etic music must have thrilled to the new strain
which sounded first--"Love among the Ruins," with its Millet-like
opening--

"Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
Half asleep
Tinkle homeward through the twilight, stray or stop
As they crop--
Was the site once of a city great and gay ..."

Soon after the return to Florence, which, hot as it was, was preferable
in July to Rome, Mrs. Browning wrote to her frequent correspondent Miss
Mitford, and mentioned that about four thousand lines of "Aurora Leigh"
had been written. She added a significant passage: that her husband had
not seen a single line of it up to that time--significant, as one of the
several indications that the union of Browning and his wife was indeed a
marriage of true minds, wherein nothing of the common bane of
matrimonial life found existence. Moreover, both were artists, and,
therefore, too full of respect for themselves and their art to bring in
any way the undue influence of each other into play.

By the spring of 1856, however, the first six "books" were concluded:
and these, at once with humility and pride, Mrs. Browning placed in her
husband's hands. The remaining three books were written, in the summer,
in John Kenyon's London house.

It was her best, her fullest answer to the beautiful dedicatory poem,
"One Word More," wherewith her husband, a few months earlier, sent forth
his "Men and Women," to be for ever associated with "E.B.B."

I.

"There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

XVIII.

This I say of me, but think of you, Love!
This to you--yourself my moon of poets!
Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder,
Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you!
There, in turn I stand with them and praise you--
Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it.
But the best is when I glide from out them,
Cross a step or two of dubious twilight,
Come out on the other side, the novel
Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of,
Where I hush and bless myself with silence."

The transference from Florence to London was made in May. In the summer