and the singing in his ears from the o'er-fevered blood
confused the serene rhythm haunting the far perspectives of the brain,
"as Arab birds float sleeping in the wind."

I have dwelt at this length upon "Pauline" partly because
of its inherent beauty and autopsychical significance,
and partly because it is the least familiar of Browning's poems,
long overshadowed as it has been by his own too severe strictures:
mainly, however, because of its radical importance to the student
who would arrive at a broad and true estimate of the power and scope
and shaping constituents of its author's genius. Almost every quality
of his after-verse may be found here, in germ or outline.
It is, in a word, more physiognomic than any other single poem by Browning,
and so must ever possess a peculiar interest quite apart
from its many passages of haunting beauty.

To these the lover of poetry will always turn with delight.
Some will even regard them retrospectively with alien emotion
to that wherewith they strive to possess their souls in patience
over some one or other of the barbarisms, the Titanic excesses,
the poetic banalities recurrent in the later volumes.

How many and how haunting these delicate oases are!
Those who know and love "Pauline" will remember the passage where the poet,
with that pantheistic ecstasy which was possibly inspired
by the singer he most loved, tells how he can live the life of plants,
content to watch the wild bees flitting to and fro, or to lie
absorbent of the ardours of the sun, or, like the night-flowering columbine,
to trail up the tree-trunk and through its rustling foliage
"look for the dim stars;" or, again, can live the life of the bird,