[Robert Browning by C. H. Herford]@TWC D-Link bookRobert Browning CHAPTER IV 79/80
That Norbert and Constance expect "doom" is obvious, and the queen's parting "glare" leaves the reader in no doubt that they are right.
They may, nevertheless, be wrong; but what, then, is meant by the coming of the guard, and the throwing open of the doors? The queen has in any case not died on the stage, for she had left it; and if she died outside, how should they have come "to carry away her dead body" ?] Were it not for its unique position in Browning's poetry, one might well be content with a passing tribute to the great love canticle which closes _Men and Women_--the crown, as it is in a pregnant sense the nucleus, of the whole.
But here, for "once, and only once, and for one only," not only the dramatic instinct, which habitually coloured all his speech, but the reticence which so hardly permitted it to disclose his most intimate personal emotion, were deliberately overcome--overcome, however, only in order, as it were, to explain and justify their more habitual sway.
All the poetry in it is reached through the endeavour to find speaking symbols for a love that cannot be told.
The poet is a high priest, entering with awed steps the sanctuary which even he cannot tread without desecration save after divesting himself of all that is habitual and of routine,--even the habits of his genius and the routine of his art.
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