Most sick folk become unconscious hours before death and slip
over the line in total coma: Browning wants to stay awake.
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
I want to taste it all, the physical suffering, the fear of the abyss:
I want to hear the raving of the fiend-voices, to be in the very
thick of the fight. He adds the splendid line,
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave.
Brave hearts turn defeat into victory.
Browning died twenty-eight years after he wrote this poem, and his
prayer was granted. He was conscious almost up to the last second,
and fully aware of the nearness of death. Even the manner of death,
as described in the first line of the poem, came to be his own
experience: for he died of bronchitis.
PROSPICE
1864
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
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