Love were as plain to see.
When see? When there dawns a day
If not on the homely earth,
Then yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth
And Power comes full in play.”[17]
Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament, perhaps, as it is expressed in At the Mermaid,—
“I find earth not gray, but rosy,
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy,