On the whole, Browning does not often touch them in their earthly activities.

His highest romance was beyond this world.

It claimed eternity, and death was the entrance into its enchanted realm.
When he did bring romantic feeling into human life, it was for the most part in the hunger and thirst, which, as in _Abt Vogler_, urged men beyond the visible into the invisible.

But now and again he touched the Romantic of Earth.

_Childe Roland_, _The Flight of the Duchess_, and some others, are alive with the romantic spirit.
But before I write of these, there are a few lyrical poems, written in the freshness of his youth, which are steeped in the light of the story-telling world; and might be made by one who, in the morning of imagination, sat on the dewy hills of the childish world.