nd no pretence of
despair. In the first of the _Garden Fancies_ (_The Flower's Name_) a
delicate little love-story of a happier kind is hinted at. The second
_Garden Fancy_ (_Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis_) is of very different tone.
It is a whimsical tale of a no less whimsical revenge taken upon a piece
of pedantic lumber, the name of which is given in the title. The varying
ring and swing communicated to the dactyls of these two pieces by the
jolly humour of the one and the refined sentiment of the other, is a
point worth noticing. The easy flow, the careless charm of their
versification, is by no means the artless matter it may seem to a
careless reader. Nor is it the easiest of metrical tasks to poise
perfectly the loose lilt of such verses as these:--

"What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake."

The two perfect little pieces on "Fame" and "Love," _Earth's
Immortalities_, are remarkable, even in Browning's work, for their
concentrated felicity, and, the second especially, for swift
suggestiveness of haunting music. Not less exquisite in its fresh
melody and subtle simplicity is the following _Song_:--

I.

"Nay but you, who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught--speak truth--above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?

II.

Because, you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over:
Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!"

In two tiny pictures, _Night and Morning_, one of four lines, the other
of twelve, we have, besides the picture, two moments which sum up a
lifetime, and "on how fine a needle's point that little world of passion
is balanced!"

I.

"MEETING AT NIGHT.

1.

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

2.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;