Many
thinkers regard the deepest sorrow of life as rising from the
disparity between our ideals and our achievement; Schiller, in his
poem, _Das Ideal und das Leben_, has expressed this cause of woe in
beautiful language. Browning says boldly,
What I aspired to be,
And was not, _comforts_ me:
This paradox, which comforts while it mocks, means, "My achievements
are ridiculously small in comparison with my hopes, my ambitions, my
dreams: thank God for all this! Thank God I was not content with low
aims, thank God I had my aspirations and have them still: they point
to future development."
In the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth stanzas,
Browning suddenly returns to this idea: in the appraisement of the
human soul, efforts, which if unsuccessful, count for nothing in
worldly estimation, pay an enormous ultimate dividend, and must
therefore be rated high. The reason why the world counts only things
done and not things attempted, is because the world's standards are
too coarse: they are adapted only for gross and obvious results.
Pages:
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394