat to cast ofF, somewhat to become. 
 
 Man must pass from old to new, 
 From vain to real, from mistake to fact. 
 From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. 
 
 Was man made a wheelwork to wind up. 
 And be discharged, and straight wound up anew ? 
 No ! — grown, his growth lasts ; taught, he ne'er forgets. 
 
 33 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Man should mount on each 
 New height in view ; the help whereby he mounts, 
 The ladder-rung his foot has left, may fall, 
 Since all things suffer change save God the Truth. 
 
 Then, as new lessons shall be learned in these 
 
 Till earth's work stop and useless time run out 
 
 So duly, daily, needs provision be 
 
 For keeping the soul's prowess possible, 
 
 Building new barriers as the old decay, 
 
 Saving us from evasion of life's proof. 
 
 Putting the question ever, does God love and will ye 
 
 Hold that truth against the world ? 
 
 Is not God now i' the world his power first made ? 
 Is not his love at issue still with sin, 
 Visibly when a wrong is done on earth ? 
 
 Nothing can be as it has been before ; 
 
 Better, so call it, only not the same. 
 To draw one beauty into our hearts' core. 
 
 And keep it changeless ! such our claim. 
 
 34 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, 
 Do out the duty ! Through such souls alone 
 God stooping shows sufficient of his light 
 For us i' the dark to rise by. 
 
 The proper 
 Friend-making, everywhere friend-finding soul, 
 Fit for the sunshine, so, it followed him. 
 A happy-tempered bringer of the best 
 Out of the worst. 
 
 When man, appalled at Nature, questioned first. 
 What if there lurk a might behind this might ? 
 He needed satisfaction God could give. 
 And did give. 
 
 Oh, we'er sunk enough here, God knows ! 
 But not quite so sunk that moments. 
 Sure though seldom are denied us, 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones 
 And apprise it if pursuing 
 Or the right way or the wrong way, 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
 35 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 " But the soul is not the body : " and the breath is not 
 
 the flute; 
 Both together make the music : either marred and all is 
 
 mute. 
 
 sr 
 
 Only grant a second life ; I acquiesce 
 In this present life as failure, count misfortune's worst 
 
 assaults 
 Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more 
 
 exalts 
 Gain about to be. 
 
 sr 
 
 Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither with 
 
 extreme concern ! 
 Living here means nescience simply : 't is next life that 
 
 helps to learn. 
 
 Only grant my soul may carry high through death her 
 
 cup unspilled, 
 Brimming though it be with knowledge, life's loss drop 
 
 by drop distilled, 
 I shall boast it mine — the balsam, bless each kindly 
 
 wrench that wrung 
 From life's tree its inmost virtue, tapped the root whence 
 
 pleasure sprung, 
 Barked the bole, and broke the bough, and bruised the 
 
 berry, left all grace 
 Ashes in death's stern alembic, loosed elixir in its place ! 
 
 36 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Not alone do I declare 
 Life must needs be borne, — I also will that man become 
 
 aware 
 Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends 
 So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life 
 depends. 
 
 sr 
 
 If action more amuse thee than the passive attitude, 
 Bravely bustle through thy being, busy thee for ill or 
 
 good, 
 Reap this life's success or failure ! Soon shall things be 
 
 unperplexed 
 And the right and wrong, now tangled, lie unravelled in 
 
 the next. 
 
 tr 
 
 In this first 
 Life, I see the good of evil, why our world began at 
 
 worst : 
 Since time means amelioration, tardily enough displayed, 
 Yet a mainly onward moving, never wholly retrograde. 
 
 Just the creature I was bound 
 To be, I should become, nor thwart at all 
 God's purpose in creation. I conceive 
 No other duty possible to man, — 
 Highest mind, lowest mind, — no other law 
 By which to judge life failure or success. 
 
 37 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Do the best with the least change possible : 
 
 Carry the incompleteness on, a stage, 
 
 Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth, 
 
 And weakness strong. 
 
 w 
 
 The love of peace, care for the family. 
 Contentment with what 's bad but might be worse — 
 Good movements these ! and good, too, discontent. 
 So long as that spurs good, which might be best, 
 Into becoming better, anyhow. 
 
 This is the honor, — that no thing I know, 
 Feel or conceive, but I can make my own 
 Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart : 
 This is the glory, — that in all conceived. 
 Or felt or known, I recognize a mind 
 Not mine but like mine, — for the double joy,- 
 Making all things for me and me for Him. 
 
 I say, therefore, to live out one's life 
 
 r the world here, with the chance, — whether by pain 
 
 Or pleasure be the process, long or short 
 
 The time, august or mean the circumstance 
 
 To human eye, — of learning how set foot 
 
 Decidedly on some one path to Heaven. 
 
