Now by Robert Browning
The speaker asks a beloved to set aside past and future and concentrate thought, feeling, soul and sense into one perfect moment of love. The desired moment seems eternal, pictured through burning cheeks, open arms, closed eyes and meeting lips.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 188 words
First lines
Out of your whole life give but a moment! / All of your life that has gone before, / All to come after it, -- so you ignore, / So you make perfect the present, -- condense, / In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment, / Thought and feeling and soul and sense -- / Merged in a moment which gives me at last / You around me for once, you beneath me, above me -- / Me -- sure that despite of time future, time past, -- / This tick of our life-time's one moment you love me! / How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet -- / The moment eternal -- just that and no more -- / When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core / While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!
Genres
- Love Poetry — The speaker addresses a beloved and asks for a moment of complete love, expressed through an embrace and meeting lips.
- Lyric Poetry — A single speaker voices an urgent desire in rhyming verse, concentrating on one imagined moment rather than recounting a sequence of events.
Tags
love · ecstasy · present moment · kissing
What this Textopian page supports
Now 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: Love Poetry, Lyric Poetry
- Length: 188 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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