s to bring him, drew it
nearer to the core of his imagination and passion. Not that he looked
forward to it with the easy complacency of the hymn-writer. _Prospice_
would not be the great uplifting song it is were the note of struggle,
of heroic heart to bear the brunt and pay in one moment all "life's
arrears of pain, darkness, and cold," less clearly sounded; and were the
final cry less intense with the longing of bereavement. How near this
thought of rapturous reunion lay to the springs of Browning's
imagination at this time, how instantly it leapt into poetry, may be
seen from the _Eurydice to Orpheus_ which he fitly placed immediately
after these--

"But give them me, the mouth, the eyes, the brow!
Let them once more absorb me!"

But in two well-known poems of the _Dramatis Personae_ Browning has
splendidly unfolded what is implicit in the strong simple clarion--note
of _Prospice_. _Abt Vogler_ and _Rabbi ben Ezra_ are among the surest
strongholds of his popular fame. _Rabbi ben Ezra_ is a great song of
life, bearing more fully perhaps than any other poem the burden of what
he had to say to his generation, but lifted far above mere didacticism
by the sustained glow in which ethical passion, and its imaginative
splendour, indistinguishably blend. It is not for nothing that Browning
put this loftiest utterance of all that was most strenuous in his own
faith into the mouth of a member of the race which has beyond others
known how to suffer and how to transfigure its suffering. Ben Ezra's
thoughts are not all Hebraic, but they are conceived in the most exalted
temper of Hebrew prophecy; blending the calm of achieved wisdom with the
fervour of eagerly accepted discipline, imperious scorn for the
ignorance of fools, and heroic ardour, for the pangs and throes of the
fray. Ideals which, coolly analysed, seem antithetical, and which have
in reality inspired opposite ways of life, meet in the fusing flame of
the Rabbi's impassioned thought: the body is the soul's beguiling
sorceress, but also its helpful comrade; man is the passive clay which
the great Potter moulded and modelled upon the Wheel of Time, and yet is
bidden rage and strive, the adoring acquiescence of Eastern Fatalism
mingling with the Western gospel of individual energy. And all this
complex and manifold ethical appeal is conveyed in verse of magnificent
volume and resonance, effacing by the swift recurrent anvil crash of its
rhythm any suggesti