Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold of course.
Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.”
III
“Love is best!” That is one of the cardinal points of Browning’s creed. He repeats it in a hundred ways: tragically in A Blot in the ’Scutcheon; sentimentally in A Lover’s Quarrel, Two in the Campagna, The Last Ride Together; heroically in Colombe’s Birthday; in the form of a paradox in The Statue and the Bust; as a personal experience in By the Fireside, One Word More, and at the end of the prelude to The Ring and the Book.