The young poet, who, through a fading autumn evening, lies upon his death-bed, has been faithless to his high calling, and yet never wholly faithless.

As the pallid light declines, he studies his own soul, he reviews his past, he traces his wanderings from the way, and all has become clear.

He has failed for the uses of earth; but he recognises in himself capacities and desires for which no adequate scope could ever have been found in this life; and restored to the spirit of love, of trust, by such love, such trust as he can give Pauline, he cannot deny the witnessing audible within his own heart to a future life which may redeem the balance of his temporal loss.

The thought which plays so large a part in Browning's later poetry is already present and potent here.
Two incidents in the history of a soul--studied by the speaker under the wavering lights of his hectic malady and fluctuating moods of passion--are dealt with in a singularly interesting and original way.

He describes, with strange and beautiful imagery, the cynical, bitter pleasure--few of us do not know it--which the intellectual faculties sometimes derive from mocking and drawing down to their own level the spiritual powers, the intuitive powers, which are higher than they, higher, yet less capable of justification or verification by the common tests of sense and understanding.