Not to make Browning too formidable at first, let us begin with a few of his lighter studies, in very simple verse. I will take as the first example the poem called "A Light Woman." This is a polite word for courtesan, "light" referring to the moral character. The story, told in monologue, is the most ordinary story imaginable. It happens in every great city of the world almost every day, among that class of young men who play with fire. But there are two classes among these, the strong and the weak. The strong take life as half a joke, a very pleasant thing, and pass through many dangers unscathed simply because they know that what they are doing is foolish; they never consider it in a serious way. The other class of young men take life seriously. They are foolish rather through affection and pity than through anything else. They want a woman's love, and they foolishly ask it from women who cannot love at all--not, at least, in ninety cases out of a hundred. They get what seems to them affection, however, and this deludes them. Then they become bewitched; and the result is much sorrow, perhaps ruin, perhaps crime, perhaps suicide. In Browning's poem we have a representative of each type. A strong man, strong in character, has a young friend who has been fascinated by a woman of a dangerous class. He says to himself, "My friend will be ruined; he is bewitched; it is no use to talk to him. I will save him by taking that woman away from him. I know the kind of man that she would like; she would like such a man as I." And the rest of the cruel story is told in Browning's verses too well to need further explanation. So far as our story approaches the end, Which do you pity the most of us three?-- My friend, or the mistress of my friend With her wanton eyes, or me? My friend was already too good to lose, And seemed in the way of improvement yet, When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose, And over him drew her net. When I saw him tangled in her toils, A shame, said I, if she adds just him To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim! And before my friend be wholly hers, How easy to prove to him, I said, An eagle's the game her pride prefers, Though she snaps at a wren instead! So I gave her eyes my own eyes to take, My hand sought hers as in earnest need, And round she turned for my noble sake, And gave me herself indeed. The eagle am I, with my fame in the world, The wren is he, with his maiden face. You look away, and your lip is curled? Patience, a moment's space! For see, my friend goes shaking and white; He eyes me as the basilisk: I have turned, it appears, his day to night, Eclipsing his sun's disk.