poems published in 1855 his _One Word More_. He wrote this in a
metre different from any he had ever used, for he meant the poem to
be unique in his works, a personal expression of his love. He
remarked that Rafael wrote sonnets, that Dante painted a picture,
each man going outside the sphere of his genius to please the woman
he loved, to give her something entirely apart from his gifts to the
world. He wished that he could do something other than poetry for his
wife, and in the next life he believed that it would be possible.
But here God had given him only one gift--verse: he must therefore
present her with a specimen of the only art he could command; but it
should be utterly unlike all his other poems, for they were dramatic;
here just once, and for one woman only, he would step out from
behind the scenes, and address her directly in his own person.

Of course Browning could have modelled a statue, or written a piece
of music for Elizabeth, for in both of these arts he had attained
moderate proficiency: but he wished not only to make a gift just for
her, but to give it to her in public, with the whole world regarding;
therefore it must be of his best.

He calls her his _moon_ of poets. He reminds her how a few days ago,
they had seen the crescent moon in Florence, how they had seen it
nightly waxing until it lamped the facade of San Miniato, while the
nightingales, in ecstasy among the cypress trees, gave full-throated
applause. Then they had travelled together to London, and now saw
the same dispirited moon, saving up her silver parsimoniously, sink
in gibbous meanness behind the chimney-tops.

The notable thing about the moon is that whereas the earth, during
one revolution about the sun, turns on its own axis three hundred