he one abstract form, the one face
with its one look--all they could manage. Shall I, the illimitable
beauty, be judged by these single forms? What of that perfection in
their souls these artists were conscious of, inconceivably exceeding all
they did? What of their failure which told them an illimitable beauty
was before them? What of Michael Angelo now, who did not choose the
world's success or earth's perfection, and who now is on the breast of
the Divine? All the beauty of art is but furniture for life's first
stage. Take it then. But there are those, my saints, who were not
content, like thee, with earth's scrap of beauty, but desired the whole.
They are now filled with it. Take thy one jewel of beauty on the beach;
lose all I had for thee in the boundless ocean."

"Then I take mind; earth's knowledge carries me beyond the finite.
Through circling sciences, philosophies and histories I will spin with
rapture; and if these fail to inspire, I will fly to verse, and in its
dew and fire break the chain which binds me to the earth;--Nay, answer
me not, I know what Thou wilt say: What is highest in knowledge, even
those fine intuitions which lead the finite into the infinite, and which
are best put in noble verse, are but gleams of a light beyond them,
sparks from the sum of the whole. I give that world up also, and I take
Love. All I ask is leave to love."

"Ah," said the voice, "is this thy final choice? Love is the best; 'tis
somewhat late. Yet all the power and beauty, nature and art and
knowledge of this earth were only worth because of love. Through them
infinite love called to thee; and even now thou clingest to earth's love
as all. It is precious, but it exists to bear thee beyond the love of
earth into the boundless love of God in me." At last, beaten to his
last fortress, all broken down, he cries:

Thou Love of God! Or let me die,
Or grant what shall seem heaven almost.
Let me not know that all is lost,
Though lost it be--leave me not tied
To this despair--this corpse-like bride!
Let that old life seem mine--no more--
With limitation as before,
With darkness, hunger, toil, distress:
Be all the earth a wilderness!
Only let me go on, go on,
Still hoping ever and anon
To reach one eve the Better Land!

This is put more strongly, as in the line: "Be all the earth a
wilderness!" than Browning himself would have put it. But he is in the
passion of the man who