Every one knows it, but that we may realise how quick he was to remember and to touch a corner of early Spring in England, on a soft and windy day--for all the blossoms are scattered--I quote it here.

It is well to read his sole contribution (except in _Pauline_ and a few scattered illustrations) to the scenery of his own country: Oh, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree hole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England--now! And after April, when May follows, And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows! Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge Leans to the field and scatters on the clover Blossoms and dewdrops--at the bent spray's edge-- That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture! And though the fields look rough with hoary dew, All will be gay, when noontide wakes anew The buttercups, the little children's dower; -- Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! So it runs; but it is only a momentary memory; and he knew, when he had done it, and to his great comfort, that he was far away from England.
But when Tennyson writes of Italy--as, for instance, in _Mariana in the South_--how apart he is! How great is his joy when he gets back to England! Then, again, when Browning was touched by the impulse to write about a great deed in war, he does not choose, like Tennyson, English subjects.
The _Cavalier Tunes_ have no importance as patriot songs.

They are mere experiments.

The poem, _How They brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix_, has twice their vigour.

His most intense war-incident is taken from the history of the French wars under Napoleon.