One of the blank-verse pieces of _Men and Women_ rebukes a youthful poet of the transcendental school whose ambition is to set forth "stark-naked thought" in poetry.

Why take the harp to his breast "only to speak dry words across the strings"?
Better hollo abstract ideas through the six-foot Alpine horn of prose.

Boys may desire the interpretation into bare ideas of those thronging objects which obsess their senses and their feelings; men need art for the delight of it, and the strength which comes through delight.

Better than the meaning of a rose is the rose itself with its spirit enveloped in colour and perfume.

And so the poet for men will resemble that old mage John of Halberstadt: He with a 'look you!' vents a brace of rhymes, And in there breaks the sudden rose herself, Over us, under, round us every side, * * * * * Buries us with a glory, young once more, Pouring heaven into this shut house of life.
Browning in _Men and Women_ is in truth a John of Halberstadt; he enriches life with colour, warmth, music, romance, not dissociated from thought and intellectual energy, rather possessing and being possessed by these.