e mood of a young man
who believes that he has actually realized his ideal, and that the woman
that he loves is the most beautiful person in the whole world. The fact
that this is simply imagination on his part does not make the poem less
beautiful--on the contrary, the false imagining is just what makes it
beautiful, the youthful emotion of a moment being so humanly and frankly
described. Such a youth must imagine that every one else sees and thinks
about the girl just as he does, and he expects them to confess it.

Nay but you, who do not love her,
Is she not pure gold, my mistress?
Holds earth aught--speak truth--above her?
Aught like this tress, see, and this tress,
And this last fairest tress of all,
So fair, see, ere I let it fall?

Because you spend your lives in praising;
To praise, you search the wide world over;
Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
Above this tress, and this, I touch
But cannot praise, I love so much!

You see the picture, I think,--probably some artist's studio for a
background. She sits or stands there with her long hair loosely flowing
down to her feet like a river of gold; and her lover, lifting up some of
the long tresses in his hand, asks his friend, who stands by, to notice
how beautiful such hair is. Perhaps the girl was having her picture
painted. One would think so from the question, "Since your business is to
look for beautiful things, why can you not honestly acknowledge that this
woman is the most beautiful thing in the whole world?" Or we might imagine
the questioned person to be a critic by profession as well as an artist.
Like the preceding poem this also is a picture. But the next poem, also by
Browning, is much more than a picture--it is very profound indeed, simple
as it looks. An old man is sitting by the dead body of a young girl of
about sixteen. He tells us how he secretly loved her, as a father might
love a daughter, as a brother might love a sister. But he would have
wished, if he had not been so old, and she so young, to love her as a
husband. He never could have her in this world, but why should he not hope
for it in the future world? He whispers into her dead ear his wish, and he
puts a flower into her dead hand, thinking, "When she wakes up, in another
life, she will see that flower, and remember what I said to her, and how
much I loved her." That is the mere story. But we must under