| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Epilogue |
| | | Robert Browning (1812–89) |
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| AT the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, | |
| When you set your fancies free, | |
| Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprison’d— | |
| Low he lies who once so lov’d you, whom you lov’d so, | |
| —Pity me? | 5 |
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| Oh to love so, be so lov’d, yet so mistaken! | |
| What had I on earth to do | |
| With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? | |
| Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless did I drivel | |
| —Being—who? | 10 |
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| One who never turn’d his back but march’d breast forward, | |
| Never doubted clouds would break, | |
| Never dream’d, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, | |
| Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, | |
| Sleep to wake. | 15 |
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| No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time | |
| Greet the unseen with a cheer! | |
| Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, | |
| “Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed,—fight on, fare ever | |
| There as here!” | 20 |
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