5889. RB to Felix Moscheles

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 32, 190–191.

19. Warwick Crescent,

Upper Westbourne Terrace, W.

Apr. 6. ’67.

Dear Moscheles, [1]

I really wanted to give you a better chance, but there’s no use in waiting: here is the stanza,—and I advise that you take the last four lines: I put in the preceding, for symmetry’s sake.

Dear, the pang is brief;

Do thy part,

Have thy pleasure. How perplext

Grows belief!

Well, this cold clay clod

Was man’s heart.

Crumble it—and what comes next?

Is it God?

In a Year. by R.B. [2]

Ever yours truly

R Browning.

Address: Felix Moscheles Esqre / Cadogan Gardens, / Sloane Street, / S.W.

Publication: NL, p. 178.

Manuscript: Yale University.

1. Felix Moscheles (1833–1917), painter, son of Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870), pianist and composer, and his wife, Charlotte (née Embden, 1805–89). Felix recalled that he first met RB at the home of the Benzons, his cousins (see Fragments of an Autobiography, 1899, p. 318).

2. The last stanza from “In a Year” (Men and Women, 1855), lines 73–80.

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