XXII. How else was I found there, bolt upright. True as that heaven and earth exist. There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number,· But again, could such disgrace have happened? Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. Great news! the preacher is found no Pascal, The circle of infinity, And find so all-but-just-succeeding! Great news! the sermon proves no reading And now that I know the very worst of him, Shall I take on me to change his tasks, And dare, despatched to a river-head For a simple draught of the element, "Is mingled with the taints of earth, "While thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, "And couldst, at wink or word, convulse "The world with the leap of a river-pulse, 66 Therefore, I turned from the oozings muddy, "And bring thee a chalice I found, instead: "See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy! "One would suppose that the marble bled. "What matters the water? A hope I have nursed : "The waterless cup will quench my thirst." -Better have knelt at the poorest stream That trickles in pain from the straitest rift! For the less or the more is all God's gift, Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. I then, in ignorance and weakness, With the thinnest human veil between, It were to be wished the flaws were fewer Which lies as safe in a golden ewer ; But the main thing is, does it hold good measure? Heaven soon sets right all other matters !— Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, This soul at struggle with insanity, Who thence take comfort, can I doubt? Which an empire gained, were a loss without. May it be mine! And let us hope That no worse blessing befall the Pope, In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery! At Göttingen presently, when, in the dusk. Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase When thicker and thicker the darkness fills And he gropes for something more substantial May Christ do for him what no mere man shall, Meantime, in the still recurring fear Lest myself, at unawares, be found, While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, With none of my own made-I choose here! The giving out of the hymn reclaims me; I have done and if any blames me, : Thinking that merely to touch in brevity Looking below light speech we utter, I put up pencil and join chorus To Hepzibah tune, without further apology, Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, EASTER-DAY. As Christmas-Eve has suggested the subject of the Christian Faith, Easter-Day gives occasion to a discussion concerning the Christian Lifethe life of those who are "risen with Christ." The poem is in substance a conversation or discussion between two persons, one of whom (a thorough Christian) finds it very hard, while the other (who takes a much lower and more common-place view of spiritual things) thinks it quite easy, to be a Christian. It is not, however, in the form of a conversation. As usual in Browning's work, one speaks, stating his own views and quoting the other's, which are therefore distinguished from his own (except when he quotes, as he sometimes does, from himself) by quotation marks. The argument is too abstruse to be followed out in all its ramifications; but enough of it can be given to render quite intelligible the extracts from it which we find it possible to give. The opening sentence will give the theme : .I. How very hard it is to be A Christian! Hard for you and me, Effecting thus, complete and whole, For that is always hard to do ; But hard, I mean, for me and you To realize it, more or less, With even the moderate success Which commonly repays our strife To carry out the aims of life. After some preliminary discussion about faith in its relation to life, the easy-going friend takes this position :— |