nishment. The choosing of Saul to be king is
described in _I Samuel_, Chapters ix and x.

292. _Sabaoth._ The word means "hosts" and is ordinarily used in the
phrase "The Lord of hosts." It represents the omnipotence of God.

303. _Nor leave up nor down_, etc. At the end of stanza xv, the thought
that had come to David was that God had proved supreme in all the ways
in which a human being could test knowledge and power, but that in the
one way of love the creature might surpass the Creator. At line 302 he
has come to believe in the infinitude of God's love as well as in the
infinitude of His power. It is interesting to note that George Eliot in
_Silas Marner_ gives to ignorant Dolly Winthrop an experience and a
philosophy of life almost identical with those of Browning's David.

307-312. A prophecy of the revelation of the divine in the human, the
coming of God in the person of Christ. It is the human in the divine
that men seek and love. In the Old Testament days such an idea, though
foretold and longed for, could be but vaguely conceived except in
moments of especial insight in the minds of poet-prophets like David.
Mr. Herford (_Robert Browning_, p. 120) says of this passage:

"David is occupied with no speculative question, but with the practical
problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor
divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the
situation, urges his thought along the lonely path of prophecy. The love
for the old King, which prompted him to try all the hidden paths of his
soul in quest of healing, becomes a lighted torch by which he tracks out
the meaning of the world and the still unrevealed purposes of God; until
the energy of thought culminates in vision and the Christ stands full
before his eyes."

313-335. In this stanza David represents all existences, good and evil
spirits, all animals, all forms of nature, as stirred by the great news
of the future manifestation of the love of God as shown in Christ.

MY STAR

A love lyric generally supposed to refer to Mrs. Browning.

4. _The angled spar._ A prism. In looking at a prism the colors one sees
are determined by the point of view. The idea of the poem is amplified
in "One Word More," stanzas xvi-xviii.

TWO IN THE CAMPAGNA

The Campagna, a plain around the city of Rome, was in ancient times the
seat of many cities; it is now dotted with ruins. "There is a solemnity
and beauty about the Campagna entir