Florence, they spent years of rare companionship and happiness. After her
death he returned to England, but spent most of his summers abroad. On the
Grand Canal, in Venice, the gondoliers point out a palace where at his
son's home, Browning died in 1889. He was buried in the Poets' Corner,
Westminster Abbey.

Browning's poems are not easy to read, because he condenses so much into a
word or phrase and he often leaves large gaps to be filled in by the
reader's imagination. Any one can make selections of lines and even entire
poems from Tennyson, Poe, Southey, and Lanier, in which the poet has
created for us verbal music and beauty. Browning, however, is not so much
concerned with this side of poetry as he is with portraying correctly the
varied emotions of the human soul.

"Love in the largest sense, as the divine principle working through all
nature, is at the very center of Browning's creed. His is the heartiest,
happiest, most beautiful poetic voice that his age has read. He stands
apart from most others of his kind and age in the positiveness of his
religious faith, a faith that is based upon a conviction of the conquering
universality of love and self-sacrifice."

"How They Brought the Good News" is without historical basis; the ride
occurred only in the imagination of the poet. The inspiration came from
Browning's longing for a horseback gallop over the English downs.


Notes and Questions.

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