The Full Text of “Epilogue”
1At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
2When you set your fancies free,
3Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
4Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
5—Pity me?
6Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
7What had I on earth to do
8With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
9Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
10—Being—who?
11One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
12Never doubted clouds would break,
13Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
14Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
15Sleep to wake.
16No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
17Greet the unseen with a cheer!
18Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
19"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
20There as here!"
The Full Text of “Epilogue”
1At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
2When you set your fancies free,
3Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
4Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
5—Pity me?
6Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
7What had I on earth to do
8With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
9Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
10—Being—who?
11One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
12Never doubted clouds would break,
13Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
14Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
15Sleep to wake.
16No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
17Greet the unseen with a cheer!
18Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
19"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
20There as here!"
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“Epilogue” Introduction
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"Epilogue" was written by the Victorian poet Robert Browning. The poem's speaker is a man at the end of his life who urges his loved ones not to feel sorry for him once he's gone. Ever an optimist, the speaker plans to face death with the same vigor and courage with which he approached life. In addition to being a meditation on death and mourning, "Epilogue" is also a rousing call to maintain hope in the face of adversity. The poem first appeared in Browning's final collection Asolando, published on the day of his own death in 1899.
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“Epilogue” Summary
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In the quiet middle of the night, when you let your imagination wander, will your thoughts travel to the place where the man you loved so much, and who loved you back, lies in his grave (trapped there, fools believe, by death), and feel sorry for me?
Oh, to love someone so much and yet be so wrong! During my life, did I have anything to do with all those lazy, feeble, or cowardly folks? Did I pathetically and morosely drone on and on about nothing in particular?
I was someone who never looked back and forged straight ahead through life. I always knew that the sun would break through the clouds and that, even when it seemed like evil was winning, right would inevitably triumph over wrong. I believed that we fall down only to get back up and that we are thwarted only to do better next time. We must go to sleep in order to wake again the next morning.
Thus, even in the middle of a busy workday, people should happily welcome the unknown. Encourage your dying loved one to charge full speed ahead into death with his chest proud. Tell him to fiercely move forward and to embrace death as he embraced life.
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“Epilogue” Themes
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Confronting Death and Grief
In Robert Browning's "Epilogue," death is not an ending but a bold new beginning. The hearty and optimistic speaker encourages his loved ones not to "pity" him when he is dead. He won't be lying pathetically underground, he insists, but rather living on somewhere else—and having adventures, too. The poem suggests that death is simply another stage of life, one that people should face with vigor and goodwill.
At the start of the poem, the speaker imagines that his loved ones might cry for him after he is gone, believing that "Low he lies"—that is, he's stuck under the ground, "imprisoned" by death. But according to the speaker, this is a wrongheaded way to imagine death. Everything in life, he observes, suggests that no setback or fall is permanent. Clouds always "break" eventually, and people only "sleep to wake" back up again. Death, similarly, must not be treated as a true ending but welcomed as a new and challenging part of life's journey.
The speaker, therefore, urges his loved ones not to mourn his death but rather to spur him on in his post-mortem adventures "with a cheer," whatever those adventures may be and wherever death may bring him. Death, for him, is just another stage in a journey all people must face, or, at worst, a temporary setback that they must rebound from. With that in mind, people should face death (and grief, for that matter) with spirit and courage.
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The Value of Hope and Optimism
The speaker of Robert Browning's "Epilogue" insists that hope and optimism are sensible and worthwhile attitudes to hold in life. The belief that goodness will always win out over despair, this speaker suggests, allows one to face life's challenges fearlessly. The poem implies that hope is both a virtue and a choice, a way of seeing the world that encourages people to try their best even when they face adversity or conflict.
In the speaker's vision of the world, surrendering to gloom and doubt is both pointless and rather unbecoming. Although love is typically a positive force, the speaker presents it as a factor clouding the judgment of the grieving and causing them to appear foolish or downright "unmanly." In his eyes, giving up and deciding all is lost—even in the face of death itself—is both "mawkish" (or self-indulgently overemotional) and "slothful" (or lazy). In other words, wallowing in despair is like taking the easy way out.
The courageous choice, by contrast, is to have faith that goodness and "right" will win, even when it seems as if "right were worsted" (that is, as though right were defeated by wrong). Invoking the image of soldiers bravely facing battle, the speaker suggests that taking an optimistic view is like "march[ing] breast-forward" into life's trials—whether they arrive, like the speaker's, at the "midnight" of one’s life or "at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time."
Optimism, in this speaker’s view, isn't just temperamental: that is, it's not just something that either is or isn't in one's personality. Rather, it's a kind of bravery, a virtue people can actively choose to practice. The virtues of courage, adaptability, and fearlessness, ultimately, can help a person face even death with courage and cheer. The emphatic command at the end of the poem (in which the speaker tells his loved ones to "bid" the unexpected and unpredictable aspects of life "forward"), for instance, demonstrates that an optimistic and resilient attitude can serve as a defense against the more challenging parts of life's journey.
