The "Judgment of God" is a monologue, quite as good in its way as many of the short monologues of Browning. It is the knight against whom accusation has been brought that tells us the feelings and impressions of the moment that he enters the lists to fight. In this case we are more moved to sympathy than in the former stories, because we know that the man, whether otherwise bad or good, has saved a woman from the stake, and killed the lords who were about to burn her. So we are inclined to think of him as a hero. We have just one sudden vision of a man's mind, as he stands in the face of death, with no sympathy about him except that of his old father, who comes to give him advice about fighting, because he is to be matched against a very skilful knight. "Swerve to the left, son Roger," he said, "When you catch his eyes through the helmet-slit, Swerve to the left, then out at his head, And the Lord God give you joy of it!" The old man knows how to fight, has probably won many a battle, and he has observed the way that the light is falling. So he tells his son, "When you begin to fight, don't turn to the right--turn to the left; then you will be able to see his eyes through the helmet, and immediately that you see them, strike straight for his head, and may God help you to kill him." He has just heard these words from his father when the prologue begins. The blue owls on my father's hood Were a little dimm'd, as I turned away; This giving up of blood for blood Will finish here somehow to-day. So when I walked from out the tent, Their howling almost blinded me; Yet for all that I was not bent By any shame. Hard by, the sea Made a noise like the aspens where We did that wrong, but now the place Is very pleasant, and the air Blows cool on any passer's face. And all the throng is gather'd now Into the circle of these lists-- Yea, howl out, butchers! tell me how His hands were cut off at the wrists; And how Lord Roger bore his face A league above his spear point, high Above the owls, to that strong place Among the waters--yea, yea, cry!