There was one of these critical moments which attracted him greatly--that in which all after-life is contained and decided; when a step to the right or left settles, in an instant, the spiritual basis of the soul. I have already mentioned some of these poems--those concerned with love, such as _By the Fireside_ or _Cristina_--and the woman is more prominent in them than the man. One of the best of them, so far as the drawing of a woman is concerned, is _Dis aliter visum_. We see the innocent girl, and ten years after what the world has made of her. But the heart of the girl lies beneath the woman of the world. And she recalls to the man the hour when they lingered near the church on the cliff; when he loved her, when he might have claimed her, and did not. He feared they might repent of it; sacrificing to the present their chance of the eternities of love. "Fool! who ruined four lives--mine and your opera-dancer's, your own and my husband's!" Whether her outburst now be quite true to her whole self or not Browning does not let us know; but it is true to that moment of her, and it is full of the poetry of the moment she recalls. Moreover, these thirty short verses paint as no other man could have done the secret soul of a woman in society. I quote her outburst. It is full of Browning's keen poetry; and the first verse of it may well be compared with a similar moment in _By the Fireside_, where nature is made to play the same part, but succeeds as here she fails: Now I may speak: you fool, for all Your lore! Who made things plain in vain? What was the sea for? What, the grey Sad church, that solitary day, Crosses and graves and swallows' call? Was there nought better than to enjoy? No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due? No forcing earth teach heaven's employ? No wise beginning, here and now, What cannot grow complete (earth's feat) And heaven must finish, there and then? No tasting earth's true food for men, Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet? No grasping at love, gaining a share O' the sole spark from God's life at strife With death, so, sure of range above The limits here? For us and love. Failure; but, when God fails, despair. This you call wisdom? Thus you add Good unto good again, in vain? You loved, with body worn and weak; I loved, with faculties to seek: Were both loves worthless since ill-clad? Let the mere star-fish in his vault Crawl in a wash of weed, indeed, Rose-jacynth to the finger tips: He, whole in body and soul, outstrips Man, found with either in default. But what's whole, can increase no more, Is dwarfed and dies, since here's its sphere. The devil laughed at you in his sleeve! You knew not? That I well believe; Or you had saved two souls: nay, four.