It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example of
Browning's early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate second of
these "Paracelsus" songs, one wherein the influence of Keats is so
marked, and yet where all is the poet's own:--

"Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.

"And strew faint sweetness from some old
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud
Which breaks to dust when once unrolled;
Or shredded perfume, like a cloud
From closet long to quiet vowed,
With mothed and dropping arras hung,
Mouldering her lute and books among,
As when a queen, long dead, was young."

With this music in our ears we can well forgive some of the prosaic
commonplaces which deface "Paracelsus"--some of those lapses from
rhythmic energy to which the poet became less and less sensitive, till
he could be so deaf to the vanishing "echo of the fleeting strand" as to
sink to the level of doggerel such as that which closes the poem called
"Popularity."