spent,
And commonly my mind is bent
To think it was a dream--be sure
A mere dream and distemperature--
The last day's watching: then the night,--
The shock of that strange Northern Light
Set my head swimming, bred in me
A dream. And so I live, you see,
Go through the world, try, prove, reject,
Prefer, still struggling to effect
My warfare; happy that I can
Be crossed and thwarted as a man,
Not left in God's contempt apart,
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize.
Thank God, she still each method tries
To catch me, who may yet escape,
She knows,--the fiend in angel's shape!
Thank God, no paradise stands barred
To entry, and I find it hard
To be a Christian, as I said!
Still every now and then my head
Raised glad, sinks mournful--all grows drear
Spite of the sunshine, while I fear
And think, "How dreadful to be grudged
No ease henceforth, as one that's judged.
Condemned to earth for ever, shut
From heaven!"
But Easter-Day breaks! But
Christ rises! Mercy every way
Is infinite,--and who can say?

This poem has often been cited as a proof of Browning's own belief in
historical Christianity. It can hardly be said to be more than a
doubtful proof, for it depends upon a subjective vision of which the
speaker, himself, doubts the truth. The speaker in this poem belongs in
the same category with Bishop Blougram. A belief in infinite Love can
come to him only through the dogma of the incarnation, he therefore
holds to that, no matter how tossed about by doubts. The failure of all
human effort to attain the Absolute and, as a consequence, the belief in
an Absolute beyond this life is a dominant note in Browning's own
philosophy. The nature of that Absolute he further evolves from the
intellectual observation of power that transcends human comprehension,
and the even more deep-rooted sense of love in the human heart.

Much of his thought resembles that of the English scientist, Herbert
Spencer. The relativity of knowledge and the relativity of good and evil
are cardinal doctrines with both of them. Herbert Spencer's mystery
behind all phenomena and Browning's failure of human knowledge are
identical--the negative proof of the absolute,--but where Spencer
contents himself with the statement that though we cannot know the
Absolute, yet it must transc