By disapproving of self-pity and demonstrating how his own optimism has benefitted him, the speaker advocates for a hopeful and adaptable outlook. In the poem's view, the battle between "right" and "wrong" will only be won through embracing a courageous attitude—one that will motivate people "to fight better" and triumph over adversity.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Epilogue”
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Lines 1-5
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?"Epilogue" begins by describing a time of day (or, really, night) when people's minds tend to race: "the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time / When you set your fancies free." In other words, the time in the middle of the night, when all the world seems quiet and people's imaginations often wander. Metaphorically, this is the time when the mind is set "free" from the constraints and distractions of daily life. (The speaker might also be building on the symbolic connotations of "midnight" and describing the moments shortly before death, when people tend to reflect back on their lives.)
The soft sibilance and muffled /f/ alliteration of these lines cast a gentle hush over the poem, evoking the quiet of this hour:
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,The speaker wonders if, at such a time, "your fancies" will meander toward the speaker's grave (that is, "Will [those thoughts] pass to where" the speaker is buried). By the end of the stanza, it becomes clear that the speaker is addressing his own loved ones here and anticipating their reaction to his death. (Asolando, the collection in which "Epilogue" appears, was in fact published on the day of Robert Browning's death. As such, it's fair to take the speaker here as representing the poet himself.)
The antimetabole of line 4 emphasizes the mutual feeling between the speaker and his reader[s], placing their love on either side of a caesura:
[...] who once so loved you, whom you loved so
The speaker anticipates that those he loved (and those who loved him in return) will be sad to think of him trapped in his grave, deep underground (i.e., to think that he is "imprisoned" and physically "low"). In the speaker's opinion, however, only "fools" believe that death entails some kind of "imprison[ment]." The caesura in line 3 calls attention to this important idea, setting it apart from the rest of the stanza:
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
The speaker will elaborate on this idea throughout the rest of the poem, but already this line hints that he believes death is not necessarily a firm, final ending—and, it follows, that people don't need to "Pity," or feel sorry for, those in their graves.
Of course, the speaker doesn't come right out and say, "Will you feel sorry for me when I'm dead?" Instead, this opening stanza consists of a single sentence stretched across five lines. As the poem slowly unfurls down the page, its twisty, complex language subtly mimics the manner in which those "fancies" freely wander about before landing, at last, on the image of the speaker in his grave.
These opening lines also begin to establish the poem's form. "Epilogue" uses a complex meter. Its lines vary widely in length but maintain a clear, primarily trochaic rhythm (a trochee being poetic foot with two syllables arranged in a stressed-unstressed, DUM-da, pattern). In each stanza, the number of stressed beats per line generally falls into a 6-4-6-6-2 pattern—that is, the first line contains six stresses, the second contains four, and so on. Take lines 1-3:
At the | midnight | in the | silence | of the | sleep-time
When you | set your | fancies | free
Will they | pass to | where—by | death, fools | think, im- | prisoned—The movement from stressed to unstressed beats creates what's known as a falling rhythm. Here, it subtly evokes the sensation of drifting off to sleep (or, perhaps, drifting away into death).
Line 3 switches things up a bit, as it switches from trochees to iambs (da-DUM) at the comma halfway through:
Low he | lies who | once so | loved you, | whom you | loved so,
The metrical reversal creates a kind of mirror between the two halves of the line, subtly evoking the mutual, mirrored love between the speaker and his listeners.
Finally, the stanza ends with:
—Pity | me?
This line is missing its final syllable, a technique called catalexis. The final lines of every stanza will scan exactly the same way, making them feel abrupt and incomplete. This, in turn, reflects the speaker's belief that death is not a firm ending.
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Lines 6-10
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
—Being—who? -
Lines 11-15
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake. -
Lines 16-20
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
There as here!"
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“Epilogue” Symbols
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Midnight and Noonday
The speaker references two specific times of day in "Epilogue": "midnight in the silence of the sleep-time" and "noonday in the bustle of man's work-time."The former is when people's minds often tend to race; no longer tethered by the distractions of "work-time," people's "fancies" wander freely. And it is at this hour, the speaker says, that people may begin to think of the dead.
Symbolically, this links death itself with silence, solitude, and shadows. It reflects the notion that death is not something to be discussed openly and that people should compartmentalize their grief, fear, unease, and so on from the rest of their waking thoughts. One might even say that they imprison thoughts of death and the dead during the day.
