The blank verse of Tennyson is probably to be regarded as the most masterly found among modern poets.[34] Its flexibility is almost infinite, yet never unmelodious. The last of the specimens just quoted illustrates his use of blank verse for short lyrical poems,--an unusual and notable achievement. Perhaps only Collins's _Ode to Evening_ can be compared with his success in this direction, and Collins used a more elaborate strophe to fill, in part, the place of rime. Of the unrimed lyrics in _The Princess_, Mr. Symonds says that they "are perfect specimens of most melodious and complete minstrelsy in words." In the "Tears, Idle Tears," he goes on to say, the verse "is divided into periods of five lines, each of which terminates with the words 'days that are no more.' This recurrence of sound and meaning is a substitute for rhyme, and suggests rhyme so persuasively that it is impossible to call the poem mere blank verse." See also the specimens on p. 144 above. In the case of both Tennyson and Browning the student should compare the form of the narrative blank verse on the one hand with that of the dramatic on the other. Yet in a sense all Browning's blank verse is dramatic. It is no less flexible than Tennyson's, but (as in most of Browning's poetry) sacrifices more of melody in adapting itself to the thought. To live, and see her learn, and learn by her, Out of the low obscure and petty world-- Or only see one purpose and one will Evolve themselves i' the world, change wrong to right: To have to do with nothing but the true, The good, the eternal--and these, not alone, In the main current of the general life, But small experiences of every day, Concerns of the particular hearth and home: To learn not only by a comet's rush But a rose's birth,--not by the grandeur, God, But the comfort, Christ. All this, how far away! Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!-- Just as a drudging student trims his lamp, Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patch'd gown close, Dreams, "Thus should I fight, save or rule the world!" Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes To the old solitary nothingness. So I, from such communion, pass content.-- O great, just, good God! Miserable me! (BROWNING: _The Ring and the Book; Caponsacchi_. 1868.) _The Ring and the Book_ Professor Corson calls "the greatest achievement of the century ... in the effective use of blank verse in the treatment of a great subject.... Its blank verse, while having a most complex variety of character, is the most dramatic blank verse since the Elizabethan era.... One reads it without a sense almost of there being anything artificial in the construction of the language; ... one gets the impression that the poet thought and felt spontaneously in blank verse." (_Primer of English Verse_, pp. 224, 225.)