When the owls forebore a term,
You heard music; that was I.

Earth turned in her sleep with pain,
Sultrily suspired for proof:
_In at heaven and out again,
Lightning!--where it broke the roof,
Bloodlike, some few drops of rain_.

What they could my words expressed,
O my love, my all, my one!
Singing helped the verses best,
And when singing's best was done,
To my lute I left the rest.

So wore night; the East was gray,
White the broad-faced hemlock flowers;
There would be another day;
Ere its first of heavy hours
Found me, I had passed away."

This tells enough to be an entire poem. It is not a description of
the night and the lover: we are made to see them. The lines I have
italicised are of the school of Dante or of Rembrandt. Their vividness
overwhelms. In the latest poems, as in _Ivân Ivânovitch_ or _Ned
Bratts_, we find the same swift sureness of touch. It is only natural
that most of Browning's finest landscapes are Italian.[11]

As a humorist in poetry, Browning takes rank with our greatest. His
humour, like most of his qualities, is peculiar to himself, though no