poem,
with its suggestive title, is not argumentative. The sense of "the pity
of it" in one heart, remorse which has somehow come into existence out
of the obscure storehouse of nature, or out of God, is the only
justification suggested for a hope that nature or God must at the last
intend good and not evil to the poor defeated abjects, who most abhorred
their lives in Paris yesterday. And the word "Nature" here would be
rejected by Browning as less than the truth.

In 1864 under somewhat altered conditions, and from a ground somewhat
shifted, Browning in _A Death in the Desert_ and the _Epilogue_ to
"Dramatis Personae" continued his apology for the Christian faith. The
apologetics are, however, in the first instance poems, and they remain
poems at the last. The imaginary scene of the death of the Evangelist
John is rendered with the finest art; its dignity is that of a certain
noble bareness; in the dim-lighted grotto are the aged disciple and the
little group of witnesses to whom he utters his legacy of words; at the
cave's edge is the Bactrian crying from time to time his bird-like cry
of assurance:

Outside was all noon and the burning blue.

The slow return of the dying man to consciousness of his surroundings is
as true as if it were studied from a death-bed; his sudden awakening at
the words "I am the Resurrection and the Life" arrives not as a dramatic
surprise but as the simplest surprise of nature--light breaking forth
before sunset. The chief speaker of the poem is chosen because the
argument is one concerning faith that comes through love, and St John
was the disciple who had learnt love's deepest secrets. The dialectic
proceeds along large lines, which have only the subtlety of simplicity.
The verse moves gravely, tenderly, often weighted with monosyllables; a
pondering, dwelling verse; and great single lines arise so naturally
that while they fill the mind with a peculiar power, they are felt to be
of one texture with the whole: this, for example,--

We would not lose
The last of what might happen on his face;

and this:--

When there was mid sea and the mighty things;

and this:--

Lie bare to the universal prick of light;

and these:--

The Bactrian was but a wild childish man,
And could not write nor speak, but only loved.

Such lines, however, are made to be read _in situ_.

The faith of these latter days is the same as that of the first century,
and is not