 38 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Correct the evil, mitigate your best, 
 
 Blend mild with harsh, and soften black to gray 
 
 If gray may follow with no detriment 
 
 To the eventual perfect purity! 
 
 The seed o' the apple-tree 
 Brings forth another tree which bears a crab: 
 'T is the Great Gardener grafts the excellence 
 On wildings where he will. 
 
 The ingenuities, each active force 
 
 That turning in a circle on itself 
 
 Looks neither up nor down but keeps the spot. 
 
 Mere creature-like and, for religion, works. 
 
 Works only and works ever, makes and shapes 
 
 And changes, still wrings more of good from less. 
 
 Still stamps some bad out, where was worst before, 
 
 So leaves the handiwork, the act and deed. 
 
 Were it but house and land and wealth, to show 
 
 Here was a creature perfect in the kind — 
 
 Whether as bee, beaver, or behemoth. 
 
 What 's the importance ? he has done his work 
 
 For work's sake, worked well, earned a creature's praise. 
 
 39 
 
QIJ OTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Never was so plain a truth 
 As that God drops his seed of heavenly flame 
 Just where he wills on earth : sometimes where man 
 Seems to tempt — such the accumulated store 
 Of faculties — one spark to fire the heap ; 
 Sometimes where, fireball-like, it falls upon 
 The naked unpreparedness of rock. 
 Burns, beaconing the nations through their night. 
 
 The ignorance, stupidity, the hate. 
 
 Envy malice and uncharitableness 
 
 That bar your passage, break the flow of you 
 
 Down from those happy heights where many a cloud 
 
 Combined to give you birth and bids you be 
 
 The royalest of rivers : on you glide 
 
 Silverly till you reach the summit-edge. 
 
 Then over, on to all that ignorance. 
 
 Stupidity, hate, envy, bluffs and blocks. 
 
 Posted to fret you into foam and noise. 
 
 What of it ? Up you mount in minute mist, 
 
 And bridge the chasm that crushed your quietude, 
 
 A spirit-rainbow, earthborn jewelry 
 
 Outsparkling the insipid firmament 
 
 Blue above Terni and its orange-trees. 
 
 40 
 
QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNIN G 
 
 Such a starved bank of moss 
 
 Till, that May-morn, 
 Blue ran the flash across : 
 
 Violets were born ! 
 
 Sky — what a scowl of cloud 
 
 Till, near and far, 
 Ray on ray split the shroud : 
 
 Splendid, a star ! 
 
 World — how walled about 
 
 Life with disgrace 
 Till God's own smile came out: 
 
 That was thy face! 
 
 Would you have your songs endure? 
 Built on the human heart! — why, to be sure 
 Yours is one sort of heart — but I mean theirs, 
 Ours, every one's, the healthy heart one cares 
 To build on! 
 
 A great is better than a little aim. 
 41 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 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 his life. 
 And lead him at his grandest to the grave. 
 
 Where is the use of the lip's red charm, 
 The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow. 
 And the blood that blues the inside arm — 
 Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, 
 The earthly gift to an end divine? 
 
 Stake your counter as boldly every whit. 
 Venture as warily, use the same skill. 
 Do your best, whether winning or losing it. 
 If you choose to play! — is my principle. 
 Let a man contend to the uttermost 
 For his life's set prize, be it what it will! 
 
 42 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 But ever, ever this farewell to Heaven, 
 Welcome to earth — this taking death for life — 
 This spurning love and kneeling to the vv^orld — 
 Oh Heaven, it is too often and too old! 
 
 Is this our ultimate stage, or starting-place 
 To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb, 
 'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove 
 Advantage for who vaults from low to high 
 And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone ? 
 
 To have to do with nothing but the true. 
 The good, the eternal — and these, not alone 
 In the main current of the general life. 
 But small experiences of every day. 
 Concerns of the particular hearth and home : 
 To learn not only by a comet's rush 
 But a rose's birth, — not by the grandeur, God 
 But the comfort, Christ. 
 
 Life is probation and the earth no goal 
 
 But starting-point of man : compel him strive. 
 
 Which means, in man, as good as reach the goal. 
 
 43 
 
(QUOTATIONS FROM BROWNING 
 
 Crush the tree, branch and trunk and root beside, 
 Whichever twig or leaf arrests a streak 
 Of possible sunshine else would coin itself. 
 And drop down one more gold piece in the path. 
 
 Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
 And master and make crouch beneath his foot. 
 And so be pedestalled in triumph ? 
 
 L.ofC. 
 
 44 
 
DEC 28 1903 
 
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