Through them infinite love called to thee; and even now thou clingest to earth's love as all.

It is precious, but it exists to bear thee beyond the love of earth into the boundless love of God in me." At last, beaten to his last fortress, all broken down, he cries: Thou Love of God! Or let me die, Or grant what shall seem heaven almost.
Let me not know that all is lost, Though lost it be--leave me not tied To this despair--this corpse-like bride! Let that old life seem mine--no more-- With limitation as before, With darkness, hunger, toil, distress: Be all the earth a wilderness! Only let me go on, go on, Still hoping ever and anon To reach one eve the Better Land! This is put more strongly, as in the line: "Be all the earth a wilderness!" than Browning himself would have put it.

But he is in the passion of the man who speaks, and heightens the main truth into an extreme.

But the theory is there, and it is especially applied to the love of beauty and therefore to the arts.

The illustrations are taken from music and painting, from sculpture and poetry.