“Love to hear
     A soft pulsation in their easy ear;
     To turn the page, and let their senses drink
     A lay that shall not trouble them to think.”

* * * * *

Next to these dramatic pieces come what we may be content to call simply poems:  some lyrical, some narrative.  The latter are straightforward enough, and as a rule full of spirit and humor; but this is more than can always be said of the lyrical pieces.  Now, for the first time in dealing with this first period, excluding ‘Sordello,’ we strike difficulty.  The Chinese puzzle comes in.  We wonder whether it all turns on the punctuation.  And the awkward thing for Mr. Browning’s reputation is this, that these bewildering poems are for the most part very short.  We say awkward, for it is not more certain that Sarah Gamp liked her beer drawn mild than it is that your Englishman likes his poetry cut short; and so, accordingly, it often happens that some estimable paterfamilias takes up an odd volume of Browning his volatile son or moonstruck daughter has left lying about, pishes and pshaws! and then, with an air of much condescension and amazing candor, remarks that he will give the fellow another chance, and not condemn him unread.  So saying, he opens the book, and carefully selects the very shortest poem he can find; and in a moment, without sign or signal, note or warning, the unhappy man is floundering up to his neck in lines like these, which are the third and final stanza of a poem called ’Another Way of Love’:—­

“And after, for pastime,
If June be refulgent
With flowers in completeness,
All petals, no prickles,
Delicious as trickles
Of wine poured at mass-time,
And choose One indulgent
To redness and sweetness;
Or if with experience of man and of spider,
She use my June lightning, the strong insect-ridder
To stop the fresh spinning,—­why June will consider.”

He comes up gasping, and more than ever persuaded that Browning’s poetry is a mass of inconglomerate nonsense, which nobody understands—­least of all members of the Browning Society.

We need be at no pains to find a meaning for everything Mr. Browning has written.  But when all is said and done—­when these few freaks of a crowded brain are thrown overboard to the sharks of verbal criticism who feed on such things—­Mr. Browning and his great poetical achievement remain behind to be dealt with and accounted for.  We do not get rid of the Laureate by quoting:—­

     “O darling room, my heart’s delight,
     Dear room, the apple of my sight,
     With thy two couches soft and white
     There is no room so exquisite—­
     No little room so warm and bright
     Wherein to read, wherein to write;”

or of Wordsworth by quoting:—­

     “At this, my boy hung down his head: 
     He blushed with shame, nor made reply,
     And five times to the child I said,
     “‘Why, Edward? tell me why?’”