and subtly-felt description of the scenery of a piece of village country
between the mountains and the sea, with all its life, than in the poem
called _The Englishman in Italy_. The very title is an outline of
Browning's position in this matter. We find this English poet in France,
in Syria, in Greece, in Spain, but not in England. We find Rome,
Florence, Venice, Mantua, Verona, and forgotten towns among the
Apennines painted with happy love in verse, but not an English town nor
an English village. The flowers, the hills, the ways of the streams, the
talk of the woods, the doings of the sea and the clouds in tempest and
in peace, the aspects of the sky at noon, at sunrise and sunset, are all
foreign, not English. The one little poem which is of English landscape
is written by him in Italy (in a momentary weariness with his daily
adoration), and under a green impulse. Delightful as it is, he would not
have remained faithful to it for a day. Every one knows it, but that we
may realise how quick he was to remember and to touch a corner of early
Spring in England, on a soft and windy day--for all the blossoms are
scattered--I quote it here. It is well to read his sole contribution
(except in _Pauline_ and a few scattered illustrations) to the scenery
of his own country:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,