Observations placeholder
Browning, Robert - Reverie - Head praises, but heart refrains
Identifier
011003
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Robert Browning - from Reverie
Head praises, but heart refrains
From loving's acknowledgement
Whole losses outweigh half-gains
Earth's good is with evil blent
Good struggles but evil reigns
Yet since Earth's good proved good -
Incontrovertibly
Worth loving – I understood
How evil – did mind descry
Power's object to end pursued -
Were haply as cloud across
Good's orb, no orb itself:
Mere mind – were it found at loss
Did it play the tricksy elf
And from life's gold purge the dross?
Power is known infinite:
Good struggles to be – at best
Seems – scanned by the human sight,
Tried by the senses' test -
Good palpably: but with right
Therefore to mind's award
Of loving, as power claims praise?
Power – which finds naught too hard
Fulfilling itself all ways
Unchecked, unchanged: while barred,
Baffled, what good began
Ends evil on every side,
To Power submissive man
Breathes 'E'en as Thou art, abide!'