But sure that thought and word and deed
  All go to swell his love for me,
Me, made because that love had need
  Of something irreversibly
  Pledged solely its content to be. 30
Yes, yes, a tree which must ascend,
  No poison-gourd foredoomed to stoop! 
I have God’s warrant, could I blend
  All hideous sins, as in a cup,
  To drink the mingled venoms up;
Secure my nature will convert
  The draught to blossoming gladness fast: 
While sweet dews turn to the gourd’s hurt,
  And bloat, and while they bloat it, blast,
  As from the first its lot was cast. 40
For as I lie, smiled on, full-fed
  By unexhausted power to bless,
I gaze below on hell’s fierce bed,
  And those its waves of flame oppress,
  Swarming in ghastly wretchedness;
Whose life on earth aspired to be
  One altar-smoke, so pure!—­to win
If not love like God’s love for me,
  At least to keep his anger in;
  And all their striving turned to sin. 50
Priest, doctor, hermit, monk grown white
  With prayer, the broken-hearted nun,
The martyr, the wan acolyte,
  The incense-swinging child—­undone
  Before God fashioned star or sun! 
God, whom I praise; how could I praise,
  If such as I might understand,
Make out and reckon on his ways,
  And bargain for his love, and stand,
Paying a price, at his right hand? 60

NOTES

“Johannes Agricola in Meditation” presents the doctrine of predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a divine revelation.  Those elected for God’s love can do nothing to weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways he could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.

Johannes Agricola:  (1492-1566), Luther’s secretary, 1519, afterward in conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Luther antinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as of no use under the Gospel dispensation.  In a note accompanying the first publication of this poem, Browning quotes from “The Dictionary of All Religions” (1704):  “They say that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that God doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification.”  Though many antinomians taught thus, says George Willis Cooke in his “Browning Guide Book,” it does not correctly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality held moral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but for guidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principles and motives necessary.