Fears and Scruples by Robert Browning

<p>Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman</p><p> </p><p>Fears and Scruples  (1876)<br />by Robert Browning<br /><br />  Here's my case. Of old I used to love him,<br />    This same unseen friend, before I knew:<br />Dream there was none like him, none above him,—<br />    Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.<br /><br />Loved I not his letters full of beauty?<br />    Not his actions famous far and wide?<br />Absent, he would know I vowed him duty;<br />    Present, he would find me at his side.<br /><br />Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,<br />    Only knew of actions by hearsay:<br />He himself was busied with my betters;<br />    What of that? My turn must come some day.<br /><br />"Some day" proving—no day! Here's the puzzle.<br />    Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?<br />He's so busied! If I could but muzzle<br />    People's foolish mouths that give me pain!<br /><br />"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?<br />    Ask the experts! How they shake the head<br />O'er these characters, your friend's inditing—<br />    Call them forgery from A to Z!<br /><br />"Actions? Where's your certain proof" (they bother)<br />    "He, of all you find so great and good,<br />He, he only, claims this, that, the other<br />    Action—claimed by men, a multitude?"<br /><br />I can simply wish I might refute you,<br />    Wish my friend would,—by a word, a wink,—<br />Bid me stop that foolish mouth,—you brute you!<br />    He keeps absent,—why, I cannot think.<br /><br />Never mind! Though foolishness may flout me,<br />    One thing's sure enough: 'tis neither frost,<br />No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me<br />    Thanks for truth—though falsehood, gained—though lost.<br /><br />All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,<br />    For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill<br />Through and through me as I thought "The gladlier<br />    Lives my friend because I love him still!"<br /><br />Ah, but there's a menace some one utters!<br />    "What and if your friend at home pl