(Marry and amen!) learn one lesson hence
Of many which whatever lives should teach:
This lesson, that our human speech is naught,
Our human testimony false, our fame
And human estimation words and wind.
Why take the artistic way to prove so much?
Because, it is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to minds like mine at least....
But Art,--wherein man nowise speaks to men,
Only to mankind,--Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever e'en Beethoven dived,--
So write a book shall mean beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.
And save the soul!

From first to last Browning understood the prevailing criticism of
his poetry, directed against its so-called lack of musical rhythm.
He commented on it more than once. But he answered it always in the
same way, in _Pippa Passes_, in the last stanzas of _Pacchiarotto_,
and in the _Epilogue_ to the same volume. He insisted that what the
critics meant by melody was a childish jingle of rimes like Mother
Goose. Referring to _Sordello_, he makes the Second Student in
_Pippa Passes_ remark, "Instead of cramp couplets, each like a
knife in your entrails, he should write, says Bluphocks, both