caught out at the rein, which Sir Guy threw loose--in vain,--
_Toll slowly_.
For the horse in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in air,
On the last verge rears amain.

"Now he hangs, he rocks between, and his nostrils curdle in!--
_Toll slowly_.
Now he shivers head and hoof, and the flakes of foam fall off,
And his face grows fierce and thin!

"And a look of human woe from his staring eyes did go,
_Toll slowly_.
And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony of the headlong death below."

Who can ever forget that immortal _Cry of the Children_, which awoke
all England to the horrors of child-labor? That, and Hood's _Song of
the Shirt_, will never die.

Who has not read and loved one of the most tender poems in any
language, _Bertha in the Lane_?--

"Yes, and He too! let him stand
In thy thoughts, untouched by blame.
Could he help it, if my hand
He had claimed with hasty claim?
That was wrong perhaps--but then
Such things be--and will, again.
Women cannot judge for men.

* * * * *

"And, dear Bertha, let me keep
On this hand this little ring,
Which at night, when others sleep,
I can still see glittering.
Let me wear it out of sight,
In the grave,--where it will light
All the Dark up, day and night."

No woman has ever understood better the fulness of love, or described
it more purely and exquisitely.

One person among the many who had read Miss Barrett's poems, felt
their genius, because he had genius in his own soul, and that person
was Robert Browning. That she admired his poetic work was shown in
_Lady Geraldine's Courtship_, when Bertram reads to his lady-love:--

"Or at times a modern volume,--Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt's ballad verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,
Or from Browning some _Pomegranate_, which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

Mr. Browning determined to meet the unknown singer. Years later he
told the story to Elizabeth C. Kinney, when she had gone with the
happy husband and wife on a day's excursion from Florence. She says:
"Finding that the invalid did not receive strangers, he wrote her a
letter, intense with his desire to see her. She reluctantly consented
to an interview. He flew to her