delicate symbolism of the twin lyrics _Love in a Life_ and _Life in a
Love_, variations on the same theme--vain pursuit of the averted
face--the one a _largo_, sad, persistent, dreamily hopeless; the other
impetuous, resolute, glad. The dreamier mood is elaborated in the
_Serenade at the Villa_ and _One Way of Love_. A few superbly
imaginative phrases bring the Italian summer night about us, sultry,
storm-shot, starless, still,--

"Life was dead, and so was light."

The Serenader himself is no child of Italy but a meditative Teuton, who,
Hamlet-like, composes for his mistress the answer which he would not
have her give. The lover in _One Way of Love_ is something of a Teuton
too, and has thoughts which break the vehemence of the impact of his
fate. But there is a first moment when he gasps and knits himself closer
to endure--admirably expressed in the sudden change to a brief trochaic
verse; then the grim mood is dissolved in a momentary ecstasy of
remembrance or of idea--and the verse, too, unfolds and releases itself
in sympathy:--

"She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music's wing;
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing!"

Or, instead of this systole and diastole alternation, the glory and the
pang are fused and interpenetrated in a continuous mood. Such a mood
furnishes the spiritual woof of one of Browning's most consummate and
one of his loveliest lyrics, _The Last Ride Together_ and _Evelyn Hope_.
"How are we to take it?" asks Mr Fotheringham of the latter. "As the
language of passion resenting death and this life's woeful