esires, of the God-Man
who shall throw open to Saul the gates of that new life.

With this prophecy, David leaves Saul. On his way home, in the night,
he represents himself as attended by witnesses, cohorts to left
and to right. At the dawn, all nature, the forests, the wind,
beasts and birds, even the serpent that slid away silent,
appear to him aware of the new law; the little brooks, witnessing,
murmured with all but hushed voices, "E'en so, it is so!"

A Death in the Desert.

`A Death in the Desert' appears to have been inspired by
the controversies in regard to the historical foundations
of Christianity, and, more especially, in regard to the character
and the authorship of the Fourth Gospel--controversies which
received their first great impulse from the `Leben Jesu'
of David Friedrich Strauss, first published in 1835.
An English translation of the fourth edition, 1840, by Marian Evans
(George Eliot), was published in London, in 1846.

The immediate occasion of the composition of `A Death in the Desert'
was, perhaps, the publication, in 1863, of Joseph Ernest Renan's
`Vie de Jesus'. `A Death in the Desert' was included in the poet's
`Dramatis Personae', published in the following year.

"In style, the poem a little recalls `Cleon'; with less of
harmonious grace and clear classic outline, it possesses
a certain stilled sweetness, a meditative tenderness,
all its own, and beautifully appropriate to the utterance
of the `beloved disciple'."--Arthur Symons.

During a persecution of the Christians, the aged John of Patmos
has been secretly conveyed, by some faithful disciples,
to a cave in the desert, where he is dying. Revived temporarily
by the tender ministrations of his disciples, he is enabled
to tell over his past labors in the service of his beloved Master,
to refute the Antichrist already in the world, and to answer
the questions which, with his far-reaching spiritual vision,
he foresees will be raised in regard to Christ's nature, life,
doctrine, and miracles, as recorded in the Gospel he has written.
These services he feels to be due from him, in his dying hour,
as the sole survivor of Christ's apostles and intimate companions.

This is the only composition in which Browning deals directly
with historical Christianity; and its main purpose may, in brief,
be said to be, to set forth the absoluteness of Christianity,
which cannot be affected by any assaults made upon its external,
histori