eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?"

After the Adriatic coast was left, they hesitated as to returning to
Florence, the doctors having laid such stress on the climatic
suitability of Pisa for Mrs. Browning. But she felt so sure of herself
in her new strength that it was decided to adventure upon at least one
winter in the queen-city. They were fortunate in obtaining a residence
in the old palace called Casa Guidi, in the Via Maggiore, over against
the church of San Felice, and here, with a few brief intervals, they
lived till death separated them.

On the little terrace outside there was more noble verse fashioned in
the artist's creative silence than we can ever be aware of: but what a
sacred place it must ever be for the lover of poetry! There, one ominous
sultry eve, Browning, brooding over the story of a bygone Roman crime,
foreshadowed "The Ring and the Book," and there, in the many years he
dwelt in Casa Guidi, he wrote some of his finer shorter poems. There,
also, "Aurora Leigh" was born, and many a lyric fresh with the dew of
genius. Who has not looked at the old sunworn house and failed to think
of that night when each square window of San Felice was aglow with
festival lights, and when the summer lightnings fell silently in broad
flame from cloud to cloud: or has failed to hear, down the narrow
street, a little child go singing, 'neath Casa Guidi windows by the
church, _O bella liberta, O bella!_

Better even than these, for happy dwelling upon, is the poem the two
poets lived. Morning and day were full of work, study, or that
pleasurable idleness which for the artist is so often his best
inspiration. Here, on the little terrace, they used to sit together, or
walk slowly to and fro, in conversation that was only less eloquent than
silence. Here one day they received a letter from Horne. There is
nothing of particular note in Mrs. Browning's reply, and yet there are
not a few of her poems we would miss rather than these chance
words--delicate outlines left for the reader to fill in: "We were
reading your letter, together, on our little terrace--walking up and
down reading it--I mean the letter to Robert--and then, at the end,
suddenly turning, lo, just at the edge of the stones, just between the
balustrades, and already fluttering in a breath of wind and about to fly
away over San F