reaks the body--hunger, watching,
Excess, or languor--oftenest death's approach--
Peril, deep joy, or woe. One man shall crawl
Through life, surrounded with all stirring things,
Unmoved--and he goes mad; and from the wreck
Of what he was, by his wild talk alone,
You first collect how great a spirit he hid.
Therefore set free the spirit alike in all,
Discovering the true laws by which the flesh
Bars in the spirit! . . .
* * * * *
I go to gather this
The sacred knowledge, here and there dispersed
About the world, long lost or never found.
And why should I be sad, or lorn of hope?
Why ever make man's good distinct from God's?
Or, finding they are one, why dare mistrust?
Who shall succeed if not one pledged like me?
Mine is no mad attempt to build a world
Apart from His, like those who set themselves
To find the nature of the spirit they bore,
And, taught betimes that all their gorgeous dreams
Were only born to vanish in this life,
Refused to fit them to this narrow sphere,
But chose to figure forth another world
And other frames meet for their vast desires,--
Still, all a dream! Thus was life scorned; but life
Shall yet be crowned: twine amaranth! I am priest!"

And again:--

"In man's self arise
August anticipations, symbols, types
Of a dim splendour ever on before,
In that eternal circle run by life:
For men begin to pass their nature's bound,
And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant
Their proper joys and griefs; and outgrow all *
The narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade
Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while peace
Rises within them ever more and more.
Such men are even now upon the earth,
Serene amid the half-formed creatures round,
Who should be saved by them and joined with them."

In the last three verses is indicated the doctrine of
the regenerating power of exalted personalities, so prominent
in Browning's poetry, and which is treated in the next paper.

--
* proper: In the sense of the Latin PROPRIUS, peculiar, private, personal.
--

There is no `tabula rasa' doctrine in these passages,
nor in any others, in the poet's voluminous works; and of all men
of great intellect and learning (it is always a matter of mere
insulated intellect), born in England since the days of John Locke,
no one, perhaps, has been so entirely untainted with