Robert Browning

This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it forever.

This could but have happened once,
And we missed it, lost it forever.

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are.

So free we seem, so fettered fast we are.

Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
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Oh, to be in England,
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf,
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now.

I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn read more

I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God--the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures;
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward, Nature's good
And God's.

For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
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For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.