He expresses the celestial time when a man does not think about heaven, but about a parasol.

And therefore he is, first, the greatest of love poets, and, secondly, the only optimistic philosopher except Whitman.
The general accusation against Browning in connection with his use of the grotesque comes in very definitely here; for in using these homely and practical images, these allusions, bordering on what many would call the commonplace, he was indeed true to the actual and abiding spirit of love.

In that delightful poem "Youth and Art" we have the singing girl saying to her old lover-- "No harm! It was not my fault If you never turned your eye's tail up As I shook upon E _in alt_, Or ran the chromatic scale up." This is a great deal more like the real chaff that passes between those whose hearts are full of new hope or of old memory than half the great poems of the world.

Browning never forgets the little details which to a man who has ever really lived may suddenly send an arrow through the heart.

Take, for example, such a matter as dress, as it is treated in "A Lover's Quarrel." "See, how she looks now, dressed In a sledging cap and vest! 'Tis a huge fur cloak-- Like a reindeer's yoke Falls the lappet along the breast: Sleeves for her arms to rest, Or to hang, as my Love likes best." That would almost serve as an order to a dressmaker, and is therefore poetry, or at least excellent poetry of this order.