, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"

The emotion and the measure of _Rabbi ben Ezra_ have the chastened,
sweet gravity of wise old age. _Prospice_ has all the impetuous blood
and fierce lyric fire of militant manhood. It is a cry of passionate
exultation and exaltation in the very face of death: a war-cry of
triumph over the last of foes. I would like to connect it with the
quotation from Dante which Browning, in a published letter, tells us
that he wrote in his wife's Testament after her death: "Thus I believe,
thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall
pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul
was enamoured." If _Rabbi ben Ezra_ has been excelled as a Song of Life,
then _Prospice_ may have been excelled as a Hymn of Death.

"PROSPICE.

Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go;
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!"

Last of all comes the final word, the summary or conclusion of the whole
matter, in the threefold speech of the _Epilogue_, a comprehensive and
suggestive vision of