The verses are a confession which gives the reason of that gallant beating up against the wind, noticeable in many of Browning's later poems.

He could not cease from hope; but hope and faith had much to encounter, and sometimes he would reduce the grounds of his hope to the lowest, as if to make sure against illusion and to test the fortitude of hope even at its weakest.

The hope of immortality which was his own inevitably extended itself beyond himself, and became an interpreter of the mysteries of our earthly life.

In contrast with the ardent ideality of _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ may be set the uncompromising realism of _Apparent Failure_, with its poetry of the Paris morgue.

The lover of life will scrutinise death at its ugliest and worst, blinking no hideous fact.