Pompilia, will you let them murder me?"
The coward's agony of the fear of death has never been rendered in words so truthful or so terrible.
Last of all comes the Epilogue, entitled The Book and the Ring, giving an account of Count Guido's execution, in the form of contemporary letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian's sermon on Pompilia, and other documents needed to wind off the threads of the story.
The Ring and the Book was the first important work which Browning wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double shrine: at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication. I quote the invocation: the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living.
"O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,—
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—