In the list of Dramatis Personae, Browning placed Confessions shortly after A Death in the Desert, as if to show the enormous contrast in two death-bed scenes. After a presentation of the last noble, spiritual, inspired moments of the apostle John, we have portrayed for us the dying delirium of an old sinner, whose thought travels back to the sweetest moments of his life, his clandestine meetings with the girl he loved. The solemn voice of the priest is like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?
Not much!
Like Matthew Arnold's Wish, the brother-doctor of the soul who is called in
To canvass with official breath
is simply a nuisance in these last minutes of life. The row of medicine bottles, all useless now for practical purposes, represents to his fevered eyes the topography of the scene where the girl used to come running to meet him. "I know, sir, it's improper,"—I ought not to talk this way to a clergyman, my mind isn't right, I'm dying, and this is all I can think of.
How sad and bad and mad it was—
But then, how it was sweet!
CONFESSIONS
1864
What is he buzzing in my ears?
"Now that I come to die,
Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"
Ah, reverend sir, not I!