4. A cornfield. The picture is a field of wheat with red poppies scattered through the wheat.
23. Cypress. It is interesting to note how many of the trees, shrubs, flowers, and fruits in Browning's poems are those of southern Europe. His poetry of nature is almost as distinctively Italian as Tennyson's is English. "The Englishman in Italy" is especially rich in vivid, picturesque details of southern scenes.
36. Liver-wing. The right wing. The shot hit the king in the right arm.
37. Bourbon. Mr. and Mrs. Browning were rejoicing at any indications that the people of Italy were awake to revolt against the Bourbons. See Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows" and "First News from Villa Franca" and Mr. Browning's "[The Italian in England]."
40. Queen Mary's saying. For two hundred years Calais had been one of England's most important possessions. It was taken by the French in 1588, the last year of the reign of Queen Mary. What Queen Mary said of Calais, Browning says of Italy.
[HOME-THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD]
Compare the sentiment of this poem with that of ["De Gustibus—"] written ten years later. In "Home Thoughts from Abroad" we have one of Browning's rare uses of the scenery of his own country.
14. That's the wise thrush. The power of these lines in presenting both the musical and the emotional quality of the bird's song is rivaled only by Wilson Flagg's "The Bobolink" (quoted in John Burroughs's Birds and Poets) and Wordsworth's "To the Cuckoo."
[HOME-THOUGHTS FROM THE SEA]
This poem and the preceding one express two phases of the poet's love of country; his affection for the physical beauty of England, and his pride in her political freedom. In the first poem, he turns, in thought, from the glowing color of Italy, to the more delicate loveliness of England in April; in the second poem, he longs to repay the service his country has rendered him in defeating foreign foes.