Poetry, Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra

ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE  ROBERT BROWNING,

 POET

BORN TODAY, 7TH MAY 1812.

Browning was born in Camberwell, a suburb of London, on  May 7th,1812,His father was reputed to be a man of intellect and character, he worked as a relatively well-paid clerk for the bank of England. Robert grew up surrounded by his father’s library of around 6,000 books, many of them obscure especially in a time when printed books were still not readily available for every one to own. Robert was raised in a family unit that lived a simple life surrounded by literature and the Arts,

As a child he developed a a love of poetry and natural history. By twelve he had written a book of poetry which was later destroyed because no publisher would accept it. He disliked formal education and after being enrolled in several private schools ended up being privately tutored in his own home.

He was a naturally talented boy who by the age of fourteen was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin as well as his native English. He became a great admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley. Following the precedent of Shelley, Browning became an atheist and vegetarian, both of which he later shed. At age sixteen, he attended University College, London, but left after his first year. His mother’s staunch evangelical faith circumscribed the pursuit of his reading at either Oxford or Cambridge, then both only available to members of the Church of England. He had substantial musical ability and he composed arrangements of various songs.

In 1845, Browning met Elizabeth Barrett and a romance developed between them, leading to their secret marriage in 1846. (The marriage was initially secret because Elizabeth's tyrannical father disapproved of marriage for any of his children.) From the time of their marriage, they lived in Italy, first in Pisa and then, within a year, finding an apartment in Florence which they called Casa Guidi (now a museum to their memory). Their only child, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, nicknamed "Penini" or "Pen", was born in 1849. In these years Browning was fascinated by and learned hugely from the art and atmosphere of Italy. He would, in later life, say that 'Italy was my university', he was like a sponge with a thirst and soaked up the fine Italian culture and renaissance art works. By this time he was drawing his influence both from the English Romantics and from great the Renaissance art works and buildings found in Italy

I have chosen one of his works because despite being in the region of 150 years old it is still known and loved today, thanks to John Lennon who based his ‘Grow old with me’ song on this poem.

John Lennon's song "Grow Old with Me", which was inspired by Browning's poem Rabbi ben Ezra, appears on Lennon's album Milk and Honey.

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Rabbi Ben Ezra

              1Grow old along with me!

              2The best is yet to be,

              3The last of life, for which the first was made:

              4Our times are in His hand

              5Who saith "A whole I planned,

              6Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

              7Not that, amassing flowers,

              8Youth sighed "Which rose make ours,

              9Which lily leave and then as best recall?"

            10Not that, admiring stars,

            11It yearned "Nor Jove, nor Mars;

            12Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

            13Not for such hopes and fears

            14Annulling youth's brief years,

            15Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!

            16Rather I prize the doubt

            17Low kinds exist without,

            18Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

            19Poor vaunt of life indeed,

            20Were man but formed to feed

            21On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:

            22Such feasting ended, then

            23As sure an end to men;

            24Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?

            25Rejoice we are allied

            26To That which doth provide

            27And not partake, effect and not receive!

            28A spark disturbs our clod;

            29Nearer we hold of God

            30Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.

            31Then, welcome each rebuff

            32That turns earth's smoothness rough,

            33Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!

            34Be our joys three-parts pain!

            35Strive, and hold cheap the strain;

            36Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

            37For thence,--a paradox

            38Which comforts while it mocks,--

            39Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:

            40What I aspired to be,

            41And was not, comforts me:

            42A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

            43What is he but a brute

            44Whose flesh has soul to suit,

            45Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?

            46To man, propose this test--

            47Thy body at its best,

            48How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

            49Yet gifts should prove their use:

            50I own the Past profuse

            51Of power each side, perfection every turn:

            52Eyes, ears took in their dole,

            53Brain treasured up the whole;

            54Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn?"

            55Not once beat "Praise be Thine!

            56I see the whole design,

            57I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:

            58Perfect I call Thy plan:

            59Thanks that I was a man!

