Last Ride Together, The

( Men and Women , 1855; Romances , 1863; Dramatic Romances , 1868.) This poem is considered by many critics to be the noblest of all Browning’s love poems; for dramatic intensity, for power, for its exhibition of what Mr. Raleigh has aptly termed Browning’s “tremendous concentration of his power in excluding the object world and its relations,” the poem is certainly unequalled. It is a poem of unrequited love, in which there is nothing but the noblest resignation; a compliance with the decrees of fate, but with neither a shadow of disloyalty to the ideal, nor despair of the result of the dismi al to the lover’s own soul development. The woman may reject him,—there is no wounded pride; she does not love him,—he is not angry with her, nor annoyed that she fails to estimate him as highly as he estimates himself. He has the ideal in his heart; it shall be cherished as the occupant of his heart’s throne for ever—of the ideal he, at least, can never be deprived. This ideal shall be used to elevate and sublimate his desires, to expand his soul to the fruition of his boundle aspiration for human love, used till it transfigures the human in the man till it almost becomes Divine. And so—as he knows his fate—since all his life seemed meant for, fails—his whole heart rises up to ble the woman, to whom he gives back the hope she gave; he asks only its memory and her leave for one more last ride with him. It is granted: “Who knows but the world may end to-night?” (a line which no poet but Browning ever could have written. The force of the hour, the value of the quinte ential moment as factors in the development of the soul, have never been set forth, even by Browning, with such startling power.) She lay for a moment on his breast, and then the ride began. He will not question how he might have succeeded better had he said this or that, done this or the other. She might not only not have loved him, she might have hated. He reflects that all men strive, but few succeed. He contrasts the petty done with the vast undone, “What hand and brain went ever paired? What heart alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen?” And the meaning of it all, the reason of the struggle, the outcome of the effort? The poet alone can tell: he says what we feel . “But, poet,” he asks, “are you nearer your own sublime than we rhymele ones? You sculptor, you man of music, have you attained your aims?” Then he consoles himself that if here we had perfect bli , still there is the life beyond, and it is better to have a bli to die with dim-descried— “Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?” What if for ever he rode on with her as now, “The instant made eternity”?