all the unmusical passages in his works. He felt, as every poet must,
the difficulty of articulation--the disparity between his ideas and
the verbal form he was able to give them. Browning had his trials in
composition, and he placed in the mouth of the Pope his own ardent
hope that in the next world there will be some means of communication
better than language:

Expect nor question nor reply
At what we figure as God's judgment bar!
None of this vile way by the barren words
Which, more than any deed, characterise
Man as made subject to a curse: no speech.

Over and over again, however, Browning declared that poetry should
not be all sweetness. Flowers growing naturally here and there in a
pasture are much more attractive than cut and gathered into a nosegay.
As Luther's long disquisitions are adorned with pretty fables, that
bloom like flowers on furze, so, in the _Epilogue to Pacchiarotto_,
Browning insisted that the wide fields of his verse are not without
cowslips:

And, friends, beyond dispute
I too have the cowslips dewy and dear.
Punctual as Springtide forth peep they:
But I ought to pluck and impound them, eh?
Not let them alone, but deftly shear
And shred and reduce to--what may suit
Children, beyond dispute?

Now, there are many law-abiding and transparently honest persons who