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Robert Browning's shorter poems are best for the beginner, who should read Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Prospice, Saul, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. This should be studied only after a previous acquaintance with his shorter poems. Define Browning's creed as found in Rabbi Ben Ezra. Is he an ethical teacher? Is there any similarity between his teaching and Carlyle's?
How powerfully his gifts of utterance were brought to bear upon the souls of men will be recorded, even if never understood, by literary historians. It is idle to look to the present generation for an intelligible account of One Word More, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Prospice, Saul, The Blot on the 'Scutcheon. They must be judged by the future and by men who can speak of them with a steady lip.
When thinking of her, Browning wrote his poem Prospice welcoming death as "...a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest." His Later Years. He continued to write verse to the year of his death.
What most interests Browning, word-painting, narration, action, psychological analysis, or technique of verse? See whether a comparison of his Prospice with Tennyson's Crossing the Bar does not help you to understand Browning's peculiar cast of mind. What qualities in Browning entitle him to be ranked as a great poet? Tennyson. From his 1842 volume, read the poems mentioned on page 556.
* Miss Hickey, on reading this passage, has called my attention to the fact that the sentiment which it parodies is identical with that expressed in these words of 'Prospice', . . . in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness, and cold.
By-and-by the busy world recovered its old face to Fortune Williams not the world as she once dreamed of it, but the real world, as she had fought it through it all these years. "I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the "pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for read steadily, even when she came to the last verse in that passionate "Prospice:"
I found her as delightful as Miss Sinnett had represented her to be, and I discovered that Miss Sinnett had been governess to her younger sisters, but that there was real regard for her. I don't know that I ever spent a more delightful evening. She had just had Browning's "Dramatis Personae," and we read together "Rabbi Ben Ezira" and "Prospice."
There must have been moments in his life when the wish in its passion overleapt the bounds of hope. 'Prospice' appears to prove this. But the wide range of imagination, no less than the lack of knowledge, forbade in him any forecast of the possibilities of the life to come. He believed that if granted, it would be an advance on the present an accession of knowledge if not an increase of happiness.
the light shone in her eyes, and she said, 'Oh, that is good and great; I shall get much out of him; I had always feared he was impossible. And 'Paracelsus, too, stirred her; but when I recited the thrilling fragment, 'Prospice, on to that closing rapturous cry 'Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest!
It is enough to recall to the memory of readers that "Dramatis Personæ" contains "James Lea's Wife," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "Prospice." It has every right to be so, for nowhere does he exhibit in a manner so sustained, and yet so varied, his own extraordinary insight into characters and motives entirely dissimilar. Since that remarkable work was given to the world, Mr.
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