vers meet in a turret among the
ruins of an ancient city, and the moment chosen is immediately before
their meeting, when the lover gazes around him, struck into sudden
meditation by the vision of the mighty city fallen and of the living
might of Love.

"And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills and undistinguished grey
Melt away--
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come.

For he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,--and then,
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force--
Gold, of course.
Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best."

The quaint chime or tinkle of a metre made out of the cadence of
sheep-bells renders with curious felicity the quietness and fervent
meditation of the subject. _A Lovers' Quarrel_ is in every respect a
contrast. It is a whimsical and delicious lyric, with a flowing and
leaping melody, a light and piquant music deepened into pathos by a
mournful undertone of retrospect and regret, not without a hope for the
future. All Browning is seen in this pathetic gaiety, this eagerness
and unrest and passionate make-believe of a lover's mood. _Evelyn Hope_
strikes a tenderer note; it is one of Browning's sweetest, simplest and
most pathetic pieces, and embodies, in a concrete form, one of his
deepest convictions. It is the lament of a man, no longer young, by the
deat