Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,
You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
Is an end to your life's work out of ken?
Have you no assurance that, earth at end,
Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend
In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?
Why should I speak? You divine the test.
When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
A voice said "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?"
"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?
Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"
Browning was an optimist with his last breath. In the Prologue to Asolando, a conventional person is supposed to be addressing the poet: he says, "Of course your old age must be sad, because you have now lost all your youthful illusions. Once you looked on the earth with rose-colored spectacles, but now you see the naked and commonplace reality of the things you used to think so radiant."
Browning's answer is significant, and the figure he uses wonderfully apt. Suppose you are going to travel in Europe: you go to the optician, and you ask for a first-rate magnifying-glass, that you may scan the ocean, and view the remote corners of cathedrals. Now imagine him saying that he has for you something far better than that: he has a lovely kaleidoscope: apply your eye to the orifice, turn a little wheel, and you will behold all sorts of pretty colored rosettes. You would be naturally indignant. "Do you take me for a child to be amused with a rattle? I don't want pretty colors: I want something that will bring the object, exactly as it is, as near to my eyes as it can possibly be brought."
Indeed, when one buys a glass for a telescope, if one has sufficient cash, one buys a glass made of crown and flint glass placed together, which destroys color, which produces what is called an achromatic lens. Now just as we judge of the value of a glass by its ability to bring things as they are within the range of our vision, so, says Browning, old age is much better than youth. In age our old eyes become achromatic. The rosy illusions of youth vanish, thank God for it! The colors which we imagined belonged to the object were in reality in our imperfect eyes—as we grow older these pretty colors disappear and we see what? We see life itself. Life is a greater and grander thing than any fool's illusion about it. The world of nature and man is infinitely more interesting and wonderful as it is than in any mistaken view of it. Therefore old age is better than youth.
PROLOGUE
1889
The Poet's age is sad: for why?
In youth, the natural world could show
No common object but his eye
At once involved with alien glow—
His own soul's iris-bow.