“O lyric Love, half-angel and half-bird
      And all a wonder and a wild desire,—­
      Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sun,
      Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
      And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—­
      Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart—­
      When the first summons from the darkling earth
      Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue,
      And bared them of the glory—­to drop down,
      To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—­
      This is the same voice:  can thy soul know change? 
      Hail then, and hearken from the realms of help! 
      Never may I commence my song, my due
      To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
      Except with bent head and beseeching hand—­
      That still, despite the distance and the dark,
      What was, again may be; some interchange
      Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
      Some benediction anciently thy smile: 
      —­Never conclude, but raising hand and head
      Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
      For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
      Their utmost up and on,—­so blessing back
      In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
      Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
      Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 40:  Handbook, p. 93.]

[Footnote 41:  Swinburne, Essays and Studies, p. 220.]

18.  BALAUSTION’S ADVENTURE:  including a Transcript from Euripides.

[Published in August, 1871.  Dedication:  “To the Countess Cowper.—­If I mention the simple truth:  that this poem absolutely owes its existence to you,—­who not only suggested, but imposed on me as a task, what has proved the most delightful of May-month amusements—­I shall seem honest, indeed, but hardly prudent; for, how good and beautiful ought such a poem to be!—­Euripides might fear little; but I, also, have an interest in the performance:  and what wonder if I beg you to suffer that it make, in another and far easier sense, its nearest possible approach to those Greek qualities of goodness and beauty, by laying itself gratefully at your feet?—­R.  B., London, July 23, 1871.” (Poetical Works, 1889, Vol.  XI. pp. 1-122).]

The episode which supplies the title of Balaustion’s Adventure was suggested by the familiar story told by Plutarch in his life of Nicias:  that after the ruin of the Sicilian expedition, those of the Athenian captives who could repeat any poetry of Euripides were set at liberty, or treated with consideration, by the Syracusans.  In Browning’s poem, Balaustion tells her four girl-friends the story of her “adventure” at Syracuse, where, shortly before, she had saved her own life and the lives of a ship’s-company of her friends by reciting