Robert Browning

GREAT-HEARTED son of the Titan mother, Earth,Fed at her breast,He builded upward from the solid ground,While listening ever for the heavenly soundOf higher voices, to his soul addressed.

The elemental mother, lending mightWith vital breath,Made him, with her instinctive courage, brave;And the immortals to his spirit gaveTheir deeper knowledge and their scorn of death.

So evermore with energy and joy,He followed Truth:Still for the message and the vision sought,Still to the temple of her worship broughtThe imagination of unaging youth;

And in its largeness ever viewing life,Perceived its goalTo be beyond the bounds of space or time.He strove to picture it in powerful rhyme;But what he painted ever—was the soul!

Ay, 't was the soul that moved, delighted him,Absorbed his care,From early days in English CamberwellTo that far hour when tolled for him a knell,Mournful across the deep, from Venice the all-fair.

Voiceless he sleeps, his giant task performed;But in his stead,Brave Caponsacchi, poignantly alive,Pippa, beloved Pompilia, and Clive,Forbid the world to think of him as dead!