and throbbing eagerly beneath. When we read certain portions of "Paracelsus",
and the lovely lyrics interspersed in it, it is difficult
not to think of the poet as sometimes, in later life,
stooping like the mariner in Roscoe's beautiful sonnet,
striving to reclaim "some loved lost echo from the fleeting strand."
But it is the fleeting shore of exquisite art, not of the far-reaching
shadowy capes and promontories of "the poetic land".

Of the four interlusive lyrics the freer music is in the unique chant,
"Over the sea our galleys went": a song full of melody and blithe lilt.
It is marvellously pictorial, and yet has a freedom that places it among
the most delightful of spontaneous lyrics: --

"We shouted, every man of us,
And steered right into the harbour thus,
With pomp and paean glorious."

It is, however, too long for present quotation, and as an example
of Browning's early lyrics I select rather the rich and delicate
second of these "Paracelsus" songs, one wherein the influence of Keats
is so marked, and yet where all is the poet's own: --

"Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls,
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes
From out her hair: such balsam falls
Down sea-side mountain pedestals,
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain,
Spent with the vast and howling main,
To treasure half their island-gain.