What further may be sought for or declared?
Yet it was not to a celestial visitant that Browning's thoughts turned most, now or at any other time. It was towards the one love of his life,--towards that re-union, that restoration, that infrangible joy of retrieval, which was the goal of his whole desire. And, characteristically of the man who was "ever a fighter," he did not expect to reach his haven by a calm and prosperous passage. It had to be fought for--struggled for from strength to strength,--attained through incessant and arduous combat. For those do not "mount, and that hardly, to eternal life," who remain content upon terrestrial planes;
"Surely they see not God, I know, Nor all that chivalry of His, The soldier-saints, who, row on row, Burn upwards each to his point of bliss, Since, the end of life being manifest, He had cut his way through the world to this."
Therefore, as sleep, "Death's twin-brother," came slowly through the darkness, the fighter faced his last hour in imagination, and made haste to "greet the future with a cheer." For _Prospice_ is an "act of the faith which comes through love.... No lonely adventure is here to reward the victor o'er death: the transcendant joy is human love recovered":
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go: For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest!
(_Prospice._)