ny of the fear of death has never been rendered in words
so truthful or so terrible.

Last of all comes the Epilogue, entitled _The Book and the Ring_, giving
an account of Count Guido's execution, in the form of contemporary
letters, real and imaginary; with an extract from the Augustinian's
sermon on Pompilia, and other documents needed to wind off the threads
of the story.

_The Ring and the Book_ was the first important work which Browning
wrote after the death of his wife, and her memory holds in it a double
shrine: at the opening an invocation, at the close a dedication. I quote
the invocation: the words are sacred, and nothing remains to be said of
them except that they are worthy of the dead and of the living.

"O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,--
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,--
Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart--
When the first summons from the darkling earth
Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
And bared them of the glory--to drop down,
To toil for man, to suffer or to die,--
This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand--
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:
--Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,--so blessing back
In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: _Handbook_, p. 93.]

[Footnote 41: Swinburne, _Essays and Studies_, p. 220.]

18. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE: including a Transcript from Euripides.

[Published in August, 1871. Dedication: "To the Countess
Cowper.--If I mention the simple truth: that this poem
absolutely owes its existence to you,--who not only
suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has p