The _Dramatic Lyrics_ and _Men and Women_ are not quite silent of the tragic failure of love; but it is touched lightly in "swallow flights of song," like the _Lost Mistress_, that "dip their wings in tears and skim away." And the lovers are spiritual athletes, who can live on the memory of a look, and seem to be only irradiated, not scorched, by the tragic flame.

But these lovers of the 'Sixties are of less aetherial temper; they are more obviously, familiarly human; the loss of what they love comes home to them, and there is agony in the purifying fire.

Such are the wronged husband in _The Worst of It_, and the finally frustrated lover in _Too Late_.

In the group of "Might-have-been" lyrics the sense of loss is less poignant and tragic but equally uncompensated.

"You fool!" cries the homely little heroine of _Dis Aliter Visum_ to the elderly scholar who ten years before had failed to propose to her,-- "You fool for all your lore!...
The devil laughed at you in his sleeve! You knew not?
That I well believe; Or you had saved two souls;--nay, four." Nor is there much of the glory of failure in Kate Brown's bitter smile, as she sums up the story of Youth and Art:-- "Each life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy, We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired,--been happy." It is no accident that with the clearer recognition of sharp and absolute loss Browning shows increasing preoccupation with the thought of recovery after death.