severed from immensity," is followed by the lyric which tells how Love
transcends those limits, making an eternity of time and a universe of
solitude. Finally, the burden of these wayward intermittent strains of
love-music is caught up, with an added intensity drawn from the poet's
personal love and sorrow, in the noble Epilogue. As he listens to the
call of Love, the world becomes an enchanted place, resounding with the
triumph of good and the exultant battle-joy of heroes. But a "chill
wind" suddenly disencharms the enchantment, a doubt that buoyant faith
might be a mirage conjured up by Love itself:--

"What if all be error,
If the halo irised round my head were--Love, thine arms?"

He disdains to answer; for the last words glow with a fire which of
itself dispels the chill wind. A faith founded upon love had for
Browning a surer guarantee than any founded upon reason; it was secured
by that which most nearly emancipated men from the illusions of
mortality, and enabled them to see things as they are seen by God.

The _Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day_ (1887)
is a more laboured and, save for one or two splendid episodes, a less
remarkable achievement than _Ferishtah_. All the burly diffuseness which
had there been held in check by a quasi-oriental ideal of lightly-knit
facility and bland oracular pithiness, here has its way without stint,
and no more songs break like the rush of birds' wings upon the dusty air
of colloquy. Thrusting in between the lyrics of _Ferishtah_ and
_Asolando_, these _Parleyings_ recall those other "people of importance"
whose intrusive visit broke in upon "the tenderness of Dante." Neither
their importance in their own day nor their relative obscurity, for the
most part, in ours, had much to do with Browning's choice. They do not