-statesmen, poets, sculptors,
musicians--each fails in his ideal, for ideals are not attainable
in this life of incompletions. But faith gains something for a man.
He has loved this woman. That is something gained. If this life gave all,
what were there to look forward to? `Now, heaven and she are beyond
this ride.' Again,--and this is his closing reflection,--

"`What if heaven be, that, fair and strong'", etc.

--Browning Soc. Papers, V., 144*.

By the Fireside.

Perhaps in no other of Mr. Browning's poems are the spiritual uses of
"the love of wedded souls" more fully set forth than in the poem,
`By the Fireside'.

The Monologue is addressed by a happy husband to his "perfect wife,
my Leonor". He looks forward to what he will do when the long,
dark autumn evenings come--the evenings of declining age,
when the pleasant hue of his soul shall have dimmed, and the music
of all its spring and summer voices shall be dumb in life's November.
In his "waking dreams" he will "live o'er again" the happy life
he has spent with his loved and loving companion. Passing out
where the backward vista ends, he will survey, with her,
the pleasant wood through which they have journeyed together.
To the hazel-trees of England, where their childhood passed,
succeeds a rarer sort, till, by green degrees, they at last
slope to Italy, and youth,--Italy, the woman-country,
loved by earth's male-lands. She being the trusted guide,
they stand at last in the heart of things, the heaped and dim woods
all around them, the single and slim thread of water slipping
from slab to slab, the ruined chapel perched half-way up
in the Alpine gorge, reached by the one-arched bridge
where the water is stopped in a stagnant pond, where all day long
a bird sings, and a stray sheep drinks at times. Here,
where at afternoon, or almost eve, the silence grows conscious
to that degree, one half feels it must get rid of what it knows,
they walked side by side, arm in arm, and cheek to cheek;
cross silent the crumbling bridge, pity and praise the sweet chapel,
read the dead builder's date, 'five, six, nine, recross the bridge,
take the path again--but wait! Oh moment one and infinite! the west
is tender, with its one star, the chrysolite! the sights and sounds,
the lights and shades, make up a spell; a moment after,
and unseen hands are hanging the night around them fast,
but they know that a bar has been broken between life and life