Dream there was none like him, none above him,—
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true....
All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream’s sake! How forget the thrill
Through and through me as I thought “The gladlier
Lives my friend because I love him still!”
R. Browning (Fears and Scruples).
The “Friend” is God. The lines “All my days, I’ll go the softlier, sadlier, For that dream’s sake,” seem to me very beautiful. In so few words Browning, with dramatic insight, expresses the feeling of a Renan or George Eliot after they had lost their faith in Christianity.
The world is his, who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow....