This is generally regarded as one of Browning's greatest poems. Even
his detractors concede to it beauty of form, fervor of feeling, and
richness of imagery. The incident upon which it is based is found in
1 Samuel, chapter xvi. Saul is in the depths of mental eclipse, and
David has been summoned to cure him by music. The young shepherd sings
to him first the songs that appeal to the gentle animals; then the
songs that men use in their human relationships,--songs of labor, of
the wedding-feast, of the burial-service, of worship; then he sings
the joy of physical life, ending in an appeal to the ambition of King
Saul. Saul is roused, but not yet brought to _will_ to live. So
David sings anew of the life of the spirit, the spirit of Saul living
for his people. Then a touch of tenderness from the king flashes into
David a prophetic insight: If he, the imperfect, would do so much for
love of Saul, what would God, the all-perfect, do for men? And so he
reaches the conception of the Christ, the incarnation.
The poem is full of echoes of the Old Testament, fused with the spirit
of modern Christianity and modern thinking. It is touched here and
there with bits of beauty from Oriental landscape. The long, even
swell of the lines carries one along with no sense of the roughness so
common in Browning's verse. Rising by steady degrees to the climax, we
feel, like David, some sense of the "terrible glory," some sense of
the unseen presences that hovered around him as he made his way home
in the night.