and the greater part of the single poems are linked inseparably with the
most intimate personal relationship of his life. Hardly one of the
Romances, as we saw, but had been read in MS. by Elizabeth Barrett, and
pronounced upon with the frank yet critical delight of her nature. In
the abstruse symbolic title, too,--implying, as Browning expected his
readers to discover, "sound and sense" or "music and discoursing,"--her
wit had divined a more felicitous application to Browning's poetry--

"Some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

The two poets were still strangers when this was written; but each had
for years recognised in the other a new and wonderful poetic force,[25]
and the vivid words marked the profound community of spirit which was
finally to draw them together. A few years later, a basket of
pomegranates was handed to her, when travelling with her husband in
France, and she laughingly accepted the omen. The omen was fulfilled;
Elizabeth Browning's poetry expanded and matured in the companionship of
that rich-veined human heart; it was assuredly not by chance that
Browning, ten years after her death, recalled her symbol in the name of
his glorious woman-poet, Balaustion.

[Footnote 25: She had at once discerned the "new voice" in _Paracelsus_,
1835; and the occasion may have been not much later ("years ago" in
1845) on which he was all but admitted to the "shrine" of the "world's
wonder" _(R.B. to E.B.B._, Jan. 10, 1845).]

But she, on her part, also brought a new and potent influence to bear
upon his poetry, the only one which after early manhood he ever
experienced; and their union was by far the most signal event in