It tells what she had made of him; it reveals alike his steadfast sadness that she had gone from him and the steadfast resolution, due to her sweet and enduring power, with which, after her death, he promised, bearing with him his sorrow and his memory of joy, to stand and withstand in the battle of life, ever a fighter to the close--and well he kept his word.

It ends with the expression of his triumphant certainty of meeting her, and breaks forth at last into so great a cry of pure passion that ear and heart alike rejoice.

Browning at his best, Browning in the central fire of his character, is in it.
Fear death ?--to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face, When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go: For the journey is done and the summit attained And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that Death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! Leaving now these personal poems on Love, we come to those we may call impersonal.

They are poems about love, not in its simplicities, but in its subtle moments--moments that Browning loved to analyse, and which he informed not so much with the passion of love, as with his profound love of human nature.

He describes in them, with the seriousness of one who has left youth behind, the moods of love, its changes, vagaries, certainties, failures and conquests.