feet, and
for the rest we are no longer in the thicket of the inner life, but in
the open country of the outer world. This is but the constantly repeated
transition which, as we have already seen, Browning illustrates in his
_Sordello_, the turning-point between the early introspective and the
later dramatic periods.

Having gained the open country of the outward and objective world, the
inevitable first thought is of love as a refuge from spiritual pursuit.
The story is shortly told in nine lines. The human and the divine love
are rivals here; pagan _versus_ ideal affection. The hunted heart is not
allowed to find refuge or solace in human love. The man knows that it is
Love that follows him: yet it is the warm, red, earthly passion that he
craves for, and the divine pursuer seems cold, exacting, and austere.

Finding no refuge in human love from this "tremendous Lover," he seeks
it next in a kind of imaginative materialism, half-scientific,
half-fantastic. He appeals at "the gold gateways of the stars" and at
"the pale ports o' the moon" for shelter. He seeks to hide beneath the
vague and blossom-woven veil of far sky-spaces, or, in lust of swift
motion, "clings to the whistling mane of every wind!" Here is a choice
of paganism at its most modern and most impressive. The cosmic
imagination, revelling in the limitless fields of time and space, will
surely be sufficient for a man's idealism, without any insistence upon
further definition. Here are Carlyle's Eternities and Immensities--are
they not enough? The answer is that these are but the servants of One
mightier than they. Incorruptible and steadfast in their allegiance,
they will neither offer pity nor will they allow peace to him who is not
loyal to their Master. And the hunted soul is stung by a fever of
restlessness that chases him back across "the long savannahs of the
blue" to earth again, with the recurring patter of the little feet
behind him.

Doubling upon the course, the quarry seeks the surest refuge to be found
on earth. Children are still here, and in their simplicity and innocence
there is surely a hiding-place that will suffice. Here is no danger of
earthly passion, no Titanic stride among the vast things of the
universe. Are they not the true idealists, the children? Are they not
the authentic guardians of fairyland and of heaven? Francis Thompson is
an authority here, and his love of children has expressed itself in much
exquisite prose and poet