Wanting is — What?

Robert Browning

 

                Wanting is — what?
                Summer redundant,
                Blueness abundant,
                — Where is the blot?
Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,
— Framework which waits for a picture to frame:
What of the leafage, what of the flower?
Roses embowering with naught they embower!
Come then, complete incompletion, O comer,
Pant thro' the blueness, perfect the summer!
                Breathe but one breath
                Rose-beauty above,
                And all that was death
                Grows life, grows love,
                     Grows love!

 
This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on March 17, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

Poems by This Author

Life in a Love by Robert Browning
Escape me?
Love in a Life by Robert Browning
Room after room
Meeting at Night by Robert Browning
The gray sea and the long black land
My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
My Star by Robert Browning
All, that I know
Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning
Grow old along with me!
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister by Robert Browning
Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Song from Paracelsus by Robert Browning
Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
Two in the Campagna by Robert Browning
I wonder do you feel to-day


Further Reading

Related Poems
The Untold Want
by Walt Whitman
What I'm Looking For
by Maureen N. McLane
What Things Want
by Robert Bly