214. Ere error had bent. In I Samuel, Chapter xv, is an account of Saul's disobedience and punishment. The choosing of Saul to be king is described in I Samuel, Chapters ix and x.
292. Sabaoth. The word means "hosts" and is ordinarily used in the phrase "The Lord of hosts." It represents the omnipotence of God.
303. Nor leave up nor down, etc. At the end of stanza xv, the thought that had come to David was that God had proved supreme in all the ways in which a human being could test knowledge and power, but that in the one way of love the creature might surpass the Creator. At line 302 he has come to believe in the infinitude of God's love as well as in the infinitude of His power. It is interesting to note that George Eliot in Silas Marner gives to ignorant Dolly Winthrop an experience and a philosophy of life almost identical with those of Browning's David.
307-312. A prophecy of the revelation of the divine in the human, the coming of God in the person of Christ. It is the human in the divine that men seek and love. In the Old Testament days such an idea, though foretold and longed for, could be but vaguely conceived except in moments of especial insight in the minds of poet-prophets like David. Mr. Herford (Robert Browning, p. 120) says of this passage:
"David is occupied with no speculative question, but with the practical problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the situation, urges his thought along the lonely path of prophecy. The love for the old King, which prompted him to try all the hidden paths of his soul in quest of healing, becomes a lighted torch by which he tracks out the meaning of the world and the still unrevealed purposes of God; until the energy of thought culminates in vision and the Christ stands full before his eyes."
313-335. In this stanza David represents all existences, good and evil spirits, all animals, all forms of nature, as stirred by the great news of the future manifestation of the love of God as shown in Christ.
[MY STAR]
A love lyric generally supposed to refer to Mrs. Browning.
4. The angled spar. A prism. In looking at a prism the colors one sees are determined by the point of view. The idea of the poem is amplified in "[One Word More]," stanzas xvi-xviii.