talk of the woods, the doings of the sea and the clouds in tempest and
in peace, the aspects of the sky at noon, at sunrise and sunset, are all
foreign, not English. The one little poem which is of English landscape
is written by him in Italy (in a momentary weariness with his daily
adoration), and under a green impulse. Delightful as it is, he would not
have remained faithful to it for a day. Every one knows it, but that we
may realise how quick he was to remember and to touch a corner of early
Spring in England, on a soft and windy day--for all the blossoms are
scattered--I quote it here. It is well to read his sole contribution
(except in _Pauline_ and a few scattered illustrations) to the scenery
of his own country:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge--
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay, when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower;
--Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

So it runs; but it is only a momentary memory; and he knew, when he had
done it, and to his great comfort, that he was far away from England.
But when Tennyson writes of Italy--as, for instance, in _Mariana in the
South_--how apart he is! How great is his joy when he gets back to
England!

Then, again, when Browning was touched by the impulse to write about a
great deed in war, he does not choose, like Tennyson, English subjects.
The _Cavalier Tunes_ have no importance as patriot songs. They are mere
experiments. The poem, _How They brought the Good News from Ghent to
Aix_, has twice their vigour. His most intense war-incident is taken
from the history of the French wars under Napoleon. The most ringing and
swiftest poem of personal dash and daring--and at sea, as if he was
tired of England's mistress-ship of