Page:The complete works of Mrs. E. B. Browning (Volume 1).djvu/25

Rh derings of the poet-child, dowered with the freedom of a large country seat in a beautiful region, where she could busy herself with pleasures as leisurely as the day was long. "The Deserted Garden" expresses the joy she actually found in a nook where the trees were wildly enough interwoven "to keep both sheep and shepherd out," but not this happy child. She read minstrel stories there until "the breeze made sounds poetic in the trees," whereupon she did indeed "shut the book," but only in order to make of these sounds the mind stuff for a new book quite her own. Of this one she says:

Thus upon the inward-drawn page, made tributary to the fresh writing, was the real eventfulness continually written.

Another such poetic matrix of her impressional youth was formed, she tells us, on an incident that happened in the wood just beyond their garden. "The Lost Bower" keeps the dint of the hot heart and intrepid soul that were native to her. Veils of invalidism later cloaked and almost masked her natural vehemence that chorded in so richly with her delicate lyrical sensitiveness, but never could they stifle it. Robert Browning found it out later within the veils, and rightly called her "Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun." And here in like fashion, albeit in childish guise, her character appears in this poem which tells how the "fair walk and far survey" toward the Malvern hill range, considered the charm of the