lute and song . . . loved yesterday
(The singing angels know) are only dear
Because thy name moves right in what they say."

The wonder of how she could have been able to live without him impresses
her much.

"Beloved, my beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sat alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice . . . but link by link
Went counting all my chains as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand . . . why, thus I drink
Of life's great cup of wonder. Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech, nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God's presence out of sight."

But in order to tell the whole story we should have to quote all the
"Sonnets from the Portuguese,"--and they would make an alluring chapter
certainly,--but we must refrain. The result was that,

"As brighter ladies do not count it strange
For love to give up acres and degree,
I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange
My near, sweet view of Heaven for earth with thee."

The two poets were married, and removed at once to Italy, where the
lady's health improved, and where they passed many years of happy
married life. Miss Barrett's father did not approve the marriage, and he
cast her off in consequence, and never became reconciled to her, which
was the one great grief of her happy and fortunate life. She had before
marriage lost a favorite brother by drowning, for whom she had mourned
so deeply as seriously to affect her health. These were the only
abiding sorrows of her life, as far as the world knows. The perfect
companionship of these two gifted souls has been described by Browning
himself:--

"When if I think but deep enough
You are wont to answer prompt as rhyme,
And you too find without a rebuff
The response your soul seeks, many a time
Piercing its fine flesh stuff."

Their perfect union he describes thus:--

"My own, see where the years conduct.
At first 't was something our two souls
Should mix as mists do; each is sucked
Into each now, on the new stream rolls,
Whatever rocks obstruct.

"Think when our one soul understands
The great Word which makes all things new,
When earth breaks up and heaven expands,
How will the ch