Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me. 
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.

* * * * *

So, take and use Thy work: 
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o’ the stuff, what warpings past the aim! 
My times be in Thy hand! 
Perfect the cup as planned! 
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!”

The emotion and the measure of Rabbi ben Ezra have the chastened, sweet gravity of wise old age. Prospice has all the impetuous blood and fierce lyric fire of militant manhood.  It is a cry of passionate exultation and exaltation in the very face of death:  a war-cry of triumph over the last of foes.  I would like to connect it with the quotation from Dante which Browning, in a published letter, tells us that he wrote in his wife’s Testament after her death:  “Thus I believe, thus I affirm, thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall pass to another better, there, where that lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.”  If Rabbi ben Ezra has been excelled as a Song of Life, then Prospice may have been excelled as a Hymn of Death.

      “PROSPICE.

      Fear death?—­to feel the fog in my throat,
          The mist in my face,
      When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
          I am nearing the place,
      The power of the night, the press of the storm,
          The post of the foe;
      Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
          Yet the strong man must go;
      For the journey is done and the summit attained,
          And the barriers fall,
      Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
          The reward of it all. 
      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!”

Last of all comes the final word, the summary or conclusion of the whole matter, in the threefold speech of the Epilogue, a comprehensive and suggestive vision of the religious life of humanity.

FOOTNOTES: