"How good to sleep and so get nearer death!"
But with the daybreak, what was the clear summons that seemed to pierce her slumber?
". . . Up I sprang alive,
Light in me, light without me, everywhere
Change!"
The exquisite morning was there—the broad yellow sunbeams with their "myriad merry motes," the glittering leaves of the wet weeds against the lattice-panes, the birds—
"Always with one voice—where are two such joys?—
The blessed building-sparrow! I stepped forth,
Stood on the terrace—o'er the roofs such sky!
My heart sang, 'I too am to go away,
I too have something I must care about,
Carry away with me to Rome, to Rome!
* * * * *
Not to live now would be the wickedness.'"[137:1]
Pope Innocent XII—"the great good old Pope," as Browning calls him in the summary of Book I—when in his turn he speaks to us, gives his highest praise, "where all he praises," to this trait in her whom he calls "My rose, I gather for the breast of God."