Browning's Shorter Poems, page 109 by Robert Browning
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hook, for mighty Saul shuddered: and sparkles 'gan dart From the jewels that woke in his turban, at once with a start, All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart. So the head: but the body still moved not, still hung there erect. And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it unchecked,
As I sang,--
IX
"Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, 70 The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine, And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy!
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, whose sword thou didst guard 80 When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for glorious reward? Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and all was for best!' Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much, but the rest. And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the working whence grew Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit strained true: And the friends of thy boyhood--that boyhood of wonder and hope, Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope,-- 90 Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch; a people is thine:
And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one head combine! On one head, all the beauty and strength, love and rage (l