The speaker's later call to "Greet the unseen" in the middle of the day represents clearly and openly embracing the reality of death. The speaker isn't just telling people to literally put their work down and take a few moments to think about their dead loved ones and/or their own death. Rather, he's saying that death shouldn't be some tragic, hush-hush thing that people can't think or talk about openly. It can be greeted with joy, in the full sunlight, even as life goes on all around.
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“Epilogue” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Metaphor
The speaker of "Epilogue" uses metaphors to help illustrate his ideas about life, hope, and death.
First, in line 2, he uses the phrase "set your fancies free." "Fancies" refers to one's imaginative powers. To "set your fancies free," then, means to let your mind wander. This often happens in the middle of the night, the speaker says, when the world is quiet and all the distractions of daily life—work, family, responsibilities—fade into the background.
The metaphor essentially depicts people's minds as being held captive during the day and only let loose at night. (Symbolically, "midnight" also brings to mind the end of one's life, reflecting the notion that the speaker is looking back on his life from his deathbed.) The speaker builds on the metaphor by envisioning those "fancies" as akin to wind or some other element that can smoothly "pass" over the earthly world. The mind, here, is like an actual, physical landscape through which people's thoughts travel.
In a way, this free-fancies metaphor subtly echoes the speaker's conception of death. The speaker insists that the dead are not "imprisoned" in their graves; it follows that death is a kind of release from life "on earth." In death, perhaps, the soul is "set [...] free" much like those "fancies" are once the din of waking life quiets down.
The speaker returns to this metaphor in a way in the poem's final stanza, when he encourages his listener to happily greet "the unseen"—that is, death/the unknown—"at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time." Thoughts of death shouldn't be relegated to "midnight in the silence of the sleep-time" but rather embraced with clear-eyed courage.
There are some other, subtler metaphors throughout the poem as well. The speaker describes tackling adversity using language related to military conflict, for example, as in:
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
[...]
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,With this language, the speaker presents life itself as a kind of battle that one should approach like a brave soldier. The speaker subtly personifies "right" and "wrong" here as well, imagining these abstract concepts as engaged in an epic fight. The language in the poem's final moments reiterates this idea, as the speaker urges those who have lost someone to tell the dead (or, perhaps, death itself):
"Strive and thrive!" [...] "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
There as here!"All this figurative language makes both life and death seem like a grand adventure, filled with obstacles that people must confront head-on.
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Alliteration
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Anaphora
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Juxtaposition
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Repetition
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"Epilogue" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Fancies
- Slothful
- Mawkish
- Drivel
- Worsted
- Baffled
- Strive
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Let your imagination run free/your thoughts wander.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Epilogue”
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Form
"Epilogue" contains four five-line stanzas, known as quintains. Each stanza follows the same rhyme scheme and pattern of trochaic meter, filling the poem with some regular—but never rigid—music that adds to its rousing, motivational tone.
The poem features a speaker addressing someone (or a group of people) directly, and, in a way, resembles the dramatic monologue form for which Robert Browning is so famous. Yet while the speakers of dramatic monologues are definitively not the poet, the speaker of "Epilogue" is implied to be Browning himself (the poem refers to the speaker using masculine pronouns, and Browning wrote it toward the end of his life).
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Meter
"Epilogue" uses a trochaic meter: the main foot here is the trochee, which consists of two syllables arranged in a stressed-unstressed pattern. The number of feet varies per line but the number of stressed beats generally falls into a 6-4-6-6-2 pattern across each stanza: line 1 contains six stresses, line 2 contains 4, and so on. This creates a steady, pounding rhythm. Take stanza 1:
At the | midnight | in the | silence | of the | sleep-time
When you | set your | fancies | free
Will they | pass to | where—by | death, fools | think, im- | prisoned—
Low he | lies who | once so | loved you, | whom you | loved so,
—Pity me?The meter isn't perfect: line 4 switches to iambs (unstressed-stressed) after the caesura, for example. The second and fifth line of each stanza are also missing their final unstressed beats, meaning they are catalectic. This allows for a firmer, more forceful sound to close out each stanza. At the same time, the use of catalexis might make the stanzas feel like they end too soon or rather abruptly. Readers expect to hear a syllable that never comes, and the poem thus sounds somewhat incomplete. In this way, the poem's meter subtly echoes the idea that death is not an ending—that there is something "unseen" that awaits on the other side.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Epilogue" follows an ABCDB rhyme scheme (with new rhyme sounds introduced in each stanza). That is, the second and fifth lines of each quintain rhyme while the rest of the stanza's lines do not. As a result, this final rhyme pops up somewhat unexpectedly; readers haven't been primed to expect any rhymes and yet, at the last moment in each stanza, one appears.
In addition to lending each stanza a satisfying sonic conclusion, these sudden, final rhymes at the ends of the stanzas perhaps subtly hint at the new adventures that await the speaker at the end of life.
