Take, for an example of Browning’s way of enhancing love by contrast, that most exquisite and subtle lyric called Love Among the Ruins.

“Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles

Miles and miles

On the solitary pastures where our sheep

Half asleep

Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stay or stop

As they crop—

Was the site once of a city great and gay

(So they say)

Of our country’s very capital, its prince