he church at Avon[113] must tell how _her_ secrets have been guarded by
him to whom she had entrusted them.

"MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT AND FUSELI" is the mournful yet impassioned
expression of an unrequited love.

"ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE" illustrates the manner in which the typical man
and woman will proceed towards each other: the latter committing herself
by imprudent disclosures when under the influence of fear, and turning
them into a joke as soon as the fear is past; the former pretending that
he never regarded them as serious.

"IXION" is an imaginary protest of this victim of the anger of Zeus,
wrung from him by his torments, as he whirls on the fiery wheel.[114] He
has been sentenced to this punishment for presuming on the privileges
which Zeus had conferred upon him, and striving to win Here's[115] love;
and he declares that the punishment is undeserved: "he was encouraged to
claim the love of Here, together with the friendship of Zeus; he has
erred only in his trust in their professions. And granting that it were
otherwise--that he had sinned in arrogance--that, befriended by the
gods, he had wrongly fancied himself their equal: one touch from them of
pitying power would have sufficed to dispel the delusion, born of the
false testimony of the flesh!" He asks, with indignant scorn, what need
there is of accumulated torment, to prove to one who has recovered his
sight, that he was once blind; and in this scorn and indignation he
denounces the gods, whose futile vindictiveness would shame the very
nature of man; he denounces them as hollow imitations of him whom they
are supposed to create: as mere phantoms to which he imparts the light
and warmth of his own life. Then rising from denunciation to prophecy,
he bids his fellow-men take heart. "Let them struggle and fall! Let them
press on the limits of their own existence, to find only human passions
and human pettiness in the sphere beyond; let them expiate their
striving in hell! The end is not yet come. Of his vapourized flesh, of
the 'tears, sweat, and blood' of his agony, is born a rainbow of hope;
of the whirling wreck of his existence, the pale light of a coming joy.
Beyond the weakness of the god his tormenter he descries a Power,
unobstructed, all-pure.

"Thither I rise, whilst thou--Zeus, keep the godship and sink!"

If any doubt were still possible as to Mr. Browning's attitude towards
the doctrine of eternal punishment, this poem must dispel