d, I suppose, that any contentedly orthodox poet of the
last century has given us a body of verse that compares favorably, in
purely poetical merit, with that of Arnold.

Against the imputation that he deliberately dallies with doubt, the poet
can only reply that, again as in the case of his human loves, longing is
strong enough to spur him to poetic achievement, only when it is a
thirst driving him mad with its intensity. The poet, in the words of a
recent poem, is "homesick after God," and in the period of his blackest
doubt beats against the wall of his reason with the cry,

Ah, but there should be one!
There should be one. And there's the bitterness
Of this unending torture-place for men,
For the proud soul that craves a perfectness
That might outwear the rotting of all things
Rooted in earth.
[Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe._]

The public which refuses to credit the poet with earnestness in his
quest of God may misconceive the dignified attempts of Arnold to free
himself from the tangle of doubt, and deem his beautiful gestures
purposely futile, but before condemning the poetic attitude toward
religion it must also take into account the contrary disposition of
Browning to kick his way out of difficulties with entire indifference to
the greater dignity of an attitude of resignation; and no more than
Arnold does Browning ever depict a poet who achieves religious
satisfaction. Thus the hero of _Pauline_ comes to no triumphant
issue, though he maintains,

I have always had one lode-star; now
As I look back, I see that I have halted
Or hastened as I looked towards that star,
A need, a trust, a yearning after God.

The same bafflement is Sordello's, over whom the author muses,

Of a power above you still,
Which, utterly incomprehensible,
Is out of rivalry, which thus you can
Love, though unloving all conceived by man--
What need! And of--none the minutest duct
To that out-nature, naught that would instruct
And so let rivalry begin to live--
But of a Power its representative
Who, being for authority the same,
Communication different, should claim
A course, the first chosen, but the last revealed,
This human clear, as that Divine concealed--
What utter need!

There is, after all, small need that the public should charge the poet
with deliberate failure to gain a satisfactory view of the deity. The
quest of a God who satisfies th