“Parting at Morning” - Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, And the sun looked over the mountain's rim: And straight was a path of gold for him, And the need of a world of men for me.

Morning, Edvard Munch, 1884

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“Memorabilia” - Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new! But you were living before that, And you are living after, And the memory I started at— My starting moves your laughter! I crossed a moor, with a name of its own And a certain use in the world no doubt, Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone 'Mid the blank miles round about: For there I picked up on the heather And there I put inside my breast A moulted feather, an eagle-feather— Well, I forget the rest.

View from Kersal Moor, Salford, Sebastian Pether, 1820

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“My Star” - Robert Browning (1812-1889)

All, that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

Saint-Rémy - Road with Cypress and Star, Vincent van Gogh, 1890

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“The ‘Moses’ of Michael Angelo”- Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Note: Mizraïm = the Hebrew name for Egypt.

And who is He that, sculptured in huge stone, Sitteth a giant, where no works arrive Of straining Art, and hath so prompt and live The lips, I hasten to their very tone? Moses is He—Ay, that makes clearly known The chin’s thick boast, and brow’s prerogative Of double ray; so did the mountain give Back to the world that visage, God was grown Great part of! Such was he when he suspended Round him the sounding and vast waters; such When he shut sea on sea o’er Mizraïm. And ye, his hordes, a vile calf raised, and bended The knee? This Image had ye raised, not much Had been your error in adoring Him.

Moses, Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1513-15. Sculpted for the tomb of Pope Julius II in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. Photo credit: Jörg Bittner Unna/Wikimedia Commons.

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