ange strike me and you
In the house not made with hands?

"Oh, I must feel your brain prompt mine,
Your heart anticipate my heart,
You must be just before in fine,
See and make me see for my part
New depths of the Divine."

The whole poem "By the Fireside" should be quoted to tell the story from
his side; but we will select only the close for our purpose. After
describing how their love had led on to its own consummation, he says:--

"I am named and known by that hour's feat,
There took my station and degree.
So grew my own small life complete
As Nature obtained her best of me--
One born to love you, sweet!

"And to watch you sit by the fireside now,
Back again, as you mutely sit
Musing by fire-light, that great brow
And the spirit-small hand propping it
Yonder, my heart knows how!

"So the earth has gained by one man more,
And the gain of earth must be Heaven's gain too,
And the whole is well worth thinking o'er
When the autumn comes; as I mean to do
One day, as I said before."

The autumn time has come now to Browning, and he has had ample time to
think it o'er; for the "perfect wife," the "Leonor," has lain under the
grasses and violets of the English burying-ground in Florence for
twenty-five years. In the same poem from which we have quoted, he
says:--

"How well I know what I mean to do
When the long dark autumn evenings come!
And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue?
With the music of all thy voices dumb
In life's November, too!

"I shall be found by the fire, suppose,
O'er a great wise book as beseemeth age,
While the shutters flap as the cross wind blows,
And I turn the page, and I turn the page,
Not verse now, only prose!"

It is sad to think that he should be left solitary by his fire and with
his books, but he has much that is beautiful to look back upon,--much,
too, that is beautiful to look forward to, let us hope; and he is
surrounded by many friends, and devotedly attached to the one son who
was the only fruit of this royal marriage of genius.

The house where the poets lived together for fourteen years in Florence
has been thus described:--

"Those who have known 'Casa Guidi' as it was can never forget the
square anteroom with its great picture and piano-forte at which the
boy Browning passed many an hour,--the little dining-room covered
with tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tenny