“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
"Andrea del Sarto", line 98.
Men and Women (1855)
Source: Men and Women and Other Poems
“I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.”
"At the 'Mermaid'"(1876).
Context: I find earth not gray but rosy;
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy; Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
“Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.”
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 12.
Context: Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.
"Andrea del Sarto", line 70
"Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
Men and Women (1855)
Context: I do what many dream of, all their lives,
— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat —
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
“Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!”
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 12.
Context: Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast;
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men.
“Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"”
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 70.
“Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats”
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, line 10 (1842).
Context: Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
Book X: The Pope.<!-- line 1235 -->
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
“Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.”
"At the 'Mermaid'"(1876) <!-- line 72 - 80 -->
Context: Have you found your life distasteful?
My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
Mine I save and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
My sun sets to rise again.
“Each a God's germ, but doomed remain a germ
In unexpanded infancy”
Book the Third
Sordello (1840)
“O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire”
Book I : The Ring and the Book <!-- line 1391 -->.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Context: O lyric Love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire, —
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face, —
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory — to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die, —
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Book X : The Pope.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
Context: What wonder if the novel claim had clashed
With old requirement, seemed to supersede
Too much the customary law? But, brave,
Thou at first prompting of what I call God,
And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend,
Accept the obligation laid on thee,
Mother elect, to save the unborn child,
As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living: — didst resist —
Anticipate the office that is mine —
And with his own sword stay the upraised arm,
The endeavour of the wicked, and defend
Him who, — again in my default, — was there
For visible providence: one less true than thou
To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right,
Approved less far in all docility
To all instruction, — how had such an one
Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?"
“Autumn wins you best by this its mute
Appeal to sympathy for its decay.”
Part 1.
Paracelsus (1835)
"Home-Thoughts, from Abroad", line 1.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845)
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 142.
Context: All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
Valence of Prince Berthold, in Act IV.
Colombe's Birthday (1844)
Context: p>He gathers earth's whole good into his arms;
Standing, as man now, stately, strong and wise,
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her.
One great aim, like a guiding-star, above—
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift
His manhood to the height that takes the prize;
A prize not near — lest overlooking earth
He rashly spring to seize it — nor remote,
So that he rest upon his path content:
But day by day, while shimmering grows shine,
And the faint circlet prophesies the orb,
He sees so much as, just evolving these,
The stateliness, the wisdom and the strength,
To due completion, will suffice this life,
And lead him at his grandest to the grave.
After this star, out of a night he springs;
A beggar's cradle for the throne of thrones
He quits; so, mounting, feels each step he mounts,
Nor, as from each to each exultingly
He passes, overleaps one grade of joy.
This, for his own good: — with the world, each gift
Of God and man, — reality, tradition,
Fancy and fact — so well environ him,
That as a mystic panoply they serve —
Of force, untenanted, to awe mankind,
And work his purpose out with half the world,
While he, their master, dexterously slipt
From such encumbrance, is meantime employed
With his own prowess on the other half.
Thus shall he prosper, every day's success
Adding, to what is he, a solid strength —
An aery might to what encircles him,
Till at the last, so life's routine lends help,
That as the Emperor only breathes and moves,
His shadow shall be watched, his step or stalk
Become a comfort or a portent, how
He trails his ermine take significance, —
Till even his power shall cease to be most power,
And men shall dread his weakness more, nor dare
Peril their earth its bravest, first and best,
Its typified invincibility.Thus shall he go on, greatening, till he ends—
The man of men, the spirit of all flesh,
The fiery centre of an earthly world!</p
“Inscribe all human effort with one word,
Artistry's haunting curse, the Incomplete!”
Book XI, line 1560.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)
“So men believe
And worship what they know not, nor receive
Delight from.”
Book the Second
Sordello (1840)
“My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!”
Source: Dramatis Personae (1864), Rabbi Ben Ezra, Line 187.
Context: So, take, and use thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
Book I : The Ring and the Book.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)