“No, thy Guido is rough, heady, strong, Dangerous to disquiet: let him bide! He needs some bone to mumble, help amuse The darkness of his den with: so, the fawn Which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies, --Come to me daughter!--thus I throw him back!” i.e., thus I throw back {to} him the fawn which limps up bleeding to my foot and lies. The parenthesis, “Come to me, daughter”, being interposed, and which is introduced as preparatory to his purpose, adds to the difficulty of the construction. There are, after all, but comparatively few instances in Browning’s poetry, where these features of his diction can be fairly condemned. They often impart a crispness to the expressions in which they occur. The contriving spirit of the poet’s language often results in great complexity of construction. Complexity of construction may be a fault, and it may not. It may be justified by the complexity of the thought which it bears along. “Clear quack-quack is easily uttered.” But where an author’s thought is nimble, far-reaching, elliptical through its energy, and discursive, the expression of it must be more or less complex or involved; he will employ subordinate clauses, and parentheses, through which to express the outstanding, restricting, and toning relations of his thought, that is, if he is a master of perspective, and ranks his grouped thoughts according to their relative importance. The poet’s apostrophe to his wife in the spirit-world, which closes the long prologue to ‘The Ring and the Book’ (vv. 1391-1416), and in which he invokes her aid and benediction, in the work he has undertaken, presents a greater complexity of construction than is to be met with anywhere else in his works; and of this passage it may be said, as it may be said of any other having a complex construction, supposing this to be the only difficulty, that it’s hard rather than obscure, and demands close reading. But, notwithstanding its complex structure and the freight of thought conveyed, the passage has a remarkable LIGHTSOMENESS of movement, and is a fine specimen of blank verse. The unobtrusive, but distinctly felt, alliteration which runs through it, contributes something toward this lightsomeness. The first two verses have a Tennysonian ring:--