In its social presuppositions this community belongs to a world as visionary as the mystic dream-politics of M.Maeterlinck.But, those presuppositions granted, everything in it has the uncompromising clearness and persuasive reality that Browning invariably communicates to his dreams.

The three figures who in a few hours taste the height of ecstasy and then the bitterness of disillusion or severance, are drawn with remarkable psychologic force and truth.

For all three love is the absorbing passion, the most real thing in life, scornfully contrasted with the reflected joys of the painter or the poet.

Norbert's noble integrity is of a kind which mingles in duplicity and intrigue with disastrous results; he is too invincibly true to himself easily to act a part; but he can control the secret hunger of his heart and give no sign, until the consummate hour arrives when he may "resume Life after death (it is no less than life, After such long unlovely labouring days) And liberate to beauty life's great need O' the beautiful, which, while it prompted work, Suppress'd itself erewhile." In the ecstasy of release from that suppression, every tree and flower seems to be an embodiment of the harmonious freedom he had so long foregone, as Wordsworth, chafing under his unchartered freedom, saw everywhere the willing submission to Duty.

Even "These statues round us stand abrupt, distinct, The strong in strength, the weak in weakness fixed, The Muse for ever wedded to her lyre, Nymph to her fawn, and Silence to her rose: See God's approval on his universe! Let us do so--aspire to live as these In harmony with truth, ourselves being true!" But it is the two women who attract Browning's most powerful handling.
One of them, the Queen, has hardly her like for pity and dread.