An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry by Robert Browning
page 70 of 525 (13%)
page 70 of 525 (13%)
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Only the man who supplies new feeling fresh from God, quickens and regenerates the race, and sets it on the King's highway from which it has wandered into by-ways -- not the man of mere intellect, of unkindled soul, that supplies only stark-naked thought. Through the former, "God stooping shows sufficient of His light for those i' the dark to rise by." (`R. and B., Pompilia'.) In him men discern "the dawn of the next nature, the new man whose will they venture in the place of theirs, and whom they trust to find them out new ways to the new heights which yet he only sees." (`Luria'.) It is by reaching towards, and doing fealty to, the greater spirit which attracts and absorbs their own, that, "trace by trace old memories reappear, old truth returns, their slow thought does its work, and all's re-known." (`Luria'.) "Some existence like a pact And protest against Chaos, . . . . . . The fullest effluence of the finest mind, All in degree, no way diverse in kind From minds above it, minds which, more or less Lofty or low, move seeking to impress Themselves on somewhat; but one mind has climbed Step after step, by just ascent sublimed. Thought is the soul of act, and, stage by stage, Is soul from body still to disengage, As tending to a freedom which rejects Such help, and incorporeally affects The world, producing deeds but not by deeds, |
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