But this view of the poem is, of course, a mistake.

It was written in something which, for want of a more exact word, we must call one of the bitter moods of Browning; but the bitterness is entirely the product of a certain generous hostility against the class of morbidities which he really detested, sometimes more than they deserved.

In this poem these principles of weakness and evil are embodied to him as the sicklier kind of Romanism, and the more sensual side of the French temperament.

We must never forget what a great deal of the Puritan there remained in Browning to the end.
This outburst of it is fierce and ironical, not in his best spirit.

It says in effect, "You call this a country of sleep, I call it a country of death.