To me it seems that the author himself was at the time confused
by the complicated flashing of the lights of life.

The autobiographical and autopsychical lines and passages
scattered through the poem are of immediate interest.
Generously the poet repays his debt to Shelley, whom he apostrophises
as "Sun-treader", and invokes in strains of lofty emotion --
"Sun-treader -- life and light be thine for ever." The music of "Alastor",
indeed, is audible ever and again throughout "Pauline".
None the less is there a new music, a new poetic voice, in

"Thou wilt remember one warm morn, when Winter
Crept aged from the earth, and Spring's first breath
Blew soft from the moist hills -- the black-thorn boughs,
So dark in the bare wood, when glistening
In the sunshine were white with coming buds,
Like the bright side of a sorrow -- and the banks
Had violets opening from sleep like eyes."

If we have an imaginary Browning, a Shelleyan phantasm, in

"I seemed the fate from which I fled; I felt
A strange delight in causing my decay;
I was a fiend, in darkness chained for ever
Within some ocean-wave:"

we have the real Browning in

"So I will sing on -- fast as fancies come
Rudely -- the verse being as the mood it paints.