nt, patient, yet capable of a hearty little
grumble at her lot, Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She
can threaten fictively her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing
rain to spoil her enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very
spirit of confiding love, for her threat is that if rain does fall, she
will be sorrowful and depressed, instead of joyous and exhilarated, for
the rest of the year during which she will be bound to her "wearisome
silk-winding, coil on coil." Such a possibility, thinks Pippa's trustful
heart, must surely be enough to cajole the weather into beauty and
serenity.

It is New Year's Day, and sole holiday in all the twelve-month for
silk-winders in the mills of Asolo. An oddly chosen time, one
thinks--the short, cold festival! And it is notable that Browning,
though he acquiesces in the fictive date, yet conveys to us, so
definitely that it must be with intention, the effect of summer weather.
We find ourselves all through imagining mellow warmth and sunshine; nay,
he puts into Pippa's mouth, as she anticipates the treasured outing,
this lovely and assuredly not Janiverian forecast--

"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. . . ."

Is it not plain from this that his artist's soul rejected the paltry
fact? For "blue" the hours of New Year's Day may be in Italy, but as
"_long_ blue hours" they cannot, even there, be figured. I maintain
that, whatever it may be called, it is really Midsummer's Day on which
Pippa passes from Asolo through Orcana and Possagno, and back to Asolo
again.

+ + + + +

We see her first as she springs out of bed with the dawn's earliest
touch on her "large mean airy chamber" at Asolo[24:1]--the lovely little
town of Northern Italy which Browning loved so well. In that chamber,
made vivid to our imagination by virtue of three consummately placed
adjectives (note the position of "mean"), Pippa prepares for her one
external happiness in the year.

"Oh Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee,
A mite of my twelve hours' treasure,
The least of thy gazes or glances,

* * * * *

One of thy choices or one of thy chances,

* * * * *

--My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure,
Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me!"

I have omitted two lines from this eight-lined stanza, and omitted them
because the