Amphibian.



This poem is the Prologue to `Fifine at the Fair'.

Amphibian is one who unites both lives within himself, the material
and the spiritual, in complete concord and mutual subservience --
one who "lives and likes life's way", and can also free himself
of tether, leave the solid land, and, unable to fly,
swim "in the sphere which overbrims with passion and thought", --
the sphere of poetry. Such an one may be said to be Browning's
ideal man. "The value and significance of flesh" is everywhere
recognized in his poetry. "All good things are ours," Rabbi Ben Ezra
is made to say, "nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."
The full physical life, in its relation to the spiritual,
was never more beautifully sung than it is sung by David,
in the poem of `Saul'. See the passage beginning, "Oh! our manhood's
prime vigor!" and the passage in `Balaustion's Adventure',
descriptive of Hercules, as he returns, after his conflict with Death,
leading back Alkestis.




James Lee's Wife.



The original title in `Dramatis Personae' (first published in 1864)