“The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once and for good,
Their work was done—we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood.”
Browning everywhere lays great stress on those moments of exalted feeling, when the soul has an unchecked play and is revealed to itself. See in the section of the Introduction on Personality and Art, the passage quoted from the Canon’s Monologue in ‘The Ring and the Book’, and the remarks on conversion.
Mr. Nettleship, in his ‘Essays on Browning’s Poetry’, has traced somewhat minutely the symbolical meaning which he sees in the scenery and circumstances of ‘By the Fireside’. Readers are referred to these Essays.
Prospice.
The speaker in this noble monologue is one who, having fought a good fight and finished his course, lived and wrought thoroughly in sense, and soul, and intellect, is now ready and eager to encounter the ‘Arch-Fear’, Death; and then he will clasp again his Beloved, the soul of his soul, who has gone before. He leaves the rest to God.
With this monologue should be read the mystical description, in ‘The Passing of Arthur’ (Tennyson’s Idylls of the King), of “the last, dim, weird battle of the west”, beginning,—
“A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea.”