The shame of this failure beset him from the past, and the failure was caused because he had not been true to the aspirations which took him beyond himself.

When he returned to self, the glory departed.

And a fine simile of his soul as a young witch whose blue eyes, As she stood naked by the river springs, Drew down a God, who, as he sat in the sunshine on her knees singing of heaven, saw the mockery in her eyes and vanished, tells of how the early ravishment departed, slain by self-scorn that followed on self-worship.

But one love and reverence remained--that for Shelley, the Sun-treader, and kept him from being "wholly lost." To strengthen this one self-forgetful element, the love of Pauline enters in, and the new impulse brings back something of the ancient joy.

"Let me take it," he cries, "and sing on again fast as fancies come; Rudely, the verse being as the mood it paints,"-- a line which tells us how Browning wished his metrical movement to be judged.