‘We saw the swallows gathering in the sky, And in the osier isle we heard their noise. We had not to look back on summer joys, Or forward to a summer of bright dye. But in the largeness of the evening earth Our spirits grew as we went side by side. The hour became her husband and my bride. Love that had robb’d us so, thus bless’d our dearth! The pilgrims of the year wax’d very loud In multitudinous chatterings, as the flood Full brown came from the west, and, like pale blood Expanded to the upper crimson cloud. Love that had robb’d us of immortal things, This little moment mercifully gave, And still I see across the twilight wave The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.’ It may be argued that the long delay in the acknowledgment of his sovereignty is due to himself, to his obscurities, his ruggedness, his enormous intellectual difficulties offered the reader, like five-barred gates, to leap, and, in the event of failure, fall against, stunned and aching all over from the force of big mental bruises. But Browning is fifty times more obscure, more rugged, more difficult. It is true, Browning’s apotheosis, in somewhat ironical form, lies in a Browning Society that, perhaps, may achieve a glossary and a full compilation of notes. Whereas, all the poet asks us to bring to him is a little thought and some brains. As Browning has his lucid and melodious words, when the simplest may understand him upon a first reading, so has Mr. Meredith--a fact that does not seem to have served him to such popularity as Browning enjoyed. Can anything be sweeter, softer, more musical than this little poem ‘The Meeting’?-- ‘The old coach-road thro’ a common of furze, With knolls of pine, ran white: Berries of autumn, with thistles and burrs, And spider-threads droop’d in the light. ‘The light in a thin blue veil peer’d sick; The sheep grazed close and still; The smoke of a farm by a yellow rick Curl’d lazily under a hill. ‘No fly shook the round of the silver net; No insect the swift bird chased; Only two travellers moved and met Across that hazy waste. ‘One was a girl with a babe that throve, Her ruin and her bliss; One was a youth with a lawless love, Who claspt it the more for this. ‘The girl for her babe humm’d prayerful speech; The youth for his love did pray; Each cast a wistful look on each, And either went their way.’