un,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face--
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart--
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory--to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die--
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand--
That still, despite the distance and the dark
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendor once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile;--
Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on--so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness, which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall."

These sublime lines are marred by apparent grammatical obscurity. The
face of beauty is marred when one of the eyes seems sightless. We
re-read the lines to see if we are mistaken. If they were in a foreign
language, we should say we did not fully understand them.

In the dramatic monologues, as, for instance, in The Ring and the Book
and in the innumerable other narratives and contemplations where a
single speaker holds forth, we are especially called upon to forget
grammar. The speaker relates and reflects,--pours out his ideas in the
order in which they occur to him,--pursues two or three trains of
thought at the same time, claims every license which either poetry or
conversation could accord him. The effect of this method is so
startling, that when we are vigorous enough to follow the sense, we
forgive all faults of metre and grammar, and feel that this natural
Niagara of speech is the only way for the turbulent mind of man to get
complete utterance. We forget that it is possible for the same thing to
be done, and yet to be subdued, and stilled, and charmed into music.

Prospero is as natural and as individual as Bishop Blougram. His grammar
is as incomplete, yet we do not note it. He talks to himself, to
Miranda, to Ariel, all at once, weaving all together his passions, his
philosophy, his narrative,