Introduction to Robert Browning [65]
Apparent Failure.
The poet, it appears, speaks here in his own person. Sauntering about Paris, he comes upon the Doric little Morgue, the dead-house, where they show their drowned. He enters, and sees through the screen of glass, the bodies of three men who committed suicide, the day before, by drowning themselves in the Seine.
In the last stanza, he gives expression to his hopeful philosophy, which recognizes "some soul of goodness, in things evil"; * which sees in human nature, "potentiality of final deliverance from the evil in it, given only time enough for the work". In this age of professed and often, no doubt, affected, agnosticism and pessimism, Browning is the foremost apostle of Hope. He, more than any other great author of the age, whether philosopher, or poet, or divine, has been inspired with the faith that "a sun will pierce The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; That, after Last, returns the First, Though a wide compass round be fetched; That what began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."
-- * `Henry V.', IV. 1. 4. --
Compare with this, the following stanzas from Tennyson's `In Memoriam', Section 54: -- "Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt, and taints of blood. That nothing walks with aimless feet; That not one life shall be destroyed, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made the pile complete. * * * * * Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last -- far off -- at last, to all, And every winter change to spring."
Rabbi Ben Ezra.
Accompany me, my young friend, in my survey of life from youth to old age.
The present life does not rise to its best and then decline to its worst; "the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made."
The indecisions, perplexities, and yearnings, the hopes and fears of youth, I do not remonstrate against. They are the conditions of vitality and growth, distinguish man's life from the limited completeness of the "low kinds" of creation, "finished and finite clods untroubled by a spark"; and should be prized as inseparable from his high rank in existence.
Life would have nothing to boast of, were man formed but to experience an unalloyed joy, to find always and never to seek. Care irks not the crop-full bird, and doubt frets not the maw-crammed beast. But man is disturbed by a divine spark which is his title to a nearer relationship with God who gives than with his creatures that receive.
The rebuffs he meets with should be welcomed. Life's true success is secured through obstacles, and seeming failures, and unfulfilled aspirations. He is but a brute whose soul is conformed to his flesh, whose spirit works for the play of arms and legs. The test of the body's worth should be, the extent to which it can project the soul on its lone way.
But we must not calculate soul-profits all the time. Gifts of every kind which belong to our nature should prove their use, their own good in themselves. I own that the past was for me profuse of power on every side, of perfection at every turn, which my eyes and ears took in, and my brain treasured up. The heart should beat in harmony with this life, and feel how good it is to live and learn, and see the whole design. I who once saw only Power, now see Love perfect also, and am thankful that I was a man, and trust what my Maker will do with me.
This flesh is pleasant, and the soul can repose in it, after its own activities. It is the solid land to which it can return when wearied with its flights; and we often wish, in our yearnings for rest, that we might hold some prize to match those manifold possessions of the brute, might gain most as we should do best; but the realization of such a wish is not compatible with the dignity of our nature.
Flesh and soul must be mutually subservient;