he doing of God's will such as no theologian could
better. _Saul_ (which I shall mention here, though only the first part,
sections one to nine, appeared in _Dramatic Romances_, sections ten to
nineteen being first published in _Men and Women_) has been by some
considered almost or quite Browning's finest poem. And indeed it seems
to unite almost the whole of his qualities as a poet in perfect fusion.
Music, song, the beauty of nature, the joy of life, the glory and
greatness of man, the might of Love, human and divine: all these are set
to an orchestral accompaniment of continuous harmony, now hushed as the
wind among the woods at evening, now strong and sonorous as the
storm-wind battling with the mountain-pine. _Saul_ is a vision of life,
of time and of eternity, told in song as sublime as the vision is
steadfast. The choral symphony of earth and all her voices with which
the poem concludes is at once the easiest passage to separate from its
context, and (if we may dare, in such a matter, to choose) one, at
least, of the very greatest of all.

"I know not too well how I found my way home in the night.
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and to right,
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware:
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strugglingly there,
As a runner beset by the populace famished for news--
Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell loosed
with her crews;
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled and shot
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge: but I fainted not,
For the Hand still impelled me at once and supported, suppressed
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy behest,
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth sank to rest.
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered from earth--
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's tender birth;
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the hills;
In the shuddering forests' held breath; in the sudden wind-thrills;
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with eye sidling
still
Though averted with wonder and dread; in the birds stiff and chill
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made stupid with awe:
E'en the serpent that slid away silent,--he felt the new law.
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned