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Browning, Robert - Reverie - Then life is to wake not sleep
Identifier
011002
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Robert Browning - from Reverie
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
Where, amid what strifes and storms
May wait the adventurous quest
Power is Love – transports, transforms
Who aspired from worst to best
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms
I have faith such end shall be;
From the first, Power was – I knew.
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view.
Love were as plain to see.
When see? When there dawns a day,
If not on the homely earth,
Then yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
And Power comes full in play.