And her eyes are dark and humid, like the depth on depth of lustre
Hid i' the harebell, while her tresses, sunnier than the
wild-grape cluster,
Gush in golden-tinted plenty down her neck's rose-misted marble:
Then her voice's music ... call it the well's bubbling, the bird's
warble!
And this woman says, "My days were sunless and my nights were
moonless,
Parched the pleasant April herbage, and the lark's heart's
outbreak tuneless,
If you loved me not!" And I who--(ah, for words of flame!) adore
her,
Who am mad to lay my spirit prostrate palpably before her--
I may enter at her portal soon, as now her lattice takes me,
And by noontide as by midnight make her mine, as hers she makes me!

The two lyrics, _Home-Thoughts, from the Sea_ and _Home-Thoughts,
from Abroad_, were written during Browning's first Italian journey in
1838; and it seems strange that he did not print them among the
_Dramatic Lyrics_ of 1842 but reserved them for the _Dramatic
Romances_ of 1845; especially as he subsequently transferred them to
the _Lyrics_. They are both notable on account of the strong feeling
for England which they express. No great English poet has said so
little of England as Browning, though his own feelings were always
keenly patriotic. Even in _Pauline_, a poem without a country, there
occur the two lines

... and I cherish most
My love of England--how her name, a word
Of hers in a strange tongue makes my heart beat!