Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are!'

Now, these seven verses contain the music of the poem;
in the remaining ones we pass to Browning's Platonic philosophy.

"In the eighth verse a sad thought of the banished music obtrudes--
`never to be again'. So wrapt was he in the emotions evoked,
he had no time to think of what tones called them up, and now
all is past and gone. His magic palace, unlike that of Solomon,
has `melted into air, into thin air', and, `like the baseless fabric
of a vision', only the memory of it is left. . . . And, depressed by
this saddest of human experiences, . . .he turns away impatient from
the promise of more and better, to demand from God the same--
the very same. Browning with magnificent assurance answers,
`yes, you shall have the same'.

"`Fool! all that is at all,
Lasts ever, past recall.'

"`Ay, what was, shall be.'

". . .the ineffable Name which built the palace of King Solomon,
which builds houses not made with hands--houses of flesh
which souls inhabit, craving for a heart and a love to fill them,
can and will satisfy their longings; . . .I know no other words
in the English language which compresses into small compass
such a body of high and inclusive thought as verse nine.
(1) God the sole changeless, to whom we turn with passionate desire
as the one abiding-place, as we find how all things suffer loss
and change, ourselves, alas! the greatest. (2) His power and love
able and willing to satisfy the hearts of His creatures--
the thought expatiated on by St. Augustine and George Herbert
here crystallized in one line:--`Doubt that Thy power can fill the
heart that Thy power expands?' (3) Then the magnificent declaration,
`There shall never be one lost good'--the eternal nature of goodness,
while its opposite evil. . .is a non-essential which shall one day
pass away entirely, and be swallowed up of good. . . .

"Now follows an announcement, as by tongue of prophet or seer,
that we shall at last find all our ideals complete in the mind of God,
not put forth timorously, but with triumphant knowledge--
knowledge gained by music whose creative power has for the moment
revealed to us the permanent existence of these ideals.

"The sorrow and pain and failure which we are all called upon
to suffer here, . . .are seen to be proofs and evidences of
this great belief. Without the discords how should we learn
to prize the harmony?

"Carr