that the Patriot is one who entered the city a year before, and who during this time has done his best to secure reforms, but at the end of the year is led forth to the scaffold. The poem pictures to us the thoughts that stir his mind on the way to his death. He recognizes the same street, he remembers the roses, the myrtle, the house-roofs so crowded that they seem to heave and sway, the flags on the church spires, the bells, the willingness of the multitude to give him even the sun; but he it is who aimed at the impossible--to give his friends the sun. Having done all he could, now comes his reward. There is nobody on the house-tops, and only a few too old to go to the scaffold have crept to the windows. The great crowd is at the gate or at the scaffold's foot. He goes in the rain, his hands tied behind him, his forehead bleeding from the stones that are hurled at him. The closing thought, so abruptly expressed, the most difficult one in the poem, is a mere hint of what might have happened had he triumphed in the world's sense of the word. He might have fallen dead,--dead in a deeper sense than the loss of life; his soul might have become dead to truth, to noble ideals, and to aspiration. Had he done what men wanted him to do, he would have been paid by the world. He has certainly not done the world's bidding, and in a few short words he reveals his resignation, his heroism, and his sublime triumph. "Now instead, 'Tis God shall repay: I am safer so." The first line of the last stanza in the first edition of the poem contained the word "Brescia," suggesting a reference to the reformer Arnold. But Browning later omitted "Brescia," because the poem was not meant to be in any sense historical, but rather to represent the reformer of every age whose ideals are misunderstood and whose noblest work is rewarded by death. "History," said Aristotle, "tells what Alcibiades did, poetry what he ought to have done." "The Patriot" is not a matter-of-fact narrative, but a revelation of human experience. The reader must approach such a poem as a work of art. Sympathetic and contemplative attention must be given to it as an entirety. Then point after point, idea after idea, will become clear and vivid, and at last the whole will be intensely realized. For another example of Browning's short poems take "A Woman's Last Word." Suppose one tries to read this as if it were an ordinary lyric. One is sure to be greatly confused as to its meaning. What is it all about? The words are simple enough, and while the ordinary man recognizes this, he is all the more perplexed. Perceiving certain merits, he exclaims, "If a man can write such beautiful individual lines, why does he not make his whole story clear and simple?"