Referring to this longing Browning made a short lyric that is now a classic; it is among the most dainty things of the century.
Never the time and the place And the loved one all together! This path--how soft to pace! This May--what magic weather! Where is the loved one's face?
In a dream that loved one's face meets mine, But the house is narrow, the place is bleak Where, outside, rain and wind combine With a furtive ear, if I try to speak, With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek, With a malice that marks each word, each sign! Never can we have things the way we wish in this world--a beautiful day, a beautiful place, and the presence of the beloved all at the same time.
Something is always missing; if the place be beautiful, the weather perhaps is bad.

Or if the weather and the place both happen to be perfect, the woman is absent.

So the poet finding himself in some very beautiful place, and remembering this, remembers also the last time that he met the woman beloved.

It was a small dark house and chilly; outside there was rain and storm; and the sounds of the wind and of the rain were as the sounds of people secretly listening, or sounds of people trying to look in secretly through the windows.

Evidently it was necessary that the meeting should be secret, and it was not altogether as happy as could have been wished.
The third example is a very beautiful poem; we must content ourselves with an extract from it.