Epilogue to Asolando by Robert Browning
Imagining a loved person's pity after his death, the speaker rejects it and recalls facing setbacks without surrendering hope. He asks for a cheer during the working day and encouragement to continue striving beyond death.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Reflective Poetry · 240 words
First lines
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, imprisoned -- / Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, / -- Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, 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?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, / Never doubted clouds would break, / Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, / Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, / Sleep to wake.
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Four rhymed stanzas address a loved person directly, expressing the speaker's resistance to pity and his confidence in renewed effort.
- Reflective Poetry — The speaker considers remembrance after death and describes falling, defeat, and sleep as conditions followed by renewed activity.
Tags
death · remembrance · perseverance · hope · mutual love
What this Textopian page supports
Epilogue to Asolando is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Browning, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Browning
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Reflective Poetry
- Length: 240 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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