eBook - ePub
Christmas Eve
Robert Browning
This is a test
Share book
- 38 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Christmas Eve
Robert Browning
Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations
About This Book
We thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition
Frequently asked questions
How do I cancel my subscription?
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlegoâs features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan youâll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, weâve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Christmas Eve an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Christmas Eve by Robert Browning in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & Christian Church. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Topic
Theology & ReligionSubtopic
Christian ChurchÂ
XXII
How else was I found there, bolt upright
  On my bench, as if I had never left it?
âNever flung out on the common at night,
  Nor met the storm and wedgeâlike cleft it,
Seen the rareeâshow of Peter's successor,
Or the laboratory of the Professor!
For the Vision, that was true, I wist,
True as that heaven and earth exist.
There sat my friend, the yellow and tall,
With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place;
Yet my nearest neighbour's cheek showed gall.
  She had slid away a contemptuous space:
And the old fat woman, late so placable,
Eyed me with symptoms hardly mistakable,
Of her milk of kindness turning rancid.
In short, a spectator might have fancied
That I had nodded, betrayed by slumber.
Yet kept my scat, a warning ghastly,
Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,
And woke up now at the tenth and lastly.
But again, could such disgrace have happened?
  Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it;
And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end?
  Unless I heard it, could I have judged it?
Could I report as I do at the close,
First, the preacher speaks through his nose:
Second, his gesture is too emphatic:
  Thirdly, to waive what's pedagogic,
  The subjectâmatter itself lacks logic:
Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic.
Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal,
Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call
Of making square to a finite eye
The circle of infinity,
And find so allâbutâjustâsucceeding!
Great news! the sermon proves no reading
Where beeâlike in the flowers I bury me,
Like Taylor's the immortal Jeremy!
And now that I know the very worst of him,
What was it I thought to obtain at first of him?
Ha! Is God mocked, as he asks,
Shall I take on me to change his tasks,
And dare, despatched to a riverâhead
  For a simple draught of the element,
  Neglect the thing for which he sent,
And return with another thing instead?â
Saying, "Because the water found
"Welling up from the underground,
"Is mingled with the taints of earth,
"While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth,
"And couldst, at wink or word, convulse
"The world with the leap of a riverâpulse,â
"Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy,
  "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead;
"See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy!
  "One would suppose that the marble bled.
"What matters the water? A hope I have nursed:
  "The waterless cup will quench my thirst."
âBetter have knelt at the poorest stream
That trickles in pain from the straitest rift!
For the less or the more is all God's gift,
Who blocks up or breaks wide the graniteâseam.
And here, is there water or not, to drink?
I then, in ignorance and weakness,
Taking God's help, have attained to think
My heart does best to receive in meekness
That mode of worship, as most to his mind,
Where earthly aids being cast behind,
His All in All appears serene
With the thinnest human veil between,
Letting the mystic lamps, the seven,
The many motions of his spirit,
Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven.
For the preacher's merit or demerit,
It were to be wished the flaws were fewer
In the earthen vessel, holding treasure
Which lies as safe in a golden ewer;
  But the main thing is, does it hold good measure?
Heaven soon sets right all other matters!â
  Ask, else, these ruins of humanity,
This flesh worn out to rags and tatters,
  This soul at struggle with insanity,
Who thence take comfortâcan I doubt?â
Which an empire gained were a loss without.
May it be mine! And let us hope
That no worse blessing befall the Pope,
Turned sick at last of toâday's buffoonery,
  Of posturings and petticoatings,
  Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings
In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery!
Nor may the Professor forego its peace
  At Gottingen presently, when, in the dusk
Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase,
  Prophesied of by that horrible huskâ
When thicker and thicker the darkness fills
The world through his misty spectacles,
And he gropes for something more substantial
  Than a fable, myth or personification,â
May Christ do for him what no mere man shall,
  And stand confessed as the God of salvation!
Meantime, in the still recurring fear
  Lest myself, at unawares, be found,
  While attacking the choice of my neighbours round,
With none of my own madeâI choose here!
The giving out of the hymn reclaims me;
I have done: and if any blames me,
Thinking that merely to touch in brevity
  The topics I dwell on, were unlawful,â
Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity,
  On the bounds of the holy and the awful,â
I praise the heart, and pity the head of him,
And refer myself to THEE, instead of him,
Who head and heart alike discernest
  Looking below light speech we utter,
  When frothy spume and frequent sputter
Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest!
May truth shine out, stand ever before us!
I put up pencil and join chorus
To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology,
  The last five verses of the third section
  Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection,
To conclude with the doxology.
Â
Footnotes
[1]
Terpander, a famous Lesbian musician and lyric poet, 670 B.C.
[2]
Gimel, the Hebrew G, means camel.
___________________
ISBN : 978-2-8199-2235-3