hing came and went, and a form i' the van, the rear,
Brightened the battle up, for he blazed now there, now here.

* * * * *

Did the steady phalanx falter? To the rescue, at the need,
The clown was ploughing Persia, clearing Greek earth of weed,
As he routed through the Sakian and rooted up the Mede."

After the battle, the man was nowhere to be seen, and inquiry was made
of the oracle.

"How spake the Oracle? 'Care for no name at all!
Say but just this: We praise one helpful whom we call
The Holder of the Ploughshare. The great deed ne'er grows small.'"

With _Echetlos_ may be mentioned the Virgilian legend of _Pan and Luna_,
a piece of graceful fancy, with its exquisite burden, that

"Verse of five words, each a boon:
Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon."

_Clive_, the most popular in style, and certainly one of the finest
poems in the volume, is a dramatic monologue very much akin, in subject,
treatment and form, to the narratives in the first series. The story
deals with an episode in the life of Clive, when, as a young man, he
first proved his courage in the face of a bully whom he had caught
cheating at cards. The poem is full of fire and brilliance, and is a
subtle analysis and presentation of the character of Clive. Its
structure is quite in Browning's best manner: a central situation,
illumined by "what double and treble reflection and refraction!" Like
Balzac (whose _Honorine_, for instance, is constructed on precisely
similar lines) Browning often increases the effect of his picture by
setting it in a framework, more or less elaborate, by placing the
central narrative in the midst of another slighter and secondary one,
related to it in some subtle way. The story of _Clive_ obtains emphasis,
and is rendered more impressive, by the lightly but strongly sketched-in
figure of the old veteran who tells the tale. Scarcely anything in the
poem seems to me so fine as this pathetic portrait of the lonely old
man, sitting, like Colonel Newcome, solitary in his house among his
memories, with his boy away: "I and Clive were friends."

The Arabian tale of _Muleykeh_ is the most perfect and pathetic piece in
the volume. It is told in singularly fine verse, and in remarkably
clear, simple, yet elevated style. The end is among the great heroic
things in poetry. Hoseyn, though he has neither herds nor flocks, is the
ric