The first sees a vision of the present and the future in which all the battle of our life passes into a glorious end; nor does the momentary doubt that occurs at the close of the poem—­that his belief in a divine conclusion of our strife may only have been caused by his own happiness in love—­really trouble his conviction.  That love itself is part of the power which makes the noble conclusion sure.  The certainty of this conclusion made his courage in the fight unwavering, despair impossible, joy in battle, duty; and to be “ever a fighter” in the foremost rank the highest privilege of man.

    Then the cloud-rift broadens, spanning earth that’s under,
      Wide our world displays its worth, man’s strife and strife’s success: 
    All the good and beauty, wonder crowning wonder,
      Till my heart and soul applaud perfection, nothing less.

And for that reason, because of the perfectness to come, Browning lived every hour of his life for good and against wrong.  He said with justice of himself, and with justice he brought the ideal aim and the real effort together: 

    I looked beyond the world for truth and beauty: 
     Sought, found, and did my duty.

Nor, almost in the very grasp of death, did this faith fail him.  He kept, in the midst of a fretful, slothful, wailing world, where prophets like Carlyle and Ruskin were as impatient and bewildered, as lamenting and despondent, as the decadents they despised, the temper of his Herakles in Balaustion.  He left us that temper as his last legacy, and he could not have left us a better thing.  We may hear it in his last poem, and bind it about our hearts in sorrow and joy, in battle and peace, in the hour of death and the days of judgment.

    At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time
        When you set your fancies free,
    Will they pass to where—­by death, fools think, imprisoned—­
    Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so
                        —­Pity me?

    Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken
        What had I on earth to do
    With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? 
    Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
                        —­Being—­who?

    One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
        Never doubted clouds would break,
    Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
    Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
                        Sleep to wake.

    No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time
        Greet the unseen with a cheer! 
    Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
    “Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed,—­fight on, fare ever
                        There as here!”