This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks the
high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concerned
with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstract
question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge is
dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulse
of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, the
poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, and
to save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into the
kingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life is
triumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils of
earth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and the
loss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwrecked
mariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was a
treacherous ally to his faith.

But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist,
recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems to
be possible according to the theory in his later works. In the early
poems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge of
the good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On the
contrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine,
according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom.

While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--either
blind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, in
his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own
purposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able
to maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality.
He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling
_within_ his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its