An Introduction to the Study of Robert Browning's Poetry

Wanting is—What?

  Wanting is—what?
  Summer redundant,
  Blueness abundant,
—Where is the spot?
  Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same,          {5}
—Framework which waits for a picture to frame:
  What of the leafage, what of the flower?
  Roses embowering with nought they embower!
  Come then, complete incompletion, O Comer,
  Pant through the blueness, perfect the summer!     {10}
  Breathe but one breath
  Rose-beauty above,
  And all that was death
  Grows life, grows love,
  Grows love!                                        {15}

— 4. spot: defect, imperfection.

9. O Comer: o’ e’rxo/menos, Matt. 3:11; 11:3; 21:9; 23:39; Luke 19:38; John 1:15; 3:31; 12:13. Without love, the Christ-spirit, the spirit of the Comer, man sees, at best, only dynamic action, blind force, in nature; but

            “love greatens and glorifies
       Till God’s a-glow, to the loving eyes,
       In what was mere earth before.”
                            James Lee’s Wife (Along the Beach).
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