It is the water which supports the swimmer, but in which he cannot live; the dross of straw and chaff which yields the brilliant purity of flame (c.

55); the technical cluster of sounds from which issues "music--that burst of pillared cloud by day and pillared fire by night" (c.

41).

The whole poem is haunted by the sense of dissonance which these images suggest between the real and the apparent meaning of things.

Browning's world, else so massive and so indubitable, becomes unsubstantial and phantasmal, an illusive pageant in which Truth is present only under a mask, being "forced to manifest itself through falsehood." Juan, who declares that, unlike poets, "we prose-folk" always dream, has, in effect, a visionary quality of imagination which suits his thesis and his theme.