23. _Rome's dome._ The illumination of St. Peter's was formerly one of
the customary spectacles on the evening of Easter Sunday. "At Ave-Maria
we drove to Piazza of St. Peter's. The lighting of the lanternoni, or
large paper lanterns, each of which looks like a globe of ethereal fire,
had been going on for an hour, and by the time we arrived there was
nearly completed.... The whole of this immense church--its columns,
capitals, cornices, and pediments--the beautiful swell of the lofty dome
... all were designed in lines of fire, and the vast sweep of the
circling colonnades ... was resplendent with the same beautiful light."
(C. A. Eaton, _Rome in the Nineteenth Century_, II, 208.)
23. _Space to spire._ From the wide opening between the colonnades to
the cross on the top of the lantern surmounting the dome.
34. _Protoplast._ Used apparently for protoplasm, a substance
constituting the physical basis of life in all plants and animals.
39. Into his musical palace came the wonderful Dead in a glorified form,
and also Presences fresh from the Protoplast, while, for the moment, he
himself in the ardor of musical creation felt himself raised to the
level of these exalted ones.
53. _Consider it well._ On the mystery of musical creation and on its
permanence see Cardinal Newman's sermon on "The Theory of Development in
Christian Doctrine." (Quoted in part, in Berdoe's _Browning
Cyclopædia_.)
57. _Palace of music._ Cf. the description of the glowing banquet-room
in Keats's "Lamia":
"A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone
Supportress of the faery-roof, made moan
Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might perish."
The damsel with the dulcimer in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" sings of Mount
Abora, and the poet says:
"Could I revive within me
Her sympathy and song
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome, those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there."
In Tennyson's "Gareth and Lynette" (l. 270), Merlin says to Gareth in
describing Camelot,
"For and ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built forever."
There are also more ancient accounts of this union of music and
architecture. Amphion, King of Thebes, played on his lyre till the
stones moved of their own accord into the wall he was building. When
King Laomedan built the walls of Troy, Apollo's lyre did similar service
to that of Amphion in Thebes. For an interesting account of "Voice
Figures" see _The Century Magazine_, May 1891.
64. _What was, shall be._ For this faith in the actual permanence of
what seemed so evanescent, compare Adelaide Procter's "Lost Chord."
69. _There shall never be one lost good._ Whatever of good has existed
must always exist. Evil, being self-destructive, finally "is null, is
naught." This is the Hegelian doctrine. Walt Whitman said on reading
Hegel, "Roaming in thought over the Universe I saw the little that is
Good steadily hastening towards immortality. And the vast all that is
called Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead."
(Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopædia_, page 40.)
81. _A triumph's evidence._ Failure in high heroic attempts seems to
point forward to some more favorable future where noble effort is
crowned with due success. Cf. "Cleon," lines 186-7:
"Imperfection means perfection hid,
Reserved in part to grace the after time."
96. _The C Major of this life._ The musical terms in this passage are
fully explained by Mrs. Turnbull and Miss Omerod in _Browning Society
Papers_. Symbolically this line describes the musician as he comes back
to everyday life, proud because of the vision that has been granted him,
but with a consciousness that experiences so exalted are not for "human
nature's daily food," and that their true function is to send one back
to ordinary pains and pleasures with a new acquiescence.
(In _The Browning Society Papers_ are Mrs. Turnbull's "Abt Vogler," and
three papers by Miss Helen Omerod: (1) "Abt Vogler the Man." (2) "Some
Notes on Browning's Poems relating to Music." (3) "Andrea del Sarto and
Abt Vogler.")