And this would plunge him into the depths of self were it not for that Imagination in him whose power never fails to bear him beyond himself; and is finally in him a need, a trust, a yearning after God; whom, even when he is most lost, he feels is always acting on him, and at every point of life transcending him.

And Imagination began to create, and made him at one with all men and women of whom he had read (the same motive is repeated in Sordello), but especially at one with those out of the Greek world he loved—­“a God wandering after Beauty”—­a high-crested chief

    Sailing with troops of friends to Tenedos.

Never was anything more clear than these lives he lived beyond himself; and the lines in which he records the vision have all the sharpness and beauty of his after-work—­

    I had not seen a work of lofty art. 
    Nor woman’s beauty nor sweet Nature’s face,
    Yet, I say, never morn broke clear as those
    On the dim-clustered isles in the blue sea,
    The deep groves and white temples and wet caves: 
    And nothing ever will surprise me now—­
    Who stood beside the naked Swift-footed,
    Who bound my forehead with Proserpine’s hair.

Yet, having this infinite world of beauty, he aimed low; lost in immediate wants, striving only for the mortal and the possible, while all the time there lived in him, breathing with keen desire, powers which, developed, would make him at one with the infinite Life of God.

But having thus been untrue to his early aspiration, he fell into the sensual life, like Paracelsus, and then, remorseful, sought peace in self-restraint; but no rest, no contentment was gained that way.  It is one of Browning’s root-ideas that peace is not won by repression of the noble passions, but by letting them loose in full freedom to pursue after their highest aims.  Not in restraint, but in the conscious impetuosity of the soul towards the divine realities, is the wisdom of life.  Many poems are consecrated to this idea.

So, cleansing his soul by ennobling desire, he sought to realise his dreams in the arts, in the creation and expression of pure Beauty.  And he followed Poetry and Music and Painting, and chiefly explored passion and mind in the great poets.  Fed at these deep springs, his soul rose into keen life; his powers burst forth, and gazing on all systems and schemes of philosophy and government, he heard ineffable things unguessed by man.  All Plato entered into him; he vowed himself to liberty and the new world where “men were to be as gods and earth us heaven.”  Thus, yet here on earth, not only beyond the earth, he would attain the Perfect.  Man also shall attain it; and so thinking, he turned, like Sordello, to look at and learn mankind, pondering “how best life’s end might be attained—­an end comprising every joy.”

And even as he believed, the glory vanished; everything he had hoped for broke to pieces: