Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."

There is no hesitancy in this philosophy of Browning's. With it, he
does not fear to face all the problems and mysteries of existence. No
other poet strikes such a resonant, hopeful note as he. His _Rabbi Ben
Ezra_ is more a song of triumphant faith than anything written since
the Puritan days:--

"Our times are in His hand
Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'
* * * * *
"Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
_That_ was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure."

General Characteristics.--Browning is a poet of striking originality
and impelling force. His writings are the spontaneous outpourings of a
rich, full nature, whose main fabric is intellect, but intellect
illumined with the glittering light of spiritual hopefulness and
flushed with the glow of deep human passion.

The subject of his greatest poetry is the human soul. While he
possesses a large portion of dramatic suggestiveness, he nevertheless
does not excel in setting off character against character in movement
and speech, but rather in a minute, penetrating analysis, by which he
insinuates himself into the thoughts and sensations of his characters,
and views life through their eyes.

He is a pronounced realist. His verse deals not only with the
beautiful and the romantic, but also with the prosaic and the ugly, if
they furnish true pictures for the panorama of real life. The
unconventionality and realism of his poetic art will be made manifest
by merely reading through the titles of his numerous works.

Browning did not write to amuse and entertain, but to stimulate
thought and to "sting" the conscience to activity. The meaning of his
verse is, therefore, the matter of paramount importance, far
overshadowing the form of expression. In the haste and carelessness
with which he wrote many of his difficult abstruse poems, he laid
himself open to the charge of obscurity.

His style has a strikingly individual stamp, which is marked far more
by strength than by beauty. The bare and rugged style of his verse is
often made profoundly impressive by its strenuous earnestness, its
burning intensity, which seems to necessitate the broken lin