His ideal of what a poet is called to be is given in his picture of a Contemporary. "I only knew one poet in my life, And this or something like it was his way." And then we read of one who walked about in the haunts of men, "Scenting the world, looking it full in face, Trying the mortar's temper 'tween the chinks." Watching common sights and common people, and seeing, not the outside shows, but the real thing behind, and thus awakening the conscience, and exercising a kingship by right Divine. Judging not according to the appearance, but righteous judgment. 66 'My father, like the man of sense he was, 6 "If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; His reward was to know he was "Doing the king's work all the dim day long," whilst the tongue of scandal was busy with his life-a life which the low and sensual cannot believe in. At last dying on "The neat low truckle bed "; alone haply, as far as man could see, but waited on by unseen hosts. And mark, though no audible voice spoke to the poet, though no vision of glory appeared, yet he knew, he felt the king's approval. Was some such understanding 'twixt the two?" Hereby we know that we know Him, because we love Him and keep His commandments." The consciousness of the priesthood of the true poet breathes through the whole of Sordello; his sin was that he was unfaithful almost unto the end to the spirit within him, that he was content to enjoy, to receive, when he was heir to the kingship over humanity, the crown of which is a crown of thorns. His claim to the throne had to be made good by the power of self-sacrifice, by dying to self, that he might find a larger life in those for whom he lived, and this at last redeems the erring one. What grander picture can be drawn of a poet than that of the ideal Sordello, the complete Sordello, Man and Bard, John's cloud-girt angel, this foot on the land, That on the sea, with, open in his hand, A bitter-sweetling of a book." In the consciousness of an unseen presence then, in the faith that there is a reality behind the shows of earth, a meaning in this wondrous kosmos, and that each lives and dies nobly who faces the sphinx and gives an answer to the riddle of life; in the faith that though here we know in part, we shall one day truly know, Browning addresses himself to his task. And what is it which calls out first in us the sense of poetry? Ask the great poets of the world. It is the sight of suffering. The real must be unsatisfying ere we seek for the ideal. The great epics and dramas have all been tragic; each has his own vision of Prometheus, agonizing humanity. If there is one poem into which Browning has thrown all his artistic power, I think it is Saul. How grand is the stage on which we see the suffering Titan! the black tent in the midst of the sand “burnt to powder"; the blinding glare without, darkness within. There he endures in the desert, through which flow no refreshing streams to quench the thirst of his soul; he who once had “heard the words of God, had seen the vision of the Almighty," is now blinded by the glory, and he knows not the love which his own heart has cast out. There he hangs, upon his cross. "He stood, as erect as the tent-prop, both arms stretched out wide, On the great cross-support in the centre that goes to each side. With the spring-time ;-so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb." To him, doubly shut out from the light of heaven, comes youth and beauty and innocence personified in David. He comes like a ministering angel, the dew of heaven in his "gracious gold hair," with bright lilies telling of life and hope "Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if no wild heat Were now raging to torture the desert." Then he sings the simple songs of the shepherd lad, the beauty and peace of nature, the felt harmony and love in all things. "God made all the creatures, and gave them our love and our fear, To give sign we and they are His children, one family here." Next he passes on to the tale of human joys and sorrows; but there is no response till he comes to that which gives to man's life a meaning, the consciousness of a glory beyond. "Then here in the darkness Saul groaned, And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and listened apart; And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered, and sparkles 'gan dart All its lordly male-sapphires and rubies, courageous at heart; So the head; but the body still moved not, still hung there erect." He tries another theme. He tells of the joyous sense of life and vigour, once felt by the warrior king; bids him follow again the story of the past, and thence believe in the love of God. "Let one more attest I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a lifetime, and all was for best." Then he shows him in the lives of others the ennobling of the soul through suffering. “Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the spirit-strained true." From the vantage-ground of the past he would have him contemplate the present suffering; through sorrow he had been crowned. "Then Saul, who hung propped By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck by his name. All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank, and was stilled At the king's self, left standing before me, released and aware." But this only awakens the king to consciousness, it cannot restore him. Can he live by the thought that his life may enter into the being of humanity, that though he perish he may pour out palm wine for the life of posterity; can he be sustained by the enthusiasm of humanity? No! the wretched despise themselves; only in the consciousness of a larger life and love, sustaining, fulfilling them, can they hope to bless others. They must be conscious of a love, not small