d griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after Death!"

Even such heart-music as this cannot have thrilled him more than these
two exquisite lines, with their truth almost too poignant to permit of
serene joy--

"I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange
My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee!"

Their Pisan home was amid sacred associations. It was situate in an old
palazzo built by Vasari, within sight of the Leaning Tower and the
Duomo. There, in absolute seclusion, they wrote and planned. Once and
again they made a pilgrimage to the Lanfranchi Palace "to walk in the
footsteps of Byron and Shelley": occasionally they went to Vespers in
the Duomo, and listened, rapt, to the music wandering spirally through
the vast solitary building: once they were fortunate in hearing the
impressive musical mass for the dead, in the Campo Santo. They were even
reminded often of their distant friend Horne, for every time they
crossed one of the chief piazzas they saw the statue of Cosimo de Medici
looking down upon them.

In this beautiful old city, so full of repose as it lies "asleep in the
sun," Mrs. Browning's health almost leapt, so swift was her advance
towards vigour. "She is getting better every day," wrote her husband,
"stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes."

That happy first winter they passed "in the most secluded manner,
reading Vasari, and dreaming dreams of seeing Venice in the summer." But
early in April, when the swallows had flown inland above the pines of
Viareggio, and Shelley's favourite little Aziola was hooting silverly
among the hollow vales of Carrara, the two poets prepared to leave what
the frailer of them called "this perch of Pisa."

But with all its charm and happy associations, the little city was dull.
"Even human faces divine are quite _rococo_ with me," Mrs. Browning
wrote to a friend. The change to Florence was a welcome one to both.
Browning had already been there, but to his wife it was as the
fulfilment of a dream. They did not at first go to that romantic old
palace which will be for ever sociate with the author of "Casa Guidi
Windows," but found accommodation in a more central locality.

When the June heats came, husband and wife both declared for Ancona,