bes Guido
as gradually lapsing towards the chaos, which is lower then created
existence. He observes him

"Not to die so much as slide out of life,
Pushed by the general horror and common hate
Low, lower,--left o' the very ledge of things,
I seem to see him catch convulsively,
One by one at all honest forms of life,
At reason, order, decency and use,
To cramp him and get foothold by at least;
And still they disengage them from _his_ clutch.

* * * * *

"And thus I see him slowly and surely edged
Off all the table-land whence life upsprings
Aspiring to be immortality."

There he loses him in the loneliness, silence and dusk--

"At the horizontal line, creation's verge.
From what just is to absolute nothingness."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Giuseppe Caponsacchi_, 1911-1931.]

But the matchless moral insight of the Pope leads to a different
conclusion, and the poet again retrieves his faith. The Pope puts his
first trust "in the suddenness of Guido's fate," and hopes that the
truth may "be flashed out by the blow of death, and Guido see one
instant and be saved." Nor is his trust vain. "The end comes," said Dr.
Westcott. "The ministers of death claim him. In his agony he summons
every helper whom he has known or heard of--

"'Abate,--Cardinal,--Christ,--Maria,--God--'

"and then the light breaks through the blackest gloom:

"'Pompilia! will you let them murder me?'

"In this supreme moment he has known what love is, and, knowing it, has
begun to feel it. The cry, like the intercession of the rich man in
Hades, is a promise of a far-off deliverance."

But even beyond this hope, which is the last for most men, the Pope had
still another.

"Else I avert my face, nor follow him
Into that sad obscure sequestered state
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul
He else made first in vain: _which must not be_."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 2129-2132.]

This phrase, "which must not be," seems to me to carry in it the
irrefragable conviction of the poet himself. The same faith in the
future appears in the words in which Pompilia addresses her priest.

"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,
No work begun shall ever pause for death!
Love will be helpful to me more and more
I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,
My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring