"Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one.
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,
Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay, my son.
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven
Nor yet disproven. Wherefore be thou wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No,'
She sees the best that glimmers through the worst,
She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer through the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wailed 'Mirage!'"
This illustrates Tennyson's mental attitude. If all who plume themselves upon their doubts
would put themselves into this posture of mind, they would find themselves in possession
of a very substantial faith.
Tennyson has touched with light more than one problem of the soul. The little stanza
beginning
"Flower in the crannied wall"
has shown us how the mysteries of being are shared by the commonest lives; the short
lyric "Wages" condenses into a few lines the strongest proof of the life to come; and
"Crossing the Bar" has borne many a spirit in peace out to the boundless sea.
Robert Browning's robust faith helps us in a different way. His daring and triumphant
optimism makes us ashamed of doubt. In "Abt Vogler," in "Rabbi Ben Ezra," in
"Pompilia," in "Christmas Eve," we are caught up and carried onward by an unflinching
and overcoming faith. Perhaps the most convincing arguments for religious reality in
Browning's poems are those of "An Epistle" and of "Cleon," where the cry of the human
soul for the assurance which the Christian faith supplies is given such a penetrating voice.
And there is no reasoning about the Incarnation, in any theological book that I have ever
read, which seems to me so cogent as that great passage in "Saul," where David cries:
"Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out. I would—knowing which,
I know that my service is perfect. Oh, speak through me now!
Would I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst thou—so wilt thou!"