ng mouth, and the hair's young gold.
So, hush,--I will give you this leaf to keep:
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand!
There, that is our secret: go to sleep!
You will wake, and remember, and understand.

No other poet has written so many different kinds of poems on this subject
as Browning; and although I can not quote all of them, I must not neglect
to make a just representation of the variety. Here is another example: the
chief idea is again the beauty of truthfulness and fidelity, but the
artistic impression is quite different.

A simple ring with a single stone,
To the vulgar eye no stone of price:
Whisper the right word, that alone--
Forth starts a sprite, like fire from ice.
And lo, you are lord (says an Eastern scroll)
Of heaven and earth, lord whole and sole
Through the power in a pearl.

A woman ('tis I this time that say)
With little the world counts worthy praise:
Utter the true word--out and away
Escapes her soul; I am wrapt in blaze,
Creation's lord, of heaven and earth
Lord whole and sole--by a minute's birth--
Through the love in a girl!

Paraphrased, the meaning will not prove as simple as the verses: Here is a
finger ring set with one small stone, one jewel. It is a very
cheap-looking stone to common eyes. But if you know a certain magical
word, and, after putting the ring on your finger, you whisper that magical
word over the cheap-looking stone, suddenly a spirit, a demon or a genie,
springs from that gem like a flash of fire miraculously issuing from a
lump of ice. And that spirit or genie has power to make you king of the
whole world and of the sky above the world, lord of the spirits of heaven
and earth and air and fire. Yet the stone is only--a pearl--and it can
make you lord of the universe. That is the old Arabian story. The word
scroll here means a manuscript, an Arabian manuscript.

But what is after all the happiness of mere power? There is a greater
happiness possible than to be lord of heaven and earth; that is the
happiness of being truly loved. Here is a woman; to the eye of the world,
to the sight of other men, she is not very beautiful nor at all remarkable
in any way. She is just an ordinary woman, as the pearl in the ring is to
all appearances just a common pearl. But let the right word be said, let
the soul of that woman be once really touched by the magic of love, and
what a revelation! As the spirit in the Ar