J.A. Symonds, Academy, Nov. 10, 1877.
26. LA SAISIAZ: THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC.
[Published in May, 1878. La Saisiaz (written November, 1877), pp. 1-82; The Two Poets of Croisic, pp. 83-201. (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol. XIV. pp. 153-204, 205-279).]
In La Saisiaz Browning reasons of God and the soul, of life here and of life to come. The poem is addressed to a friend of old date, who died suddenly while she was staying with Browning and his sister, in the summer of 1877, at a villa called La Saisiaz (The Sun) in the mountains near Geneva. The first twenty pages tell the touching story; the rest of the poem records the argument which it called forth. "Was ending ending once and always, when you died?" Browning asks himself, and he attempts to answer the question, not on traditional grounds, or on the authority of a creed, but by honest reasoning. He assumes two postulates, and two only, that God exists and that the soul exists; and he proceeds to show, very forcibly, the unsatisfactory nature of life if consciousness ends with death, and its completely satisfactory nature if the soul's existence continues.
"Without the want,
Life, now human, would be brutish: just that hope, however scant,
Makes the actual life worth leading; take the hope therein away,