BROWNING CELEBRATION.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 94, 13 February 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

BROWNING CELEBRATION.

A servioi'. was held on tho l'2fch December in tho parish church of St. Marylcboone, London, iu commemoration of the marriage of Robert Browning, which occurred at that church 50 years ago, and of his death on December 12th, 1889. The Dean of Canterbury, who was the preacher, thus concluded his sermon : They were recalling the wedded happiness begun in that church, of two who now were dead ; but again and agam Robert Browning.showed that he did not regard death as the end cither of life or of "wedded love. But it must not be for a moment supposed that what' Browning urged was a love like that of Gcraint for Enid ; a love which quenched effort and became " a drowning life besotted in sweet self." Against that be gave his lovely warning in "Ferishtah's Fancies." Ho rejected the ideal oF a life under the forest boutjhs, or in the lovely splendours of some selfish palace of art. He claimed as the proper sphere for true love's action and development the common life of men in the crowded city. Thus to him the love of husband and wife was the embroirK >v, the illumination, the inspiring force"o>a life devoted to noble effort for the good of man. When they considered how madly ruinous the unions of not a few poets and men of genius had been, he said that to contemplate that marriage was a delight and an example. They thought of Shakespeare livin" for years in London, with his wife left at Stratford-on-Avon ; they thought of Dante never once mentioning or even alluding to his wife during those long years of bitter exile , they thought of Milton, and how the commonplace daughter of the ruined and roystering cavalier lit the fires of hell upon his desecrated hearth ; they thought of Coleridge separated from his wife for so many years ; of Shelley and the frightful tragedy in which his hasty youthful marriage ended ; of Byron aud the repellent spectacle presented by his artificial misanthropy and the paraded pageant of his bleeding heart. And some poets there had been who. indeed, did learn before thev died, but almost too late, that earth'furnishes no blessing like that of a pure and happy wedded love. Such a poet was Moore. Indeed pure earthly love, at its highest, was, with Browning, the type of that Heavenly love with which (as the Hebrew prophets and psalmists would teach them) the soul felt for Cod, and with which, as St. James expressed it, the Spirit of God yearned over the soui even to jealousy. The preacher proceeded to speak of Browning's optimism as a characteristic more precious than all to a doubting and desponding age. The main lesson of his life and poetry might be summed up in a sentence :—Live out truly, nobly, bravely, wisely, hopefully, your human life as a human life, not as a supernatural life, tor you are a man, aud not an angel: not as a sensual life, for you are a man and not a brute ; not as a wicked life, for you aie a man aud not a demon ; no* as a frivolous life, for you arc a man and not an insect. Live each day the true life of a man of today ; not yesterday's life only, lest you become a nuirmurer ; not to-morrow's life only, lost you become a visionary ; hut the life of happy yesterdays and confident to-morrows —the life of to-day unwounded by the Parthian arrows of yesterday aud undarkened by the possible cloudkuid of to-morrow. Life is indeed a mystery, but it was God who gave it, in a world wrapped round with sweet air and bathed in sunshine, and abounding with knowledge, aud a ray of eternal light falls upon it even here, and that light shall wholly transfigure it beyond the grave.