The Poetical Works of Robert Browning
Book Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, Come and review thy counsels: art thou still Staunch to their teaching?- not as fools opine Its purport might be, but as subtler skill C...
MorePurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WITH BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE. Ay, this same midnight, by this chair of mine, Come and review thy counsels: art thou still Staunch to their teaching?- not as fools opine Its purport might be, but as subtler skill Could, through turbidity, the loaded line Of logic casting, sound deep, deeper, till It touched a quietude and reached a shrine And recognized harmoniously combine Evil with good, and hailed truth's triumph- thine, Sage dead long since, Bernard de Mandeville! Only, 't is no fresh knowledge that I crave, Fuller truth yet, new gainings from the grave; Here we alive must needs deal fairly, turn To what account Man may Man's portion, learn Man's proper play with truth in part, before Entrusted with the whole, I ask no more Than smiling witness that I do my best With doubtful doctrine : afterward the rest! So, silent face me while I think and speak! A full disclosure ? Such would outrage law. Law deals the same with soul and body: seek Full truth my soul may, when some babe, I saw A new-born weakling, starts up strong- not weak- Man every whit, absolved from earning awe, Pride, rapture, if the soul attains to wreak Its will on flesh, at last can thrust, lift, draw, As mind bids muscle- mind which long has striven, Painfully urging body's impotence To effort whereby- once law's barrier riven, Life's rule abolished - body might dispense With infancy's probation, straight be given - Not by foiled darings, fond attempts back-driven, Fine faults of growth, brave sins which saint when shriven- To stand full-statured in magnificence. No : as with body so deals law with soul That's stung to strength through weakness, strives for good Through evil,- earth its race-ground, heaven its goal, Presumably: so far I understood...
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