“And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
          Smiles to leave
      To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
          In such peace,
      And the slopes and rills and undistinguished grey
          Melt away—­
      That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
          Waits me there
      In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
          For the goal,
      When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
          Till I come.

      For he looked upon the city, every side,
          Far and wide,
      All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’
          Colonnades,
      All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—­and then,
          All the men! 
      When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
          Either hand
      On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
          Of my face,
      Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
          Each on each.

      In one year they sent a million fighters forth
          South and North,
      And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
          As the sky,
      Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—­
          Gold, of course. 
      Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! 
          Earth’s returns
      For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! 
          Shut them in,
      With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! 
          Love is best.”

The quaint chime or tinkle of a metre made out of the cadence of sheep-bells renders with curious felicity the quietness and fervent meditation of the subject. A Lovers’ Quarrel is in every respect a contrast.  It is a whimsical and delicious lyric, with a flowing and leaping melody, a light and piquant music deepened into pathos by a mournful undertone of retrospect and regret, not without a hope for the future.  All Browning is seen in this pathetic gaiety, this eagerness and unrest and passionate make-believe of a lover’s mood. Evelyn Hope strikes a tenderer note; it is one of Browning’s sweetest, simplest and most pathetic pieces, and embodies, in a concrete form, one of his deepest convictions.  It is the lament of a man, no longer young, by the death-bed of a young girl whom he has loved, unknown to her.  She has died scarcely knowing him, not even suspecting his love.  But what matter?  God creates love to reward love, and there is another life to come.

      “So hush,—­I will give you this leaf to keep
        See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! 
      There, that is our secret:  go to sleep! 
        You will wake, and remember, and understand.”

A Woman’s Last Word is an exquisite little lyric which sings itself to its own music of delicate gravity and gentle pathos; but it too holds, in its few small lines, a complete situation, that most pathetic one in which a woman resolves to merge her individuality in the wish and will of her husband, to bind, for his sake, her intellect in the chains of her heart.