As round eve's shades their framework roll,

Gladly fronts for once thy soul.

And then, as 'mid the dark, a gleam

Of yet another morning breaks,

And, like the hand which ends a dream,
Death, with the might of his sunbeam,

Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes,

Then-"

"So, still within this life,

(Flight of the Duchess.)

Though lifted o'er its strife,

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last.

So, better, age, exempt

From strife, should know than tempt

Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death nor be afraid."

(Rabbi Ben Ezra.)

"And stung by straitness of our life made strait
On purpose to make sweet the life at large,
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death,
We burst there, as the worm into the fly,
Who, while a worm still, wants his wings."

(Cleon.)

Christmas Eve.

MR. BROWNING'S Christmas Eve is a study, developing the ethical significance of Christian teaching. It was published in 1850, together with Easter Day; being one of five important poems, written apparently between 1850 and 1864, in which our poet deals with the fundamental truths of Christianity. Part of Saul (sections 1-9) had indeed appeared in 1845, but the distinctively Christian portion was not published till ten years after, together with the Epistle of Kharshish. The Death in the Desert was first printed in 1864. To the year 1852 belongs the Introductory Essay on Shelley, reprinted in volume i. of the Browning Society Papers. May we not think that the poet was speaking out of his own experience when he tells us of Shelley: "He endeavoured to realise, as he went on idealising; gradually he was raised to the great Abstract Light, and through the discrepancy of creation, to the sufficiency of the First Cause-I shall say what I think. Had Shelley lived he would finally have ranged himself with the Christians. Already he had attained to a profession of worship to the spirit of good within"? I think we may trace in our poet's work, too, during these years, a growing power to "realise, whilst idealising," as though the old forms were undergoing for him a "metamorphosis," a transfiguration. Are not the words often true for the individual, as for the world, "Yet a little while and thou shalt not see Me, and again a little while and thou shalt see Me"? We lose the vision of truth which is received through the sense alone, apprehended by the understanding-to

behold a vision, which eye cannot see, nor ear hear, but which is revealed by the spirit, and embraced by reason. We pass beyond the thought of a God speaking to us from without through the visible Kosmos, to the thought of a God manifested in that Holy of Holies, that inmost shrine, the spirit of man. We pass beyond the adoring worship of God's glory revealed in outward nature, to the thought of a personal Presence

"I forgot all about the sky,"

"Ah, whose foot shall I see emerge?"

In the order of thought, Mr. Browning's Easter Day precedes Christmas Eve, and though the latter is different in form, it reminds us of Clough's poem Easter Day, for in the opening pages one hears the same question-Is Christ risen? Can He have come to redeem a world yet unredeemed? Is there indeed an Immanuel, a God with us? Can we believe it, when we look upon the world without; look upon ignorance and sectarianism; upon idolatry and hypocrisy; upon the sceptic, seeking and finding not?

In fact, Christmas Eve is an attempt to bring home, not to sense, but to consciousness, the central truth of Christianity. The poem is a sort of colloquy of the soul on the special teaching of Christmas Day, on the Incarnation in its largest sense, i.e., on the mode of God's manifestation to the creature.

290

"God, Whose pleasure brought

Man into being, stands away
As it were a handbreadth off, to give
Room for the newly made to live,
And look at Him from a place apart,

And use his gifts of brain and heart."1

1 Am I wrong in thinking that the poet owed something of his inspiration to the Regenerator of Germany, the eloquent author of Wissenschaftslehre ?

Thus he does not bid us look only at a far-off vision of the past, we behold the Christ revealed in time, that we may realise the Divine indwelling, as an eternal fact of consciousness, the union of God and man. And the realisation of the Christ-revelation is shown to be a transfiguring power as regards the moral being, energising the spiritual faculties, quickening insight, arousing sympathy, and therefore kindling love. All this is expressed in the wonderful vision (lines 420 et seq.).

Hence is the poem, too, an Eirenicon, teaching us that all are united by the life of love who are moved by the presence of God in Nature, in Scripture, in the Church, in the mind of man-these are united, not by dogma, i.e. by knowledge attained, but by the common life of discipleship-they are seekers after God, and only when they cease to follow after, do they lose the hem of Christ's garment.

One office of the poet is to stir our souls, and thus energise our spiritual faculties, so that we may be able to assimilate, to embrace in the sphere of consciousness those truths which remain for ever a dim, unapprehended vision for the apathetic, and also be made conscious of those spiritual affinities, by which those are united who yet stand opposed to one another as separate individualities,

As regards the form, may I say, there are few poems which to my mind contain so much that is artistically repulsive-double rhymes, grotesque illustrations, arguments at full length in verse metre; but there are also passages of wonderful artistic beauty (as the lunar rainbow of Christmas Eve, and the glowing sky of Easter Day), thoughts so illuminated that one can never lose the impression of them.

But however much Mr. Browning may be charged with failure in form, few deny his pre-eminence as a

dramatist, if we are content to define a dramatist as one who reveals to us the real man moving and acting, the hidden self revealed through deed, or word, or scarce articulate thought. The true drama shows us the man, melodrama the movements of puppets. Many prefer the latter to the former. Of action in the ordinary sense there is little, even in those poems which Mr. Browning calls dramatic; but there is the movement upward of the human soul, its struggles to rise out of darkness to light within that globe"that hollow space

That rounds the mortal temples of a man".

Mrs. Browning speaks of this when she says:-
"Take for a worthier stage, the soul itself,

Its shifting fancies, and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences

To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds".

In this sense Christmas Eve too is dramatic.

My readers must take the poem in hand, and I will try to guide them through what seem at first its mazy wanderings. Here, as ever, the stage is suited to the action, the surroundings in harmony with the thought. What a scene of utter desolation and barrenness have we in the opening description of the bleak common, that gusty night-how miserable is the vista of gravel pits, of broken palings, of squalid alleys, whence emerge the sickly inhabitants, suffering from all the ills of physical, intellectual, and moral starvation. It may be questioned whether Mr. Browning is a poet, but he is certainly a seer. He looks right at things as they are in the present, he compels us to face them too, and they seem ugly and mean; then he looks not at but into them, and he teaches us it is because we look at the world from the outside only that our faith fails. He sees "not after the sight of the eyes, but beholds'