were chanted by the choir in
Westminster Abbey when the body of her husband was laid in the "Poets'
Corner"), "The Dead Pan," and that most exquisite lyric of all, "Catarina
to Camoens," were all written during this period.

The title of the latter was but a transparent veil for her own feelings
toward Robert Browning, and had she died in his absence, as Catarina did
in that of Camoens, the words would have expressed her own feeling. What
profound pathos is in the line,

"Death is near me,--and not _you_,"

and how her own infinite sweetness of spirit is mirrored in the stanza,

"I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine,
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine."

And read her own self-revelation again in "A Denial,"

"We have met late--it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend!"

But the denial breaks down, and the last lines tell the story:

"Here's no more courage in my soul to say
'Look in my face and see.'"

And in that last line of "Insufficiency,"

"I love thee so, Dear, that I only can leave thee."

In "Question and Answer," in "Proof and Disproof," "A Valediction," "Loved
Once," and "Inclusions," he who reads between the lines and has the magic
of divination may read the story of her inner life.

In the poem "Confessions" is touched a note of mystical, spiritual
romance, spiritual tragedy, wholly of the inner life, that entirely
differentiates from any other poetic expression of Mrs. Browning. In one
stanza occur these lines:

"The least touch of their hands in the morning, I keep it by day and
by night;
Their least step on the stair, at the door, still throbs through me,
if ever so light."

Even with all allowance for the imagination of the poet, these lines
reveal such feeling, such tremulous susceptibility, that with less
intellectual balance than was hers, combined with such lack of physical
vigor, would almost inevitably have resulted in failure of poise. The
current of spiritual energy was so strong with Elizabeth Barrett as to
largely take the place of greater physical strength. That she never
relapsed into the conditions of morbid invalidism is a marvel, and it is
also an impressive testimony to the power of spiritual energy to control
and determine physical conditions.

All through that summer the letters run on, daily, semi-daily. Of his work
Browning writes that he shall be "prouder to