Dubiety by Robert Browning
A speaker asks autumn weather for sheltered, softly dimmed comfort that blunts the world's pressures without inducing sleep. The speaker questions whether this calm is a dream, a vision, or perhaps a memory of a woman leaning to find where she might kiss the speaker's brow.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry · 265 words
First lines
I will be happy if but for once: / Only help me, Autumn weather, / Me and my cares to screen, ensconce / In luxury's sofa-lap of leather!
Sleep? Nay, comfort -- with just a cloud / Suffusing day too clear and bright: / Eve's essence, the single drop allowed / To sully, like milk, Noon's water-white.
Let gauziness shade, not shroud -- adjust, / Dim and not deaden, -- somehow sheathe / Aught sharp in the rough world's busy thrust, / If it reach me through dreaming's vapor-wreath.
Be life so, all things ever the same! / For, what has disarmed the world? Outside, / Quiet and peace: inside, nor blame / Nor want, nor wish whate'er betide.
What this Textopian page supports
Dubiety is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Browning, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Browning
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Meditative Poetry
- Length: 265 words
- Structure: 1 section, 6 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for Dubiety by Robert Browning
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Six rhymed stanzas express a speaker's wish for sheltered comfort and tentative recollection of a woman's tender gesture.
- Meditative Poetry — The speaker questions whether the present calm resembles a dream, a vision, musing, or a memory.
Tags
autumn · comfort · uncertainty · memory · tenderness