In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge,
While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge,
Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see,
Each grass-blade's glory-glitter," etc.

Who that has ever read "Pauline" will forget the masterful poetry
descriptive of the lover's wild-wood retreat, the exquisite lines beginning
"Walled in with a sloped mound of matted shrubs, tangled, old and green"?
There is indeed a new, an unmistakable voice here.

"And tongues of bank go shelving in the waters,
Where the pale-throated snake reclines his head,
And old grey stones lie making eddies there;
The wild mice cross them dry-shod" . . . .

What lovelier image in modern poetry than that depictive of the forest-pool in
depths of savage woodlands, unvisited but by the shadows of passing clouds, --

"the trees bend
O'er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl."

How the passionate sexual emotion, always deep and true in Browning,
finds lovely utterance in the lines where Pauline's lover
speaks of the blood in her lips pulsing like a living thing,
while her neck is as "marble misted o'er with love-breath," and

". . . her delicious eyes as clear as heaven,
When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans."