V. Robert Browning. NEW YEAR'S EVE. HIS evening's meditation does not pretend to give an estimate of Robert Browning's works. Critically, therefore, it is narrowed into this: a study in Robert Browning for the purposes of edification and devout thought. I shall deal mainly with a poem entitled "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," stopping short of the Easter Day portion—in reality a separate poem. Like the wise man of old, the wise men of this and every other age ask "Who are our true spiritual teachers?" We are all looking for stars in the East. From the Milky Way-from the tangled nebulæ from the transient fires that flash and pass-these Eastern lights slowly but surely disengage themselves, and orb into solitary splendour as each century waxes and wanes. The first ten years of a man's life-work seldom fixes his position, although the work then done |