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Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup
The festal board, lamp’s flash and trumpet’s peal,
The new wine’s foaming flow,
The Master’s lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel?

But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men!
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,–to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife,
Bound dizzily,–mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst.

So take and use Thy work,
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand! 190
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

NOTE

Abraham Ben Meir Ben Ezra, into whose mouth Browning puts the reflections in this poem, was born in Toledo, Spain, in 1090, and died about 1168. He was distinguished as philosopher, astronomer, physician, and poet. The ideas of the poem are drawn largely from the writings of Rabbi Ben Ezra. See Berdoe’s Browning Cyclopaedia.

1. =Grow old along with me=. Come, and let us talk of old age.

7-15. =Not that=. Connect “not that” of lines 7 and 10, and the “not for, etc.,” of 13, with “Do I remonstrate” in line 15.

29. =hold of=. Are like, share the nature of.

39-41. Compare A Grammarian’s Funeral.

117. =be named=. That is, known, or distinguished.

124. =Was I= (whom) =the world arraigned=. Browning frequently omits the relative.

139-144. Compare lines 36-41. Note here and elsewhere in this poem the frequent repetition, and variation of the same idea.

151. =Potter’s wheel=. The figure of the Potter’s wheel is frequent in Oriental literature. See Isaiah lxiv. 8, and Jeremiah xviii, 2-6; see also Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat, stanzas xxxvii, xxxviii, lxxxii-xc.

169-171. In the period of youth.

172-174. In old age.