            60  Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

            61For pleasant is this flesh;

            62Our soul, in its rose-mesh

            63Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;

            64Would we some prize might hold

            65To match those manifold

            66Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!

            67Let us not always say,

            68"Spite of this flesh to-day

            69I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"

            70As the bird wings and sings,

            71Let us cry "All good things

            72Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"

            73Therefore I summon age

            74To grant youth's heritage,

            75Life's struggle having so far reached its term:

            76Thence shall I pass, approved

            77A man, for aye removed

            78From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.

            79And I shall thereupon

            80Take rest, ere I be gone

            81Once more on my adventure brave and new:

            82Fearless and unperplexed,

            83When I wage battle next,

            84What weapons to select, what armour to indue.

            85Youth ended, I shall try

            86My gain or loss thereby;

            87Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:

            88And I shall weigh the same,

            89Give life its praise or blame:

            90Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.

            91For note, when evening shuts,

            92A certain moment cuts

            93The deed off, calls the glory from the grey:

            94A whisper from the west

            95Shoots--"Add this to the rest,

            96Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

            97So, still within this life,

            98Though lifted o'er its strife,

            99Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,

          100This rage was right i' the main,

          101That acquiescence vain:

          102The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."

          103For more is not reserved

          104To man, with soul just nerved

          105To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:

          106Here, work enough to watch

          107The Master work, and catch

          108Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

          109As it was better, youth

          110Should strive, through acts uncouth,

          111Toward making, than repose on aught found made:

          112So, better, age, exempt

          113From strife, should know, than tempt

          114Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid!

          115Enough now, if the Right

          116And Good and Infinite

          117Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own

          118With knowledge absolute,

          119Subject to no dispute

          120From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

          121Be there, for once and all,

          122Severed great minds from small,

          123Announced to each his station in the Past!

          124Was I, the world arraigned,

          125Were they, my soul disdained,

          126Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

          127Now, who shall arbitrate?

          128Ten men love what I hate,

          129Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;

          130Ten, who in ears and eyes

          131Match me: we all surmise,

          132They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

          133Not on the vulgar mass

          134Called "work," must sentence pass,

          135Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

          136O'er which, from level stand,

          137The low world laid its hand,

          138Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

          139But all, the world's coarse thumb

          140And finger failed to plumb,

          141So passed in making up the main account;

          142All instincts immature,

          143All purposes unsure,

          144That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

          145Thoughts hardly to be packed

          146Into a narrow act,

          147Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

          148All I could never be,

          149All, men ignored in me,

          150This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

          151Ay, note that Potter's wheel,

          152That metaphor! and feel

          153Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--

          154Thou, to whom fools propound,

          155When the wine makes its round,

          156"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

          157Fool! All that is, at all,

          158Lasts ever, past recall;

          159Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:

          160What entered into thee,

          161That was, is, and shall be:

          162Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

          163He fixed thee mid this dance

          164Of plastic circumstance,

          165This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:

          166Machinery just meant

          167To give thy soul its bent,

          168Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

          169What though the earlier grooves,

          170Which ran the laughing loves

          171Around thy base, no longer pause and press?

          172What though, about thy rim,

          173Skull-things in order grim

          174Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

          175Look not thou down but up!

          176To uses of a cup,

          177The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,

          178The new wine's foaming flow,

          179The Master's lips a-glow!

          180Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?

          181But I need, now as then,

          182Thee, God, who mouldest men;

          183And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

          184Did I,--to the wheel of life

          185With shapes and colours rife,

          186Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

          187So, take and use Thy work:

          188Amend what flaws may lurk,

          189What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!

          190My times be in Thy hand!

          191Perfect the cup as planned!

          192Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

Notes

1] Ben Ezra, a Spanish Jew who lived in the twelfth century, was a distinguished scholar. In this poem, however, Browning does not build on historic facts. He simply needed, as the mouthpiece of the ideas of the poem, a theist familiar with the Scriptures. The point of view is the antithesis of that of the Epicurean and Sceptic, the man who lives for the passing moment.

151] The image is biblical; see Isaiah 64: 8.