Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

II.

PARTING AT MORNING.

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me."

But the largest, if not the greatest work in the volume must be sought
for, not in the romances, properly speaking, nor in the lyrics, but in
the dramatic monologues. _Pictor Ignotus_ (Florence, 15--) is the first
of those poems about painting, into which Browning has put so much of
his finest art. It is a sort of first faint hint or foreshadowing of
_Andrea del Sarto_, perfectly individual and distinct though it is.
_Pictor Ignotus_ expresses the subdued sadness of a too timid or too
sensitive nature, an "unknown painter" who has dreamed of painting great
pictures and winning great fame, but who shrinks equally from the
attempt and the reward: an attempt which he is too self-distrustful to
make, a reward which he is too painfully discriminating to enjoy.

"So, die my pictures! surely, gently die!
O youth, men praise so,--holds their praise its worth?
Blown harshly, keeps the trump its golden cry?
Tastes sweet the water with such specks of earth?"

The monotonous "linked sweetness long drawn out" of the verses, the
admirably arranged pause, recurrence and relapse of the lines, render
the sense and substance of the subject with singular appropriateness.
_The Tomb at St. Praxed's_ (now known as _The Bishop orders his Tomb at
St. Praxed's Church_), has been finally praised by Ruskin, and the whole
passage may be here quoted:--

"Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of
the Middle Ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that
in the matter of art, with which we have been specially
concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the
mediaeval temper that he has not struck upon in those
seemingly careless and too rugged lines of his.

"'As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
"Do I live, am I dead?" Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed's ever was the church for peace;