400 
LITERARY PAPERS 
his forecast of what is to be. Oft with him it is “ the pain 
of Truth’s deliverance troubling all within me.” But with 
courage from knowing and loving he speaks. And even at the 
last he would face Truth whate’er presents. Those words of 
his in “Prospice” spur on the soul to pass “Arch Fear” for 
the Truth, “for Light,” and for the “Soul of his soul.” 
“I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 
The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, 
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!” 
Browning is all patience with the weak, even with the false and 
untruthful; but the lying soul is hateful to him. His far sight 
helps him to see that in the distance all will become true and 
truthful. With his penetrating vision he discerns all evils 
blending into the good. He says, “So may a glory from defect 
arise.” But he urges action as essential to the real regen¬ 
eration. Action towards the relatively true were better than 
stagnation in the absolute. And all evils are as the waters of 
the ocean whose waves in turn and time will surge over the 
shores of Goodness and Truth. Yes, through the evil the good 
is found, through the false the true, and in “Fifine at the Fair” 
he tells us—- 
“We must endure the false, no particle of which 
Do we acquaint us with, but up we mount a pitch 
Above it, find our head reach truth, while hands explore 
The false below.” 
