[ { "title": "A Grammarian's Funeral : Shortly After the Revival of Learning in Europe", "author": "Robert Browning", "lines": [ "Let us begin and carry up this corpse,", " Singing together.", "Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes,", " Each in its tether", "Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,", " Cared-for till cock-crow:", "Look out if yonder be not day again", " Rimming the rock-row!", "That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,", " Rarer, intenser,", "Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,", " Chafes in the censer.", "", "Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;", " Seek we sepulture", "On a tall mountain, citied to the top,", " Crowded with culture!", "All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;", " Clouds overcome it;", "No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's", " Circling its summit.", "Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:", " Wait ye the warning?", "Our low life was the level's and the night's:", " He's for the morning.", "Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head,", " 'Ware the beholders!", "This is our master, famous calm and dead,", " Borne on our shoulders.", "", "Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,", " Safe from the weather!", "He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,", " Singing together,", "He was a man born with thy face and throat,", " Lyric Apollo!", "Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note", " Winter would follow?", "Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!", " Cramped and diminished,", "Moaned he, \"New measures, other feet anon!", " My dance is finished?\"", "No, that's the world's way; (keep the mountain-side,", " Make for the city!)", "He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride", " Over men's pity;", "Left play for work, and grappled with the world", " Bent on escaping:", "\"What's in the scroll,\" quoth he, \"thou keepest furled?", " Show me their shaping,", "Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,--", " Give!\"--So, he gowned him,", "Straight got by heart that book to its last page:", " Learned, we found him.", "Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,", " Accents uncertain:", "\"Time to taste life,\" another would have said,", " \"Up with the curtain!\"", "This man said rather, \"Actual life comes next?", " Patience a moment!", "Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,", " Still there's the comment.", "", "Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,", " Painful or easy!", "Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,", " Ay, nor feel queasy.\"", "Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,", " When he had learned it,", "When he had gathered all books had to give!", " Sooner, he spurned it.", "Image the whole, then execute the parts--", " Fancy the fabric", "Quite, ere you build, ere steel strikes fire from quartz,", " Ere mortar dab brick.", "", "(Here's the town-gate reached; there's the market-place", " Gaping before us.)", "Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace", " (Hearten our chorus!)", "That before living he'd learn how to live--", " No end to learning:", "Earn the means first--God surely will contrive", " Use for our earning.", "Others mistrust and say, \"But time escapes!", " Live now or never!\"", "He said, \"What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes!", " Man has Forever.\"", "", "Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head:", "Calculus_ racked him:", "Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead:", "Tussis_ attacked him.", "\"Now, master, take a little rest!\"--not he!", " (Caution redoubled!", "Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly!)", " Not a whit troubled,", "Back to his studies, fresher than at first,", " Fierce as a dragon", "He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)", " Sucked at the flagon.", "Oh, if we draw a circle premature,", " Heedless of far gain,", "Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure", " Bad is our bargain!", "Was it not great? did not he throw on God", " (He loves the burthen)--", "God's task to make the heavenly period", " Perfect the earthen?", "Did not he magnify the mind, show clear", " Just what it all meant?", "He would not discount life, as fools do here,", " Paid by instalment.", "He ventured neck or nothing--heaven's success", " Found, or earth's failure:", "\"Wilt thou trust death or not?\" He answered \"Yes!", " Hence with life's pale lure!\"", "That low man seeks a little thing to do,", " Sees it and does it:", "This high man, with a great thing to pursue,", " Dies ere he knows it.", "That low man goes on adding one to one,", " His hundred's soon hit:", "This high man, aiming at a million,", " Misses an unit.", "That, has the world here--should he need the next,", " Let the world mind him!", "This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed", " Seeking shall find Him.", "So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,", " Ground he at grammar;", "Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:", " While he could stammer", "He settledHoti's_ business--let it be!--", " Properly basedOun_--", "Gave as the doctrine of the encliticDe_", " Dead from the waist down.", "Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:", " Hail to your purlieus,", "All ye highfliers of the feathered race,", " Swallows and curlews:", "Here's the top-peak; the multitude below", " Live, for they can, there:", "This man decided not to Live, but Know--", " Bury this man there?", "Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,", " Lightnings are loosened,", "Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,", " Peace let the dew send!", "Lofty designs must close in like effects:", " Loftily lying,", "Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects,", " Living and dying." ], "linecount": "148" } ]