I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
One can hardly repress a smile at Browning's thorough-going optimism,
when he reads the poem, _Apparent Failure_, and then glances back at
the title. _Apparent_ failure! Of all the defeated sons of earth,
the nameless suicides whose wretched bodies are taken to the public
morgue, ought surely, we should imagine, to be classed as absolute
failures.
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