The Study of Poetry • Paragraph 641
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In the last stanza, he gives expression to his hopeful philosophy, which recognizes “some soul of goodness, in things evil”; * which sees in human nature, “potentiality of final deliverance from the evil in it, given only time enough for the work”. In this age of professed and often, no doubt, affected, agnosticism and pessimism, Browning is the foremost apostle of Hope. He, more than any other great author of the age, whether philosopher, or poet, or divine, has been inspired with the faith that