More finely touched than either of these is _By the Fireside_.

After _One Word More_, to which it is obviously akin, it is Browning's most perfect rendering of the luminous inner world, all-sufficing and self-contained, of a rapturous love.

The outer world is here neither thrust aside nor fantastically varied; it is drawn into the inner world by taking its hue and becoming the confidant and executant of its will.

A landscape so instinct with the hushed awe of expectation and with a mystic tenderness is hardly to be found elsewhere save in _Christabel_,-- "We two stood there with never a third, But each by each, as each knew well: The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, The lights and the shades made up a spell, Till the trouble grew and stirred.
* * * * * A moment after, and hands unseen Were hanging the night around us fast; But we knew that a bar was broken between Life and life: we were mixed at last In spite of the mortal screen.
The forests had done it; there they stood; We caught for a moment the powers at play: They had mingled us so, for once and good, Their work was done--we might go or stay, They relapsed to their ancient mood." _By the Fireside_ is otherwise memorable as portraying with whatever disguise the Italian home-life of the poet and his wife.

The famous description of "the perfect wife" as she sat "Musing by firelight, that great brow And the spirit-small hand propping it, Yonder, my heart knows how"-- remain among the most living portraitures of that exquisite but fragile form.