Explore "Touch him Ne'Er so Lightly" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Touch him ne'er so lightly, into song he broke: / Soil so quick-receptive, -- not one feather-seed, / Not one flower-dust fell but straight its fall awoke / Vitalizing virtue: song would song succeed / Sudden as spontaneous -- prove a poet-soul! " / Indeed? / Rock's the song-soil rather, surface hard and bare: / Sun and dew their mildness, storm and frost their rage / Vainly both expend, -- few flowers awaken there: / Quiet in its cleft broods -- what the after-age / Knows and names a pine, a nation's heritage.
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Thus I wrote in London, musing on my betters, / Poets dead and gone; and lo, the critics cried, / "Out on such a boast! " as if I dreamed that fetters / Binding Dante bind up -- me! as if true pride / Were not also humble! / So I smiled and sighed / As I oped your book in Venice this bright morning, / Sweet new friend of mine! and felt the clay or sand, / Whatsoe'er my soil be, break -- for praise or scorning -- / Out in grateful fancies -- weeds; but weeds expand / Almost into flowers, held by such a kindly hand.