Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.
BY THE FIRESIDE
The scene of the declaration in this poem is laid in a little mountain gorge adjacent to the Baths of Lucca, where the Brownings spent the summer of 1853.
How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn evenings come;
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?