Browning's
_Epilogue_ is full of excitement and strenuous rage: there is no
hint of acquiescence; it is a wild charge with drum and trumpet on
the hidden foe. Firm in the faith, full of plans for the future, he
looks not on the darkening night, but on to-morrow's sunrise.
He tells us not to pity him. He is angry at the thought that people
on the streets of London, when they hear of his death will say,
"Poor Browning! He's gone! How he loved life!" Rather he wishes that
just as in this life when a friend met him in the city with a face
lighted up by the pleasure of the sudden encounter, with a shout of
hearty welcome--so now, when your thoughts perhaps turn to me, let
it not be with sorrow or pity, but with eager recognition. I shall
be striving there as I strove here: greet me with a cheer!
EPILOGUE
1889
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned--
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
--Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
--Being--who?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
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