enough for them to possess, but large enough to possess them; of an ocean in which they and all may be baptized, of a boundless love in which we may all live and move; a spiritual presence, which, brooding over the dead soul, awakens it to a responsive life. And it is upon the revelation of the Divine love first revealed within the soul that our poet rests the salvation of humanity. The love which David feels kindling, glowing, burning in himself towards this sufferer, what is it but the Spirit bearing witness with his spirit to the deeper depths of the Divine love? "Shall the creature surpass the Creator,-the end, what began? As man's love yearns to utter itself, though it cannot, so must the Divine love, and God can. Man cannot utter through the feeble body, in the bonds of time, the infinite love which he yet feels within, but the Infinite, the Eternal, God is uttering it in all creation, in every soul of man who feels and responds to the music of heaven. This it is which restores life to the dying soul, whilst to the prophet, the Divine incarnation becomes a fact realized in the inner consciousness; it is a truth antecedent to and resting upon a deeper foundation than any external evidence, it is a truth in Plato's sense; it is a Divine, an eternal idea, which must be realized in time, be one day revealed to redeem the world. So he passes on from the must be to the shall be; this was the argument of the risen Lord, ἔδει παθεῖν τὸν χριστόν. I believe it! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive. Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou-so wilt thou! He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand." And in the consciousness of this Divine presence, the Divine love comes in like a flood upon his soul, it overflows into creation, all vibrates to the music of heaven, and trembles in the glow of its surpassing glory; the earth is transformed, there seems no longer an inanimate, for the life of God Himself breathes through all. "And the stars of night beat with emotion and tingled and shot Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not, For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet and holy behest, Till the rapture was shut in itself and the earth sank to rest." And as we read we feel the poet has given us a higher idea of inspiration; no outside voice is heard now; the revelation is not by the voice of nature through sense and understanding, but through the heart; the love of God possesses the soul, the heart of God is felt beating with the heart of man; it is a moral revelation. In the depths of man's being is felt the quickening spirit, the true enthusiasm, and he rises to a new life; there is the revelation to the human consciousness of the Divine in man, the central truth of Christianity. But the pessimist may turn to the reverse; it may be said, if the intuitions of the noble tell of self-sacrifice and love, what about the degraded creeds that men have held? are not these all the outcome, the utterances of humanity too, though on a lower plane? Mr. Browning has not shrunk from facing this question. As in the poem of Saul we have intuitions, which enable us to grasp Divine truth, in Caliban we have a teaching from the text, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." He refuses to recognize as man, one without moral consciousness. He does not believe that there is any such monster born of woman, or, if such lives, he has descended from the human to the animal kingdom, by starving or poisoning the spirit. His creed, derived from the experience of his own wickedness, needs but to be expressed to be rejected. Caliban is a monster, for he is not a man who has no aspirations, who is content to lie and kick in the mud, who is a slave of impulse. His god, Setebos, is only a monstrous Caliban. In these two poems I think Browning has sought to illustrate the deep truth that according to our moral standard are we able to receive Divine light and truth into our being. Let him not, however, be misunderstood. It is not historical propositions about Divine truth with which he is dealing-these, as St. James says, devils may believe-but the faith which lifts us out of the region of the phenomenal and transitory and imperfect into the real, the eternal, the inwardly true. But it may be said, if God be indeed love, if man's utmost joy is to enter into the full recognition of that love (which is eternal life), why are we left to grope our way in the dim light? why does God not open for us the portals of the grave, let us look beyond, and then, with light and truth in our minds, return to lead our life here. Bearing in mind the neo-platonic psychology which underlies Browning's thought, and is fully expressed in the Death in the Desert, we may say that as in Saul we have the truly human, the man in whom the soul predominates, and in Caliban the bestial type, so in the Epistle of Karshish we have the spiritual, the supernatural man, and his theology. The scene of the drama is a land desolated by war, dangerous from robbers and beasts of prey, barren and dreary, as it seems; yet in it are content to journey, or to live, two men-one to whom the soul's life perishes with the body, who therefore spends his time in studying how best "To coop up and keep down on earth a space That puff of vapour from God's mouth, man's soul;" the other, to whom this life is but a shadow of the true. We have in Lazarus the study of a soul that has seen things as they are, whose life has therefore passed out of the sphere of the phenomenal into that of the real. He has seen the "consuming fire" of the Divine glory, and "the elements have melted with fervent heat." Sensitive only to that transcendent light, the things of earth seem but as shadows, and the path of life a |