XII
Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the minor,--yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep;
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep.
In the autumn following his wife's death Browning wrote the poem
_Prospice_, which title means _Look Forward_! This is the most
original poem on death in English Literature. It shows that Browning
strictly and consistently followed the moral appended to _The Glove_
--_Venienti occurrite morbo_, run to meet approaching disaster!
Although the prayer-book expresses the wish that the Good Lord will
deliver us from battle, murder, and sudden death, that hope was
founded on the old superstition that it was more important how a man
died than how he lived.
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