sums up the matter when he says to Aprile--

I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge....
We must never part ...
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love--until both are saved.

Arising logically out of this belief in unity, there follows, as with
all mystics, the belief in the potential divinity of man, which
permeates all Browning's thought, and is continually insisted on in such
poems as _Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert_, and _The Ring and the
Book_. He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that
the object of life is to know God; and according to the poet, in knowing
love we learn to know God. Hence it follows that love is the meaning of
life, and that he who finds it not

loses what he lived for
And eternally must lose it.

_Christina._

For life with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear ...
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love.

_A Death in the Desert._

This is Browning's central teaching, the key-note of his work and
philosophy. The importance of love in life is to Browning supreme,