On the whole, his poetry, like that of Wordsworth, but not so completely, is destitute of the love-poem in the ordinary sense of the word; and the few exceptions to which we might point want so much that exclusiveness of a lover which shuts out all other thought but that of the woman, that it is difficult to class them in that species of literature.

However, this is not altogether true, and the main exception to it is a curious-piece of literary and personal history.

Those who read _Asolando_, the last book of poems he published, were surprised to find with what intensity some of the first poems in it described the passion of sexual love.

They are fully charged with isolated emotion; other thoughts than those of love do not intrude upon them.

Moreover, they have a sincere lyric note.