Numerous and varied expressions of the idea of conversion set forth in this passage, occur in Browning’s poetry, evidencing his deep sense of this great and indispensable condition of soul-life, of being born anew (or from above, as it should be rendered in the Gospel, a’/nwqen, that is, through the agency of a higher personality), in order to see the kingdom of God-- evidencing his conviction that “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: for lo! the kingdom of God is within you.” In the poem entitled ‘Cristina’, the speaker is made to say,-- “Oh, we’re sunk enough here, God knows! but not quite so sunk that moments, Sure tho’ seldom, are denied us, when the spirit’s true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, and apprise it if pursuing Or the right way or the wrong way, to its triumph or undoing. There are flashes struck from midnights, there are fire-flames noon-days kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish, whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had play unstifled, Seems the sole work of a life-time that away the rest have trifled.” And again, when the Pope in ‘The Ring and the Book’ has come to the decision to sign the death-warrant of Guido and his accomplices, he says: “For the main criminal I have no hope except in such a SUDDENNESS OF FATE. I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: but the night’s black was burst through by a blaze-- thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, through her whole length of mountain visible: there lay the city thick and plain with spires, and, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. SO MAY THE TRUTH BE FLASHED OUT BY ONE BLOW, AND GUIDO SEE, ONE INSTANT, AND BE SAVED. Else I avert my face, nor follow him into that sad obscure sequestered state where God UNMAKES BUT TO REMAKE the soul he else made first in vain; which must not be. Enough, for I may die this very night: and how should I dare die, this man let live? Carry this forthwith to the Governor!” Browning is the most essentially Christian of living poets. Though he rarely speaks ‘in propria persona’ in his poetry, any one who has gone over it all, can have no doubt as to his own most vital beliefs. What the Beauty-loving Soul in Tennyson’s ‘Palace of Art’ say of herself, cannot be suspected even, of Browning:-- “I take possession of man’s mind and deed. I care not what the sects may brawl. I sit as God holding no form of creed, But contemplating all.”