Ixion, a far finer poem than Jochanan Hakkadosh, is, no doubt, an equally sincere utterance of personal belief.  The poem is a monologue, in unrhymed hexameters and pentameters.  It presents the old myth in a new light.  Ixion is represented as the Prometheus of man’s righteous revolt against the tyranny of an unjust God.  The poem is conceived in a spirit of intense earnestness, and worked out with great vigour and splendour of diction.  For passion and eloquence nothing in it surpasses the finely culminating last lines, of which I can but tear a few, only too barbarously, from their context:—­

      “What is the influence, high o’er Hell, that turns to a rapture
        Pain—­and despair’s murk mists blends in a rainbow of hope? 
      What is beyond the obstruction, stage by stage tho’ it baffle? 
        Back must I fall, confess ‘Ever the weakness I fled’? 
      No, for beyond, far, far is a Purity all-unobstructed! 
        Zeus was Zeus—­not Man:  wrecked by his weakness I whirl. 
      Out of the wreck I rise—­past Zeus to the Potency o’er him! 
        I—­to have hailed him my friend!  I—­to have clasped her—­my love! 
      Pallid birth of my pain,—­where light, where light is, aspiring
        Thither I rise, whilst thou—­Zeus, keep the godship and sink!”

While Ixion is the noblest and most heroically passionate of these poems, Adam, Lilith, and Eve, is the most pregnant and suggestive.  Browning has rarely excelled it in certain qualities, hardly found in any other poet, of pungency, novelty, and penetrating bitter-sweetness.

      “ADAM, LILITH, AND EVE.

      One day it thundered and lightened. 
      Two women, fairly frightened,
      Sank to their knees, transformed, transfixed,
      At the feet of the man who sat betwixt;
      And ‘Mercy!’ cried each, ’If I tell the truth
      Of a passage in my youth!’

      Said This:  ’Do you mind the morning
      I met your love with scorning? 
      As the worst of the venom left my lips,
      I thought, “If, despite this lie, he strips
      The mask from my soul with a kiss—­I crawl,
      His slave,—­soul, body and all!"’

      Said That:  ’We stood to be married;
      The priest, or someone, tarried;
      “If Paradise-door prove locked?” smiled you. 
      I thought, as I nodded, smiling too,
      “Did one, that’s away, arrive—­nor late
      Nor soon should unlock Hell’s gate!"’

      It ceased to lighten and thunder. 
      Up started both in wonder,
      Looked round, and saw that the sky was clear,
      Then laughed, ‘Confess you believed us, Dear!’
      ‘I saw through the joke!’ the man replied
      They seated themselves beside.”