I feel for what I verily find--again The face, again the eyes, again, through all, The heart and its immeasurable love Of my one friend, my only, all my own, Who put his breast between the spears and me. Ever with Caponsacchi! . . . O lover of my life, O soldier-saint, No work begun shall ever pause for death! Love will be helpful to me more and more I' the coming course, the new path I must tread-- My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that! * * * * * Not one faint fleck of failure! Why explain? What I see, oh, he sees, and how much more! * * * * * Do not the dead wear flowers when dressed for God? Say--I am all in flowers from head to foot! Say--not one flower of all he said and did, But dropped a seed, has grown a balsam-tree Whereof the blossoming perfumes the place At this supreme of moments!" She has recognised the truth. This _is_ love--but how different from the love of the smilings and the whisperings, the "He is your lover!" He is a priest, and could not marry; but she thinks he would not have married if he could: "Marriage on earth seems such a counterfeit, * * * * * In heaven we have the real and true and sure." In heaven, where the angels "know themselves into one"; and are never married, no, nor given in marriage: ". . . They are man and wife at once When the true time is . . . So, let him wait God's instant men call years; Meantime hold hard by truth and his great soul, Do out the duty! Through such souls alone God, stooping, shows sufficient of his light For us i' the dark to rise by. And I rise." * * * * * Who would analyse this child would tear a flower to pieces. Pompilia is no heroine, no character; but indeed a "rose gathered for the breast of God": "Et, rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses, L'espace d'un matin." FOOTNOTES: [126:1] _Introduction to the Study of Browning_, 1886, p. 152. [130:1] Abandoning for the moment intermediate events, it was _this_ which moved Guido to the triple murder: for once the old couple and Pompilia dead, with the question of his claim to the dowry still undecided as it was, his child, the new-born babe, might inherit all. [131:1] Guido's second speech, wherein he tells the truth, in the hope that his "impenitence" may defer his execution. [131:2] Her dying speech. [131:3] Browning's summary. Book I.