beautiful specimens of poetic art. Certainly no two poems
could be chosen to show wider diversity in the poet's genius than these.

The story told by the huntsman in "The Flight of the Duchess" is
interesting enough simply as a story, but the telling of it is
inimitable. One can see before him the devoted, kindly man,
somewhat clumsy of speech, as indicated by the rough rhymes, and
characteristically drawing his illustrations from the calling he
follows. Keen in his critical observation of the Duke and other members
of the household, he, nevertheless, has a tender appreciation of
the difficulties of the young Duchess in this unloving artificial
environment.

When the Gypsy Queen sings her song through his memory of it, the rhymes
and rhythm take on a befitting harmoniousness and smoothness contrasting
finely with the remainder of the poem.

By means of this song, moreover, the horizon is enlarged beyond the
immediate ken of the huntsman. The race-instinct, which has so strong
a hold upon the Gypsies, is exalted into a wondrous sort of love which
carries everything before it. This loving reality is also set over
against the unloving artificiality of the first part of the poem. The
temptation is too strong for the love-starved little Duchess, and even
the huntsman and Jacinth come under her hypnotic spell.

Very different in effect is "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." The
one, rich in this lay of human emotion, couched in the simple language
of reality; the other, a symbolic picture of the struggle and aspiration
of the soul. Interpreters have tried to pin this latter poem down to the
limits of an allegory, and find a specific meaning for every phrase
and picture, but it has too much the quality of the modern symbolistic
writing to admit of any treatment so prosaic. In this respect it
resembles music. Each mind will draw from it an interpretation suited to
its own attitude and experiences. Reduced to the simplest possible lines
of interpretation, it symbolizes the inevitable fate which drives a
truth-seeking soul to see the falsity of ideals once thought absolute,
yet in the face of the ruin of those ideals courage toward the
continuance of aspiration is never for a moment lost.

As a bit of art, it is strikingly imaginative, and suggests the
picture-quality of the tapestried horse, which Browning himself says was
the chief inspiration of the poem. It is a fine example of the way in
which the "strange and winge