id,
Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown,
But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree
Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place
At this supreme of moments! He is a priest;
He cannot marry therefore, which is right:
I think he would not marry if he could.
Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,
Mere imitation of the inimitable:
In heaven we have the real and true and sure.
'Tis there they neither marry nor are given
In marriage but are as the angels: right,
Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ
To say that! Marriage-making for the earth,
With gold so much,--birth, power, repute so much,
Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these!
Be as the angels rather, who, apart,
Know themselves into one, are found at length
Married, but marry never, no, nor give
In marriage; they are man and wife at once
When the true time is; here we have to wait
Not so long neither! Could we by a wish
Have what we will and get the future now,
Would we wish aught done undone in the past?
So, let him wait God's instant men call years;
Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
Do out the duty! Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of His light
For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise.

Last of these main characters, the Pope appears. Guido, condemned to
death by the law, appeals from the law to the head of the Church,
because, being half an ecclesiastic, his death can only finally be
decreed by the ecclesiastical arm. An old, old man, with eyes clear of
the quarrels, conventions, class prejudices of the world, the Pope has
gone over all the case during the day, and now night has fallen. Far
from the noise of Rome, removed from the passions of the chief
characters, he is sitting in the stillness of his closet, set on his
decision. We see the whole case now, through his mind, in absolute
quiet. He has been on his terrace to look at the stars, and their solemn
peace is with him. He feels that he is now alone with God and his old
age. And being alone, he is not concise, but garrulous and discursive.
Browning makes him so on purpose. But discursive as his mind is, his
judgment is clear, his sentence determined. Only, before he speaks, he
will weigh all the characters, and face any doubts that may shoot into
his conscience. He passes Guido and the rest before his spiritual
tribunal, judging not from