The prologue seems deliberately to strike this note, with its exquisite
idealisation of the old red brick wall and its creepers lush and
lithe,--a formidable barrier indeed, but one which spirit and love can
pass. For here the "wall" is the unsympathetic throng who close the poet
in; there

"I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strife
At breast, and a life whence storm-notes start--
Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing
That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free;
Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring
Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!"

These stanzas finely hint at a second theme which wanders in and out
among the strident notes of Browning's anti-critical "apologetics." Of
all the springs of poetry none lay deeper in Browning than love; to the
last he could sing of love with the full inspiration of his best time;
and the finest things in this volume are concerned with it. But as
compared with the love-lays of the _Dramatic Lyrics_ or _Men and Women_
there is something wistful, far off, even elegiac, in this love-poetry.
A barrier, undefinable but impassable, seems to part us from the full
tide of youthful passion. The richest in this tender sunset beauty is
the _St Martin's Summer_, where the late love is suddenly smitten with
the discovery that its apparent warmth is a ghost of old passion buried
but unallayed. Again and again Browning here dwells upon the magic of
love,--as if love still retained for the ageing poet an isolated and
exceptional irradiating power in a world fast fading into commonplace
and prose. The brief, exquisite snatches of song, _Natural Magic,
Magical Nature_, are joyous tributes to the power of the charm, paid by
one who remains master of his heart. _Numpholeptos_ is the long-drawn