ine, the glamour of hope, with which he (Apollo) gilds it.
Apollo owns that human happiness may rest upon illusion, but undertakes
to show that man holds the magic within himself; and to that end
persuades the sisters to drain a bowl of wine which he has brought with
him. In the moment's intoxication the scales fall from their eyes, and
they see that life is good. They see that if its earlier course means
conflict, old age is its recorded victory. They see it enriched by the
joys which are only remembered as by the good which only might have
been. They praise the Actual and still more the Potential--the infinite
possibilities to which Man is born and which imagination alone can
anticipate; and joining hands with Apollo in a delirious dance, proclaim
the discovery of the lost secret: _Fancy compounded with Fact._

This philosophy is, however, ill-suited to the dark ministers of fate;
and an oracular explosion from the earth's depths startles them back
into sobriety; in which condition they repudiate the new knowledge which
has been born of them, flinging it back on their accomplice with various
expressions of disgust. They admit, nevertheless, that the web of human
destiny often defeats their spinning; its intended good and evil change
places with each other; the true significance of life is only revealed
by death; and though they still refuse to yield to Apollo's demand, they
compromise with it: Admetus shall live, if someone else will voluntarily
die for him. It is true they neutralize their concession by deriding the
idea of such a devoted person being found; and Apollo also shows himself
a stranger to the decrees of the higher powers by making wrong guesses
as to the event; but the whole episode is conceived in a humorous and
very human spirit which especially reveals itself in the attitude of
the contending parties towards each other. The Fates display throughout
a proper contempt for what they regard as the showy but unsubstantial
personality of the young god; and the natural antagonism of light and
darkness, hope and despair, is as amusingly parodied in the mock
deference and ill-disguised aversion with which he approaches them.
Apollo finally vindicates Mr. Browning's optimistic theism by claiming
the gifts of Bacchus, youngest of the gods, for the beneficent purpose
and anterior wisdom of Zeus.

The one serious idea which runs through the poem is conveyed in its
tribute to the power of wine: in other words, to t