Then did the form expand, expand—
I knew Him through the dread disguise
As the whole God within His eyes
Embraced me.
XXXIII
When I lived again,
The day was breaking,—the grey plain
I rose from, silvered thick with dew.
Was this a vision? False or true?
[411] Since then, three varied years are spent,
And commonly my mind is bent
To think it was a dream—be sure
A mere dream and distemperature—
The last day's watching: then the night,—
The shock of that strange Northern Light
Set my head swimming, bred in me
A dream. And so I live, you see,
Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
Prefer, still struggling to effect
My warfare; happy that I can
Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.
Thank God, she still each method tries
To catch me, who may yet escape,
She knows,—the fiend in angel's shape!
Thank God, no paradise stands barred
To entry, and I find it hard
To be a Christian, as I said!
Still every now and then my head
Raised glad, sinks mournful—all grows drear
Spite of the sunshine, while I fear
And think, "How dreadful to be grudged
No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.
Condemned to earth for ever, shut
From heaven!"
But Easter-Day breaks! But
Christ rises! Mercy every way
Is infinite,—and who can say?
This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in historical Chris[412]tianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension, and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.
Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are identical—the negative proof of the absolute,—but where Spencer contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the Absolute, yet it must transcend all that the human mind has con[413]ceived of perfection, Browning, as we have already seen, declares that we can know something of the nature of that Absolute through the love which we know in the human heart as well as the power we see displayed in Nature.
In connection with this subject, which for lack of space can merely be touched on in the present volume, it will be instructive to round out Browning's presentations of his own contributions to nineteenth-century thought with two quotations, one from "The Parleyings:" "With Bernard de Mandeville," and one from a poem in his last volume "Reverie." In the first, human love is symbolized as the image made by a lens of the sun, which latter symbolizes Divine Love.
BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
IX
Boundingly up through Night's wall dense and dark,
Embattled crags and clouds, outbroke the Sun
Above the conscious earth, and one by one
Her heights and depths absorbed to the last spark
His fluid glory, from the far fine ridge
Of mountain-granite which, transformed to gold,
Laughed first the thanks back, to the vale's dusk fold
On fold of vapor-swathing, like a bridge
[414] Shattered beneath some giant's stamp. Night wist
Her work done and betook herself in mist
To marsh and hollow there to bide her time
Blindly in acquiescence. Everywhere
Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime
Thrilling her to the heart of things: since there
No ore ran liquid, no spar branched anew,
No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew
Glad through the inrush—glad nor more nor less
Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness,
Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread,
The universal world of creatures bred
By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise—
All creatures but one only: gaze for gaze,
Joyless and thankless, who—all scowling can—
Protests against the innumerous praises? Man,
Sullen and silent.