ed growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April's sowing.

I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield--what you'll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like.

You'll look at least on love's remains,
A grave's one violet:
Your look?--that pays a thousand pains.
What's death? You'll love me yet!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 16: _Handbook_, p. 54.]

6. KING VICTOR AND KING CHARLES: A Tragedy.

[Published in 1842 as No. II. of _Bells and Pomegranates_,
although written some years earlier (_Poetical Works_, 1889,
Vol. III., pp. 81-165).]

_King Victor and King Charles_ is an historical tragedy, dealing with
the last episode in the career of Victor II., first King of Sardinia.
Browning says in his preface:

"So far as I know, this tragedy is the first artistic
consequence of what Voltaire termed 'a terrible event without
consequences;' and although it professes to be historical, I
have taken more pains to arrive at the history than most
readers would thank me for particularising: since acquainted,
as I will hope them to be, with the chief circumstances of
Victor's remarkable European career--nor quite ignorant of
the sad and surprising facts I am about to reproduce (a
tolerable account of which is to be found, for instance, in
Abbe Roman's _Recit_, or even the fifth of Lord Orrery's
_Letters from Italy_)--I cannot expect them to be versed, nor
desirous of becoming so, in all the details of the memoirs,
correspondence, and relations of the time.... When I say,
therefore, that I cannot but believe my statement (combining
as it does what appears correct in Voltaire and plausible in
Condorcet) more true to person and thing than any it has
hitherto been my fortune to meet with, no doubt my word will
be taken, and my evidence spared as readily."

The episode recorded in the play is the abdication of Victor in favour
of his son Charles, and his subsequent attempt to return to the throne.
The only point in which Browning has departed from history is that the
very effective death on the stage replaces the old king's real death in
captivity a year later. As a piece of literature, this is the least
interesting and valuable of Browning's plays, the thinnest in structure,
the dryest in substance.

The interest o