Love is depicted by Browning with truth, with vehemence, and with the constant conviction that it is the supreme thing in life. The great variety of occasions in which it appears in his pages and the different degrees of elaboration it receives, leave it always of the same quality--the quality of passion. It never sinks into sensuality; in spite of its frequent extreme crudeness, it is always, in Browning's hands, a passion of the imagination, it is always love. On the other hand it never rises into contemplation: mingled as it may be with friendship, with religion, or with various forms of natural tenderness, it always remains a passion; it always remains a personal impulse, a hypnotization, with another person for its object or its cause. Kept within these limits it is represented, in a series of powerful sketches, which are for most readers the gems of the Browning gallery, as the last word of experience, the highest phase of human life. "The woman yonder, there's no use in life But just to obtain her! Heap earth's woes in one And bear them--make a pile of all earth's joys And spurn them, as they help or help not this; Only, obtain her!" "When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each.... O heart, O blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin-- Shut them in-- With their triumphs and their follies and the rest. Love is best." In the piece called "In a Gondola" the lady says to her lover:-- "Heart to heart And lips to lips! Yet once more, ere we part, Clasp me and make me thine, as mine thou art." And he, after being surprised and stabbed in her arms, replies:-- "It was ordained to be so, sweet!--and best Comes now, beneath thine eyes, upon thy breast: Still kiss me! Care not for the cowards; care Only to put aside thy beauteous hair My blood will hurt! The Three I do not scorn To death, because they never lived, but I Have lived indeed, and so--(yet one more kiss)--can die." We are not allowed to regard these expressions as the cries of souls blinded by the agony of passion and lust. Browning unmistakably adopts them as expressing his own highest intuitions. He so much admires the strength of this weakness that he does not admit that it is a weakness at all. It is with the strut of self-satisfaction, with the sensation, almost, of muscular Christianity, that he boasts of it through the mouth of one of his heroes, who is explaining to his mistress the motive of his faithful services as a minister of the queen:--