,
that they are mixed at last in spite of the mortal screen.

"The forests had done it; there they stood;
We caught for a moment the powers at play:
They had mingled us so, for once and for good,
Their work was done--we might go or stay,
They relapsed to their ancient mood."

Browning everywhere lays great stress on those moments
of exalted feeling, when the soul has an unchecked play and is
revealed to itself. See in the section of the Introduction
on Personality and Art, the passage quoted from the Canon's Monologue
in `The Ring and the Book', and the remarks on conversion.

Mr. Nettleship, in his `Essays on Browning's Poetry',
has traced somewhat minutely the symbolical meaning which he sees
in the scenery and circumstances of `By the Fireside'.
Readers are referred to these Essays.

Prospice.

The speaker in this noble monologue is one who, having fought
a good fight and finished his course, lived and wrought thoroughly
in sense, and soul, and intellect, is now ready and eager to encounter
the `Arch-Fear', Death; and then he will clasp again his Beloved,
the soul of his soul, who has gone before. He leaves the rest to God.

With this monologue should be read the mystical description,
in `The Passing of Arthur' (Tennyson's Idylls of the King),
of "the last, dim, weird battle of the west", beginning,--

"A deathwhite mist slept over sand and sea."

Amphibian.

This poem is the Prologue to `Fifine at the Fair'.

Amphibian is one who unites both lives within himself, the material
and the spiritual, in complete concord and mutual subservience--
one who "lives and likes life's way", and can also free himself
of tether, leave the solid land, and, unable to fly,
swim "in the sphere which overbrims with passion and thought",--
the sphere of poetry. Such an one may be said to be Browning's
ideal man. "The value and significance of flesh" is everywhere
recognized in his poetry. "All good things are ours," Rabbi Ben Ezra
is made to say, "nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."
The full physical life, in its relation to the spiritual,
was never more beautifully sung than it is sung by David,
in the poem of `Saul'. See the passage beginning, "Oh! our manhood's
prime vigor!" and the passage in `Balaustion's Adventure',
descriptive of Hercules, as he returns, after his conflict with Death,
leading back Alkestis.

James Lee's Wife.