Explore "Dubiety" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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 is it like that has happened before? / A dream? No dream, more real by much. / A vision? But fanciful days of yore / Brought many: mere musing seems not such.
Perhaps but a memory, after all! / -- Of what came once when a woman leant / To feel for my brow where her kiss might fall. / Truth ever, truth only the excellent!