I have written of her and of other parts of the poem elsewhere. It only remains to say that nowhere is the lyric element in Browning's genius more delightfully represented than in this little piece of mingled song and action. There is no better love-lyric in his work than
You'll love me yet!—and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing;
and the two snatches of song which Pippa sings when she is passing under Ottima's window and the Monsignore's—"The year's at the spring" and "Overhead the tree-tops meet"—possess, independent of the meaning of the words and their poetic charm, a freshness, dewiness, morning ravishment to which it is difficult to find an equal. They are filled with youth and its delight, alike of the body and the soul. What Browning's spirit felt and lived when he was young and his heart beating with the life of the universe, is in them, and it is their greatest charm.
CHAPTER IX
POEMS OF THE PASSION OF LOVE
When we leave Paracelsus, Sordello and the Dramas behind, and find ourselves among the host of occasional poems contained in the Dramatic Lyrics and Romances, in Men and Women, in Dramatis Personæ, and in the later volumes, it is like leaving an unencumbered sea for one studded with a thousand islands. Every island is worth a visit and different from the rest. Their variety, their distinct scenery, their diverse inhabitants, the strange surprises in them, are as continual an enchantment for the poetic voyager as the summer isles of the Pacific. But while each of them is different from the rest, yet, like the islands in the Pacific, they fall into groups; and to isolate these groups is perhaps the best way to treat so varied a collection of poems. To treat them chronologically would be a task too long and wearisome for a book. To treat them zoologically, if I may borrow that term, is possible, and may be profitable. This chapter is dedicated to the poems which relate to Love.