ely its own. To the reflective mind,
this ghost of old Rome is full of suggestion; its vast, almost limitless
extent as it seems to the traveler; its abundant herbage and floral
wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its
evidences of a vanished civilization, fill the mind with a sweet
sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in
the poem." (Berdoe, _Browning Cyclopaedia_, p. 553.)

6. _I touched a thought._ The elusive thought which he fancifully
pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement
in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (_Life of Browning_, p. 159) says,
"There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not
the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It
is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this
always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save
the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no
poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware,
often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable
isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a
kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some one or other exquisite moment."

IN THREE DAYS

"Another poem of waiting love is 'In Three Days.' And this has the
spirit of a true love lyric in it. It reads like a personal thing; it
breathes exaltation; it is quick, hurried, and thrilled. The delicate
fears of chance and changes in the three days, or in the years to come,
belong of right and nature to the waiting, and are subtly varied and
condensed. It is, however, the thoughtful love of a man who can be
metaphysical in love." (Stopford Brooke, _The Poetry of Robert
Browning_, p. 253.)

THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

_Fano._ This poem was written in the summer of 1848 after a visit of
three days at Fano. It is addressed to Alfred Domett, one of Browning's
warm friends, who was at that time in New Zealand on the Wairoa River.
For a vivid description of him see Browning's "Waring." The picture at
Fano, the details of which are fully brought out in the poem, has been
reproduced in _Illustrations to Browning's Poems_, Part I, published by
the Browning Society. Mrs. Browning (_Letters_ i, 380) speaks of it as
"a divine picture of Guercino's worth going all that way to see."

6. _Another child for tending._ With a longing for guidance and
prot