This doctrine, that earthly existence is a mere test of the soul to determine its fitness for entering upon an eternal and freer stage of development, is frequently set forth in Browning. The apostle John makes it quite clear in A Death in the Desert; and in Abt Vogler, the inspired musician sings
And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue
thence?
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony might be prized?
From the above discussion it should be plain that the short poem Cristina deserves patient and intense study, for it contains in the form of a dramatic lyric, some of Browning's fundamental ideas.
CRISTINA
1842
I
She should never have looked at me
If she meant I should not love her!
There are plenty … men, you call such,
I suppose … she may discover
All her soul to, if she pleases,
And yet leave much as she found them:
But I'm not so, and she knew it
When she fixed me, glancing round them.
II
What? To fix me thus meant nothing?
But I can't tell (there's my weakness)
What her look said!—no vile cant, sure,
About "need to strew the bleakness
Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed,
That the sea feels"—no "strange yearning
That such souls have, most to lavish
Where there's chance of least returning."