"Thought hankers after speech, while no speech may evince Feeling like music,--mine, o'er-burthened with each gift From every visitant, at last resolved to shift Its burthen to the back of some musician dead And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, instead Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in the same, Truth that escapes prose,--nay, puts poetry to shame. I read the note, I strike the Key, I bid _record_ The instrument--thanks greet the veritable word! And not in vain I urge: 'O dead and gone away, Assist who struggles yet, thy strength becomes my stay, Thy record serve as well to register--I felt And knew thus much of truth! With me, must knowledge melt Into surmise and doubt and disbelief unless Thy music reassure--I gave no idle guess, But gained a certitude I yet may hardly keep! What care? since round is piled a monumental heap Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as well Was certain of the same! thou, master of the spell, Mad'st moonbeams marble, didst _record_ what other men Feel only to forget!'" The man in the case is merely an appreciator, not a creator, yet he experiences with equal force music's power as a recorder of feeling. He notes also that the feeling must appear from time to time in a new dress, "the stuff that's made To furnish man with thought and feeling is purveyed Substantially the same from age to age, with change Of the outside only for successive feasters." In this case, the old tunes have actually been worked over by the more modern composer whose form has not yet sufficiently gone by to fail of an immediate appeal to this person with feelings kindled by similar experiences. What the speaker in the poem perceives is not merely the fact of the feelings experienced but the power of the music to take him off upon a long train of more or less philosophical reasoning born of that very element of change. In this power of suggestiveness lies music's greater range of spiritual force even when the feeling expressed is not of the deepest. If we look at his poems on painting, the same principles of art are insisted upon except that more emphasis is laid upon the positive value of the incompleteness of the form. In so far as painting or sculpture reaches a perfect unity of thought and form it loses its power of suggesting an infinite beauty beyond any that our earth-born race may express. This in Browning's opinion is the limitation of Greek art. It touches perfection or completion in expression and in so doing limits its range to the brief passion of a day. The effect of such art is to arouse a sort of despair, for it so far transcends merely human beauty that there seems nothing left to accomplish: "So, testing your weakness by their strength, Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty Measured by Art in your breadth and length, You learned--to submit is a mortal's duty."