Only in dwelling too exclusively, as perhaps the situation demands, on the renunciation of this world's successes, he has left out that part of his theory which demands that we should, accepting our limits, work within them for the love of man, but learn from their pressure and pain to transcend them always in the desire of infinite perfection.

In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, a masterpiece of argumentative and imaginative passion--such a poem as only Browning could have written, who, more than other poets, equalised, when most inspired, reasoning, emotions and intuitions into one material for poetry--he applies this view of his to the whole of man's life here and in the world to come, when the Rabbi in the quiet of old age considers what his life has been, and how God has wrought him through it for eternity.

But I leave that poem, which has nothing to do with art, for _Abt Vogler_, which is dedicated to music.
"When Solomon pronounced the Name of God, all the spirits, good and bad, assembled to do his will and build his palace.

And when I, Abt Vogler, touched the keys, I called the Spirits of Sound to me, and they have built my palace of music; and to inhabit it all the Great Dead came back, till in the vision I made a perfect music.

Nay, for a moment, I touched in it the infinite perfection; but now it is gone; I cannot bring it back.