He will always love her--in
losing her he has found a guiding principle for his own life, which
will lead him ever up and on.
She has lost me, I have gained her;
Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect,
I shall pass my life's remainder.
Her body I have lost: some other man will possess that: but her soul
I gained in the moment when our eyes met, and my life has reached a
higher plane and now has a higher motive. In failure I reach real
success.
This doctrine, illustrated repeatedly in Browning's works, is stated
explicitly in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_:
For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
The thought that life is not measured by length of days is brought
out clearly in _Cristina_. We constantly read in the paper
interviews with centenarians, who tell us how to prolong our lives
by having sufficient sleep, by eating moderately, by refraining from
worry.
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