“And how shall I assure them? Can they share --They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength About each spirit, that needs must bide its time, {200} Living and learning still as years assist Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see-- With me who hardly am withheld at all, But shudderingly, scarce a shred between, Lie bare to the universal prick of light? {205} Is it for nothing we grow old and weak, We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too. To me, that story--ay, that Life and Death Of which I wrote ‘it was’--to me, it is; --Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else. {210} Is not God now i’ the world His power first made? Is not His love at issue still with sin, Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around? Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise {215} To the right hand of the throne--what is it beside, When such truth, breaking bounds, o’erfloods my soul, And, as I saw the sin and death, even so See I the need yet transiency of both, The good and glory consummated thence? {220} I saw the Power; I see the Love, once weak, Resume the Power: and in this word ‘I see’, Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both That moving o’er the spirit of man, unblinds His eye and bids him look. These are, I see; {225} But ye, the children, His beloved ones too, Ye need,--as I should use an optic glass I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i’ the world, It had been given a crafty smith to make; A tube, he turned on objects brought too close, {230} Lying confusedly insubordinate For the unassisted eye to master once: Look through his tube, at distance now they lay, Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear! Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth {235} I see, reduced to plain historic fact, Diminished into clearness, proved a point And far away: ye would withdraw your sense From out eternity, strain it upon time, Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, {240} Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread, As though a star should open out, all sides, Grow the world on you, as it is my world. -- 202. “Oh, not alone when life flows still do truth and power emerge, but also when strange chance ruffles its current; in unused conjuncture, when sickness breaks the body--hunger, watching, excess, or languor-- oftenest death’s approach--peril, deep joy, or woe.” --Browning’s ‘Paracelsus’.