Smart's David is before all things the glowing singer of the Joy of Earth,--the glory of the visible creation uttering itself in rapturous Praise of the Lord. And it is this David of whom we have a presentiment in the no less glowing songs with which Browning's shepherd-boy seeks to reach the darkened mind of Saul. Of the poem we now possess, only the first nine sections belong to the present phase of Browning's work. These were confessedly incomplete, but Browning was content to let them go forth as they were, and less bent upon even their ultimate completion, it would seem, than Miss Barrett, who bade him "remember" that the poem was "there only as a first part, and that the next parts must certainly follow and complete what will be a great lyrical work--now remember."[24] And the "next parts" when they came, in _Men and Women_, bore the mark of his ten years' fellowship with her devout and ecstatic soul, as well as of his own growth towards the richer and fuller harmonies of verse. The 1845 fragment falls, of course, far short of its sequel in imaginative audacity and splendour, but it is steeped in a pellucid beauty which Browning's busy intellectuality was too prone to dissipate. Kenyon read it nightly, as he told Mrs Browning, "to put his dreams in order"; finely comparing it to "Homer's Shield of Achilles, thrown into lyrical whirl and life." And certainly, if Browning anywhere approaches that Greek plasticity for which he cared so little, it is in these exquisitely sculptured yet breathing scenes. Then, as the young singer kindles to his work, his song, without becoming less transparent, grows more personal and impassioned; he no longer repeats the familiar chants of his tribe, but breaks into a new impetuous inspiration of his own; the lyrical whirl and life gathers swiftness and energy, and the delicate bas-reliefs of Saul's people, in their secular pieties of grief or joy, merge in the ecstatic vision of Saul himself, as he had once been, and as he might yet be, that "boyhood of wonder and hope, Present promise and wealth of the future beyond the eye's scope," all the fulness and glory of the life of humanity gathered upon his single head. It is the very voice of life, which thrills and strikes across the spiritual darkness of Saul, as the coming of Hyperion scattered the shadows of Saturnian night. [Footnote 24: _E.B.B. to R.B._, Dec. 10, 1845.] CHAPTER IV. WEDDED LIFE IN ITALY. _MEN AND WOMEN_. This foot, once planted on the goal; This glory-garland round my soul. --_The Last Ride Together_. Warmer climes Give brighter plumage, stronger wing; the breeze Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where The Siren waits thee, singing song for song. --LANDOR. I.