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“Epilogue” Speaker
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The speaker of "Epilogue" is a man at the end of his life, much like Robert Browning himself at the time he wrote the poem. He imagines his loved ones thinking about him when he dies and feeling sorry for him, believing him to be "imprisoned" in his grave underground.
According to the speaker, there's no need for such "Pity." He dramatically declares that though these people clearly love him (and he loves them back), they're "mistaken" when it comes to what death will mean for him. He insists that he has been a courageous and resilient person in life and argues that there's no reason to believe he won't be similarly bold and brave in death. He also describes his relentless hope in the face of adversity: he always believed that sunny skies would follow cloudy days and that right would triumph over wrong. Ever the optimist, he reasons that all the evidence points towards death not being a dark and dismal end but rather a new beginning: "we fall to rise" and "Sleep" only to "wake," he says. As such, he calls his loved ones to "Greet the unseen"—that is, death—with joy. Instead of pitying him, they should cheer him on as he bravely steps forth into a new adventure.
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“Epilogue” Setting
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"Epilogue" seems to take place as the speaker is on his deathbed. He imagines how his loved ones will think of him after he dies, following their wandering thoughts to the "low" grave in which he will soon lie—and in which, "fools think," death will have "imprisoned" him.
He then describes his time "on earth"—implying that death is a realm that is not on earth. That is, he argues that he won't actually be stuck in his grave after he dies by off on some new adventure. The poem never describes what or where death actually is—it is, after all, something the living cannot yet see—but implies that it is not a definitive ending. As such, the poem doesn't take place at the end of the speaker's story—just at one stop along the way.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Epilogue”
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Literary Context
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a Victorian writer quite unlike those around him. Considered a minor poet for most of his early career, Browning became famous toward the end of his life for his wild dramatic monologues: theatrical poems spoken in the voices of characters from murderous Italian dukes to good-hearted 16th-century soldiers. "Epilogue," by contrast, is one of Browning's more personal, intimate poems, clearly rooted in his own experiences: the poem was written at the end of his life and included in his final collection Asolando, published the day Browning died in 1899. By this time, Browning's work had become extremely popular in England.
Browning's poetry reveals both the influence of the Romantic poets who preceded him and the Victorian era in general. The earlier Romantics, whose poetry evolved in part as a reaction to the Enlightenment's focus on science and reason, celebrated individuality, human emotion, and the overwhelming wonder of nature. As a young man, Browning particularly respected Shelley as both a poet and a radical political thinker. However, Browning's own poetry diverged from the Romantic tradition in its exploration of more practical, realistic themes—including the concerns of the working class and the relationship between science and society. In this way, Browning was firmly a part of the Victorian literary movement, alongside writers such as Thomas Hardy, the Bronte sisters, and Christina Rosetti.
Historical Context
Robert Browning wrote during the reign of Queen Victoria (who ruled England from 1831 to 1901), a time of massive scientific, societal, and religious upheavals. Considered a literary Golden Age, the Victorian era saw writers grappling with vast shifts in the religious, moral, and class structures of their world. New ideas such as Darwin's theory of evolution challenged people's conception of their place in society, while the rise of dangerous factory work and economic disparity led to an increased focus on poverty, child labor, and the treatment of women.
Browning's poetry was often written in response to the conversations of the day, and he explored topical subjects such as the relationship between art and morality and the conflict between materialism and altruism in his work. His moral conviction and literary output indeed suggest a man who did not "drivel" nor mope about with "the slothful" or
the mawkish." Browning was also a deeply romantic man, and he lived out one of literature's most touching—and dramatic—love stories. Indeed, that story is one example of the way in which Browning faced the obstacles in his life with courage and hope.In the mid-1800s, Browning fell in love with his fellow (and far more successful) poet Elizabeth Barrett. Barrett's tyrannical father was having none of it, however. He disapproved of Browning, who was several years younger than Barrett—unconventional in a Victorian marriage—and not yet a commercially successful writer himself. Defying Mr. Barrett, the couple eloped to Italy in 1846; outraged, Elizabeth's father disinherited her. The newlywed Brownings, undaunted, set up house in Florence. There, they would live happily for over a decade until Elizabeth fell ill. She died in Robert's arms at the age of 55.
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More “Epilogue” Resources
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External Resources
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"Epilogue" Aloud — Listen to a reading of "Epilogue."
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Browning's Life and Work — Learn more about Browning's life and how it informed his poetry via the British Library.
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A "Mistaken" Speaker — An article on how scholars have misinterpreted "Epilogue" and its speaker. Browning admitted regretting his word choice and always intended the "you" who is "mistaken" in the poem's second stanza to refer to the reader or audience (rather than Browning himself).
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The Legacy of Robert Browning — Read an essay celebrating the bicentenary of Browning's birth and learn how Browning continues to influence poetry today.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Browning
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