Cunliffe — Browning’s Idealism. 
673 
As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar. 
God and man, and what duty I owe both,— 
I dare to say I have confronted these 
In thought; but no such faculty helped here. 
I put forth no thought,—powerless, all that night 
I paced the city: it was the first Spring. 
By the invasion I lay passive to, 
In rushed new things, the old were rapt away. 
(VI. 922-933.) 
The same contrast between intellect and emotion lies at the 
basis of Luria. Luria stands for the East, for feeling, for in¬ 
tuition : 
My own East! 
How nearer God we were! He glows above 
With scarce an intervention, presses close 
And palpitatingly, his soul o’er ours: 
We feel him, nor by painful reason know! 
And in the end Puecio, Jacopo, Domizia, Tiburzio, and 
Braccio, who in different ways represent the thought of the 
Horth and West, acknowledge the dominion of the higher 
power. Once more, Browning’s view, implicit in the poems 
of his earlier and middle period, is set forth plainly and di¬ 
rectly in his later work. In Feristah’s Fancies he says: 
My curls were crowned 
In youth with knowledge,—off, alas, crown slipped 
Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still 
Which nowise proved more constant: gain, to-day, 
Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last 
—Knowledge, the golden?—lacquered ignorance! 
* * * 
Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust 
As wholly love allied to ignorance! 
There lies thy truth and safety. 
* * * 
For why? The creature and creator stand 
Rightly related so. Consider well! 
Were knowledge all thy faculty, then God 
Must be ignored: love gains him by first leap. 
{A Pillar at Sebzevar, 10-15, 63-6, 132-5.) 
