4. Robert Browning Poetry Quotes: Confessional & TR

• 'It is a lie --- their Priests, their Pope,

  Their Saints, their ... all they fear or hope

  Are lies, and lies'
• 'I was a human creature too,

  With flesh and blood like one of you,

  A girl that laughed in beauty's pride

  Like lilies in your world outside.'
• '``That is a sin,'' I said: and slow

  With downcast eyes to church I go,

  And pass to the confession-chair,

  And tell the old mild father there.'
• '``Nay, I will turn this love of thine

  ``To lawful love, almost divine;'
• 'He told me what he would not tell

  For hope of heaven or fear of hell;

  And I lay listening in such pride!'
• 'No part in aught they hope or fear!

  No heaven with them, no hell!'
• I've a Friend, over the sea;

  I like him, but he loves me.'
• '``Better have kept away

  ``Than come and kill me, night and day,

  ``With, worse than fever throbs and shoots,

  ``The creaking of his clumsy boots."'
• 'And I can neither think nor read

  Nor make these purple fingers hold

  The pen; this garret's freezing cold!'
• 'And I've a Lady --- there he wakes,

  The laughing fiend and prince of snakes

  Within me, at her name, to pray

  Fate send some creature in the way

  Of my love for her, to be down-torn,

  Upthrust and outward-borne,

  So I might prove myself that sea

  Of passion which I needs must be!'
• 'and she

  ---I'll tell you,---calmly would decree

  That I should roast at a slow fire'
• 'If that would compass her desire

  And make her one whom they invite

  To the famous ball to-morrow night.'
• 'There may be heaven; there must be hell;

  Meantime, there is our earth here---well!'