That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive; I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there. [Illustration: _Painting by W. J. Neatby._ MY LAST DUCHESS.] After a light and early breakfast--the poet, when abroad, lived almost entirely on milk, fruit, etc., abjuring animal food--Browning would follow his invariable custom, a stroll along the Riva to the public gardens. He never failed to leave the house at the same hour of the day: he was a man of singularly methodical habits in many ways. "Good sense," it has been said, "was his foible, if not his habit": and an orderly method of life was one of the strongest proofs of this fact: another evidence lay in his care to avoid being _labelled_. The disorderly locks and careless appearance of the typical poet were quite alien to this well-groomed, cleanly-looking Englishman, with his "sweet, grave face," silvery hair, and smooth, healthy skin. Singularly wholesome in body as well as in mind, until past seventy he could take the longest walks without fatigue; the splendid eyesight of his clear grey eyes remained untarnished to the last. These keen grey eyes of his never failed to notice anything worth seeing in his walks: an extraordinary minuteness of observation is perceptible in all his poems dealing with out-door life,--little touches of detail such as few men are masters of: And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, to-day; One day more bursts them open fully, --You know the red turns grey. (_The Lost Mistress._) And again, those lines of poignant, passionate reserve, which sum up _May and Death_: I wish that when you died last May, Charles, there had died along with you Three parts of spring's delightful things; Ay, and for me, the fourth part too. A foolish thought, and worse, perhaps! There must be many a pair of friends Who, arm in arm, deserve the warm Moon-births, and the long evening-ends. So, for their sake, be May still May! Let their new time, as mine of old, Do all it did for me: I bid Sweet sights and sounds throng manifold. Only, one little sight, one plant, Woods have in May, that starts up green Save a sole streak which, so to speak, Is spring's blood, spilt its leaves between,--