Solitude and Society The volume which consists of _La Saisiaz_ and _The Two Poets of Croisic_ (1878) brings the work of this decade to a close.[119] _La Saisiaz_, the record of thoughts that were awakened during that solitary clamber to the summit of Salève after the death of Miss Egerton-Smith, is not an elegy, but it remains with us as a memorial of friendship. In reading it we discern the tall white figure of the "stranger lady," leaning through the terrace wreaths of leaf and bloom, or pacing that low grass-path which she had loved and called her own. It serves Browning's purpose in the poem that she should have been one of those persons who in this world have not manifested all that lies within them. Does she still exist, or is she now no more than the thing which lies in the little enclosure at Collonge? The poem after its solemn and impressive prelude becomes the record of an hour's debate of the writer with himself--a debate which has a definite aim and is brought to a definite issue. In conducting that debate on immortality, Browning is neither Christian nor anti-Christian. The Christian creed involves a question of history; he cannot here admit historical considerations; he will see the matter out as he is an individual soul, on the grounds suggested by his individual consciousness and his personal knowledge. It may be that any result he arrives at is a result for himself alone. But why conduct an argument in verse? Is not prose a fitter medium for such a discussion? The answer is that the poem is more than an argument; it is the record in verse of an experience, the story of a pregnant and passionate hour, during which passion quickened the intellect; and the head, while resisting all illusions of the heart, was roused to that resistance by the heart itself. Such an hour is full of events; it may be almost epic in its plenitude of action; but the events are ideas. The frame and setting of the discussion also are more than frame and setting; they co-operate with the thoughts; they form part of the experience. The poet is alone among the mountains, with dawn and sunset for associates, Jura thrilled to gold at sunrise, Salève in its evening rose-bloom, Mont-Blanc which strikes greatness small; or at night he is beneath the luminous worlds which One by one came lamping--chiefly that prepotency of Mars. While he climbs towards the summit he is aware of "Earth's most exquisite disclosures, heaven's own God in evidence"; he stands face to face with Nature--"rather with Infinitude." All through his mountain ascent the vigour of life is aroused within him; and, as he returns--there is her grave.