This is the loggia Browning loved,
High on the flank of the friendly town;
These are the hills that his keen eye roved,
The green like a cataract leaping down
To the plain that his pen gave new renown.
There to the West what a range of blue!—
The very background Titian drew
To his peerless Loves! O tranquil scene!
Who...
There is delight in singing, though none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, though the praiser sit alone
And see the praised far off him, far above.
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world’s,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walked along our...
UPON St. Michael’s Isle
They laid him for awhile
That he might feel the Ocean’s full embrace,
And wedded be
To that wide sea—
The subject and the passion of his race.
As Thetis, from some lovely underground
Springing, she girds him round
With lapping sound...
I
The clearest eyes in all the world they read
With sense more keen and spirit of sight more true
Than burns and thrills in sunrise, when the dew
Flames, and absorbs the glory round it shed,
As they the light of ages quick and dead,
Closed now,...
I have not met thee in this outward world,
Bounded by time and space; but in that realm,
O'er which imagination holds her reign,
There have I seen thy spirit face to face,
Majestic, and yet lovely. There have I
Sat at thy feet to listen to thy voice,
...
