And gather what we let fall!

31.

What did I say?--that a small bird sings
All day long, save when a brown pair
Of hawks from the wood float with wide wings
Strained to a bell: 'gainst noonday glare
You count the streaks and rings.

--
St. 31. Here he returns to the subject broken off at St. 21.

32.

But at afternoon or almost eve
'Tis better; then the silence grows
To that degree, you half believe
It must get rid of what it knows,
Its bosom does so heave.

33.

Hither we walked then, side by side,
Arm in arm and cheek to cheek,
And still I questioned or replied,
While my heart, convulsed to really speak,
Lay choking in its pride.

34.

Silent the crumbling bridge we cross,
And pity and praise the chapel sweet,
And care about the fresco's loss,
And wish for our souls a like retreat,
And wonder at the moss.

35.

Stoop and kneel on the settle under,
Look through the window's grated square:
Nothing to see! For fear of plunder,
The cross is down and the altar bare,
As if thieves don't fear thunder.

36.

We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,
Take the path again--but wait!

37.

Oh moment one and infinite!
The water slips o'er stock and stone;
The West is tender, hardly bright:
How gray at once is the evening grown--
One star, its chrysolite!

38.

We two stood there with never a third,
But each by each, as each knew well:
The sights we saw and the sounds we heard,
The lights and the shades made up a spell
Till the trouble grew and stirred.

--
St. 37, 38. "Mr. Browning's most characteristic feeling for nature
appears in his rendering of those aspects of sky, or earth, or sea,
of sunset, or noonday, or dawn, which seem to acquire some sudden
and passionate significance; which seem to be charged with
some spiritual secret eager for disclosure; in his rendering of
those moments which betray the passion at the heart of things,
which thrill and tingle with prophetic fire. When lightning searches
for the guilty lovers, Ottima and Sebald {in `Pippa Passe