and to show how a modern poet greets a landscape he flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible little lyric
"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds."
The poet's strictures upon classicism are entirely in line with his philosophy, placing as it does the paramount importance on living realities.
"'Do and no wise dream,' he exclaims
'Earth's young significance is all to learn;
The dead Greek lore lies buried in its urn
Where who seeks fire finds ashes.'"
The 'Parleying with Charles Avison' is more a poem of moods than any of the others. The poet's love for music is reflected in his claiming it as the highest expression possible to man; but sadness comes to him at the thought of the ephemeralness of its forms, a fact that is borne in on him by the inadequateness of Avison's old March styled "grand." He finally makes of music the most perfect symbol of the evolution of spirit of which the central truth remains always permanent, while the form though ever changing is of absolute value to the time when the spirit found expression in it.
Even this does not quite satisfy the poet's desires for the supremacy of music, and his final conclusion is that if we only get ourselves into a proper historical frame of mind, any form will reveal its beauty, This is a truth which needs especially to be recognized in music, for we too often hear people objecting to Haydn or Mozart and even Beethoven because they are not modern, never realizing that each age has produced its distinctive musical beauty.
But Browning means it of course to have the largest significance in relation to all forms of truth and beauty of which every age has had its living example--thus--his last triumphant mood is, "Never dream that what once lived shall ever die."