the light, life and love of the day, the town,
the people and the poem. She passes like an angel by and touches with
her wing events and persons and changes them to good. She has some
natural genius, and is as unconscious of her genius as she is of the
good she does. In her unconsciousness is the fountain of her charm. She
lives like a flower of the field that knows not it has blest and
comforted with its beauty the travellers who have passed it by. She has
only one day in the whole year for her own, and for that day she creates
a fresh personality for herself. She clothes her soul, intellect,
imagination, and spiritual aspiration in holiday garments for the day,
becoming for the time a new poetic self, and able to choose any other
personality in Asolo from hour to hour--the queen and spirit of the
town; not wishing to be, actually, the folk she passes by, but only,
since she is so isolated, to be something in their lives, to touch them
for help and company.

The world of nature speaks to her and loves her. She sees all that is
beautiful, feeds on it, and grasps the matter of thought that underlies
the beauty. And so much is she at home with nature that she is able to
describe with ease in words almost as noble as the thing itself the
advent of the sun. When she leaps out of her bed to meet the leap of the
sun, the hymn of description she sings might be sung by the Hours
themselves as they dance round the car of the god. She can even play
with the great Mother as with an equal, or like her child. The charming
gaiety with which she speaks to the sunlights that dance in her room,
and to the flowers which are her sisters, prove, however isolated her
life may be, that she is never alone. Along with this brightness she has
seriousness, the sister of her gaiety; the deep seriousness of
imagination, the seriousness also of the evening when meditation broods
over the day and its doings before sleep. These, with her sweet
humanity, natural piety, instinctive purity, compose her of soft
sunshine and soft shadow. Nor does her sadness at the close, which is
overcome by her trust in God, make her less but more dear to us. She is
a beautiful creation. There are hosts of happy women like her. They are
the salt of the earth. But few poets have made so much of them and so
happily, or sung about these birds of God so well as Browning has in
_Pippa Passes_.

That was in 1841. Pleased with his success in this half-lyrical,
half-dramatic