The
inner voice still tells of a nobler heritage; but she understands and
loves these earthly things, and would fain linger among them, shy of the
further flight.
The whole conception of the poem is the counterpart of Browning's
_Easter Day_, where the soul chooses and is allowed to choose the same
regions of the lesser good and beauty for its home. In that poem the
soul is permitted to devote itself for ever to the finest things that
earth can give--life, literature, scientific knowledge, love. The
permission sends it wild with joy, and having chosen, it settles down
for ever to the earth-bound life. But eternity is too long for the earth
and all that is upon it. It wears time out, and all the desire of our
mortality ages and grows weary. The spirit, made for immortal thoughts
and loves and life, finds itself the ghastly prisoner of that which is
inevitably decaying; but its immortality postpones the decent and
appropriate end to an eternal mockery and doom. At last, in the
tremendous close, it wakens to the unspeakable blessedness of _not_
being satisfied with anything that earth can give, and so proves itself
adequate for its own inheritance of immortality.
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