The two poets were married, and removed at once to Italy, where the lady's health improved, and where they passed many years of happy married life. Miss Barrett's father did not approve the marriage, and he cast her off in consequence, and never became reconciled to her, which was the one great grief of her happy and fortunate life. She had before marriage lost a favorite brother by drowning, for whom she had mourned so deeply as seriously to affect her health. These were the only abiding sorrows of her life, as far as the world knows. The perfect companionship of these two gifted souls has been described by Browning himself:-- "When if I think but deep enough You are wont to answer prompt as rhyme, And you too find without a rebuff The response your soul seeks, many a time Piercing its fine flesh stuff." Their perfect union he describes thus:-- "My own, see where the years conduct. At first 't was something our two souls Should mix as mists do; each is sucked Into each now, on the new stream rolls, Whatever rocks obstruct. "Think when our one soul understands The great Word which makes all things new, When earth breaks up and heaven expands, How will the change strike me and you In the house not made with hands? "Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine, Your heart anticipate my heart, You must be just before in fine, See and make me see for my part New depths of the Divine." The whole poem "By the Fireside" should be quoted to tell the story from his side; but we will select only the close for our purpose. After describing how their love had led on to its own consummation, he says:-- "I am named and known by that hour's feat, There took my station and degree. So grew my own small life complete As Nature obtained her best of me-- One born to love you, sweet! "And to watch you sit by the fireside now, Back again, as you mutely sit Musing by fire-light, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it Yonder, my heart knows how! "So the earth has gained by one man more, And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too, And the whole is well worth thinking o'er When the autumn comes; as I mean to do One day, as I said before." The autumn time has come now to Browning, and he has had ample time to think it o'er; for the "perfect wife," the "Leonor," has lain under the grasses and violets of the English burying-ground in Florence for twenty-five years. In the same poem from which we have quoted, he says:-- "How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark autumn evenings come! And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices dumb In life's November, too! "I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!"