Pompilia ends her words more quietly, in the faith that comes with death.  Caponsacchi has to live on, to bear the burden of the world.  But Pompilia has borne all she had to bear.  All pain and horror are behind her, as she lies in the stillness, dying.  And in the fading of this life, she knows she loves Caponsacchi in the spiritual world and will love him for ever.  Each speaks according to the circumstance, but she most nobly: 

    He is ordained to call and I to come! 
    Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God? 
    Say,—­I am all in flowers from head to foot! 
    Say,—­not one flower of all he said and did,
    Might seem to flit unnoticed, fade unknown,
    But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree
    Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place
    At this supreme of moments!  He is a priest;
    He cannot marry therefore, which is right: 
    I think he would not marry if he could. 
    Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit,
    Mere imitation of the inimitable: 
    In heaven we have the real and true and sure. 
    ’Tis there they neither marry nor are given
    In marriage but are as the angels:  right,
    Oh how right that is, how like Jesus Christ
    To say that!  Marriage-making for the earth,
    With gold so much,—­birth, power, repute so much,
    Or beauty, youth so much, in lack of these! 
    Be as the angels rather, who, apart,
    Know themselves into one, are found at length
    Married, but marry never, no, nor give
    In marriage; they are man and wife at once
    When the true time is; here we have to wait
    Not so long neither!  Could we by a wish
    Have what we will and get the future now,
    Would we wish aught done undone in the past? 
    So, let him wait God’s instant men call years;
    Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul,
    Do out the duty!  Through such souls alone
    God stooping shows sufficient of His light
    For us i’ the dark to rise by.  And I rise.

Last of these main characters, the Pope appears.  Guido, condemned to death by the law, appeals from the law to the head of the Church, because, being half an ecclesiastic, his death can only finally be decreed by the ecclesiastical arm.  An old, old man, with eyes clear of the quarrels, conventions, class prejudices of the world, the Pope has gone over all the case during the day, and now night has fallen.  Far from the noise of Rome, removed from the passions of the chief characters, he is sitting in the stillness of his closet, set on his decision.  We see the whole case now, through his mind, in absolute quiet.  He has been on his terrace to look at the stars, and their solemn peace is with him.  He feels that he is now alone with God and his old age.  And being alone, he is not concise, but garrulous and discursive.  Browning makes him so on purpose.  But discursive