“For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear, ...
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.”
But it must be confessed that he does not often say it as clearly, as quietly, as beautifully as in Love Among the Ruins. For his chosen method is dramatic and his natural manner is psychological. So ardently does he follow this method, so entirely does he give himself up to this manner that his style
“is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”
In the dedicatory note to Sordello, written in 1863, he says “My stress lay in the incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study.” He felt intensely
“How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment’s product thus,