"In vain our pent wills fret,
And would the world subdue;
Limits we did not set
Condition all we do;
Born into life we are, and life must be our mould."
Undoubtedly that is a true thought, and expressed with more cogency and clearness than—
"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God; see all nor be afraid!'"
It is obviously more often than not impossible to obey the command to grow old along with any genial old gentleman; it is often, also, untrue that the best is yet to be. No doubt it would be very consoling if experience bore out the old Rabbi; but it does not.
Now listen to Shelley, for the desired, the enchanting, the ever-acceptable accent which creates beauty and joy even out of depression:
"We look before and after
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."
True. To a Skylark treats continually of lovely and agreeable things, but so does Rabbi Ben Ezra; he compares passionate youth with serene old age, and, refurbishing the hackneyed image of the potter and the clay, substitutes for the nondescript "vessel" a Grecian urn. Yet with all these opportunities he never turns a single stanza so beautiful as the most abstract of Shelley's.
The fact is, Browning represents Rabbi Ben Ezra as a prosperous old man enjoying a stately decline, who allows
