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Mr. Ruskin has laboured hard
to save St. Mark’s, Venice, from the destroying hand of the restorer. Mr.
Browning wrote this poem to save from complete destruction a much less
important, though a celebrated building, the Paris Morgue, the deadhouse
wherein are exposed the bodies of persons found dead, that they may be
claimed by their friends. The Doric little Morgue is close to Notre Dame,
on the banks of the Seine, and is one of the sights of Paris—repulsive as
it is—which everybody makes a point of seeing. The poet entered the
building and saw behind the great screen of glass three bodies exposed for
identification on the copper couch fronting him. They were three men who
had killed themselves, and the poet mentally questions them why they
abhorred their lives so much. You “poor boy” wanted to be an emperor,
forsooth; you “old one” were a red socialist, and this next one fell a
prey to misdirected love. The three deadly sins of Pride, Covetousness,
and Lust had each its victim. And before them stands the poet of optimism,
not staggered in his doctrine even by this sad sight. Not for a moment
does his faith fail that “what God blessed once can never prove accurst.”
His optimism in this poem is at high-water mark; where some weak-kneed
believers in humanity would have found a breaking link in the chain, Mr.
Browning sees but “apparent failure,” and declines to believe the doom of
these poor wrecks of souls to be final.
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