The public which refuses to credit the poet with earnestness in his quest of God may misconceive the dignified attempts of Arnold to free himself from the tangle of doubt, and deem his beautiful gestures purposely futile, but before condemning the poetic attitude toward religion it must also take into account the contrary disposition of Browning to kick his way out of difficulties with entire indifference to the greater dignity of an attitude of resignation; and no more than Arnold does Browning ever depict a poet who achieves religious satisfaction. Thus the hero of _Pauline_ comes to no triumphant issue, though he maintains, I have always had one lode-star; now As I look back, I see that I have halted Or hastened as I looked towards that star, A need, a trust, a yearning after God. The same bafflement is Sordello's, over whom the author muses, Of a power above you still, Which, utterly incomprehensible, Is out of rivalry, which thus you can Love, though unloving all conceived by man-- What need! And of--none the minutest duct To that out-nature, naught that would instruct And so let rivalry begin to live-- But of a Power its representative Who, being for authority the same, Communication different, should claim A course, the first chosen, but the last revealed, This human clear, as that Divine concealed-- What utter need! There is, after all, small need that the public should charge the poet with deliberate failure to gain a satisfactory view of the deity. The quest of a God who satisfies the poet's demand that He shall include all life, satisfy every impulse, be as personal as the poet himself, and embody only the harmony of beauty, is bound to be a long one. It appears inevitable that the poet should never get more than incomplete and troubled glimpses of such a deity, except, perhaps, in The too-bold dying song of her whose soul Knew no fellow for might, Passion, vehemence, grief, Daring, since Byron died. [Footnote: Said of Emily Bronte. Arnold, _Haworth Churchyard._] A complete view of the poet's deity is likely always to be as disastrous as was that of Lucretius, as Mrs. Browning conceived of him, Who dropped his plummet down the broad Deep universe, and said, "No God," Finding no bottom. [Footnote: _A Vision of Poets._] If the poet's independent quest of God is doomed to no more successful issue than this, it might seem advisable for him to tolerate the conventional religious systems of his day. Though every poet must feel with Tennyson, Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they, [Footnote: _In Memoriam._] yet he may feel, with Rossetti, that it is best to Let lore of all theology Be to thy soul what it can be. [Footnote: _Soothsay._]