It may be that there are persons who think lightly of Pippa Passes in comparison with Fifine at the Fair, persons who judge poetry by the difficulties they find in its perusal.  But Pippa Passes fulfils the demands of the art of poetry, and produces in the world the high results of lovely and noble poetry.  The other only does these things in part; and when Fifine at the Fair and even Sordello are in the future only the study of pedants, Pippa Passes will be an enduring strength and pleasure to all who love tenderly and think widely.  And those portions of it which belong to Pippa herself, the most natural, easy and simplest portions, will be the sources of the greatest pleasure and the deepest thought.  Like Sordello’s song, they will endure for the healing, comforting, exalting and impelling of the world.

I have written of her and of other parts of the poem elsewhere.  It only remains to say that nowhere is the lyric element in Browning’s genius more delightfully represented than in this little piece of mingled song and action.  There is no better love-lyric in his work than

    You’ll love me yet!—­and I can tarry
      Your love’s protracted growing;

and the two snatches of song which Pippa sings when she is passing under Ottima’s window and the Monsignore’s—­“The year’s at the spring” and “Overhead the tree-tops meet”—­possess, independent of the meaning of the words and their poetic charm, a freshness, dewiness, morning ravishment to which it is difficult to find an equal.  They are filled with youth and its delight, alike of the body and the soul.  What Browning’s spirit felt and lived when he was young and his heart beating with the life of the universe, is in them, and it is their greatest charm.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IX

POEMS OF THE PASSION OF LOVE

When we leave Paracelsus, Sordello and the Dramas behind, and find ourselves among the host of occasional poems contained in the Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, in Men and Women, in Dramatis Personae, and in the later volumes, it is like leaving an unencumbered sea for one studded with a thousand islands.  Every island is worth a visit and different from the rest.  Their variety, their distinct scenery, their diverse inhabitants, the strange surprises in them, are as continual an enchantment for the poetic voyager as the summer isles of the Pacific.  But while each of them is different from the rest, yet, like the islands in the Pacific, they fall into groups; and to isolate these groups is perhaps the best way to treat so varied a collection of poems.  To treat them chronologically would be a task too long and wearisome for a book.  To treat them zoologically, if I may borrow that term, is possible, and may be profitable.  This chapter is dedicated to the poems which relate to Love.