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CHAPTER IV.

POEMS ON LOVE.

Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle,
The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh;
The Eden, where the spirit and the flesh
Are one again, and new-born souls walk free,
And name in mystic language all things new.

Charles Kingsley, The Saint's Tragedy.

1.-THE ASCENSION OF LOVE.

ROWNING is one of our most original poets, but like all great thinkers for the last twenty

five centuries he owes much of his teaching to the philosophy of Plato. Especially in his poems on love, I find him an ardent disciple of the Greek philosopher. I would advise those who are studying Browning, to read a translation of Plato's dialogue called The Banquet. Let me, in a few sentences, describe the doctrine taught in this dialogue,-a doctrine which was the inspiration of Dante in Italy as well as of Browning in England. Plato introduces us to a number of Athenians in the company of Socrates, as they are discussing the nature of love. Each one does his best to give an adequate definition;

and at last the turn comes to Socrates. He confesses himself far too ignorant to attempt such a hazardous task. But once, he says, he paid a visit to a wise prophetess, who told him some wonderful secrets which he will do his best to reveal. After explaining

the instincts of animals and the desires of man, the prophetess declared that these were only lower stages of a divine passion, which, in its ascension, divests itself of everything temporal and material, and rises. into the love of a supernal Beauty which is spiritual and eternal. He who aspires after the perfect Love, must first seek to discern the Beauty which shines through the forms of earthly objects. These earthly objects, in their endless variety, must gradually suggest to him the one divine Ideal of loveliness, whose pure light is refracted in these changing forms. This contemplation of the celestial Ideal will then raise a stronger love for beauty of soul than for that of body, so that a pure and noble character will quicken a sacred passion, infinitely higher than that which we feel when we are attracted by the mere outward form. Thus the aspiring mind rises into the vision of a moral and intellectual world, filled with lovely and majestic forms of wisdom, truth, and holiness; and now, reaching forward to that which is the goal of all its efforts, on a sudden it beholds a Beauty ineffable, in whose love and joy the soul is satisfied; for it is the Fountain of all being, the celestial Pattern of all earthly good. Those, continued the prophetess, who seek to gain the highest life, begin to ascend through these transitory objects towards that which is the supreme Beauty, in the knowledge and contemplation of which

they at length repose. Such a life, she declared, spent in the contemplation of the Beautiful, is the life for men to live. How transcendent must be the life of him who dwells with and gazes on that eternal Loveliness, which it becomes us all to seek. To such a man is granted the prerogative of dwelling in immediate fellowship with the All-perfect; and, as his life is made more and more divine, he becomes dear to God and lays hold of immortal blessedness.

These few sentences give the meagrest account of the sublime description of the ascension of love from flesh to spirit, from earth to heaven, from time to eternity. Such love, in its highest function, is the interpreter and mediator between things human and things divine; it is not so much an individual passion, as the aspiration to rise out of self and identify the being with the All-perfect. It has been said that the highest form of love is that "in which its personal elements seem to fade and disappear, and it becomes not so much a desire as a revelation, an inlet into some supernal world, approachable only through the annihilation of self." With Plato, love is the unutterable sigh of the finite for the Infinite. The passion for earthly forms of loveliness, the attraction of noble souls, the ceaseless search for higher truths, all these emotions are the longing of the human spirit for an eternal Beauty, unchanging and divine.

This, essentially, is the teaching of Browning, with this difference :-in the time of Plato women were regarded as radically inferior to men; hence the Philosopher never mentions the possibility of the ascension of love being aided by the attraction of a

woman's spiritual beauty. But, with our Christian poet, the passion of love becomes most adequate to its highest function, when it exists between man and woman. The unconditional gift of man and woman to each other seems to him the end for which the world is made, the chief factor in accomplishing the purpose of creation, the elemental germ from which eternal destiny must be unfolded. We need this teaching. For, indeed, we too often think of love as the comic element in life. Flirtation and courtship are our choice themes for jokes and laughter. Marriage, we say, is a lottery, —a whim of two people who take the terrible risk of living together till death releases them. But, with Browning, these themes are of the most solemn importance. He teaches us that love is the revelation in humanity of a cosmic energy, which has its origin in the nature of God. And, with repeated emphasis, he tells us that the moment we become possessed by a supreme love is a crisis on which eternity depends. These are the three points which help us to interpret these poems: 1, The divine origin of Love; 2, its earthly crisis; 3, its eternal issues.

Browning would maintain that our poets and novelists are quite right, when they make love the chief subject of their songs and stories. Smile as we may at this ever recurring theme, set to ten thousand various tunes, yet we know that it is of perennial interest. "The sense of the world is short, to love and to be beloved." With scarcely any exaggeration we may say that the world exists for the sake of love. The home is the creation of manly and womanly affection; and all the activities of politics and industry exist for the sake

of the home,-to protect it, to supply its needs, to make it beautiful. Take away the enthusiasm of home, and soon you have no enthusiasm of humanity; our civilization would soon fall asunder, without that golden thread of love to hold it together. Our best poets have told us how upon this passion depends, most frequently, a man's redemption or ruin. Salvation by love is finely taught by Tennyson :

For indeed I know
Of no more subtle master under heaven
Than is the maiden passion for a maid,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,

And love of truth, and all that makes a man.

That is the theme of which Browning frequently treats. No one ever believed more firmly that the salvation of a man depends on the woman he loves. The earliest emotions may, indeed, be awakened by beauty of form, but love is made perfect when the attractions of the body become the sacraments of the spirit. He teaches the relation of body and soul in these lines

Where is the use of the lip's red charm,
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow,
And the blood that blues the inside arm-
Unless we turn, as the soul knows how,
The earthly gift to an end divine?

He believes in the Christian doctrine of the Redemption of the Body; * he agrees with another poet that when man is made perfect, "his very flesh will become a great poem." He frankly recognises the function of the

* Romans viii. 23.