Not these, but to cling to a purpose amid all that depresses the senses at a time when the heart within us is also failing; to advance where there is nothing to arouse energy by opposition, and everything without and within to sap the very life of the soul.

Childe Roland is himself hopeless and almost heartless; the plain to which the leering cripple had pointed and over which he rides is created in the utter indigence of nature--a very nightmare of poverty and mean repulsiveness.

And yet he endures the test, and halts only when he faces the Dark Tower and blows the blast upon his horn.

Browning was wise to carry his romance no further; the one moment of action is enough; it is the breaking of the spell, the waking from the nightmare, and at that point the long-enduring quester may be left.

We are defrauded of nothing by the abrupt conclusion.
In the poems which treat of the love of man and woman Browning regards the union of soul with soul as the capital achievement of life, and also as affording one of its chief tests.