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"'Why?' Because all I haply can and do,

All that I am now, all I hope to be—

Whence comes it save from fortune setting free

Body and soul the purpose to pursue,

God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,

Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,

These shall I bid men—each in his degree

Also God-guided—bear, and gayly too?

"But little do or can the best of us:

That little is achieved thro' Liberty.

Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,

His fellow shall continue bound? Not I,

Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss

A brother's right to freedom. That is 'Why.'"

William Wordsworth

"How all our copper had gone for his service. Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proved."

17 Enthusiasm for liberal views comes out again and again in the poetry of Browning.

His fullest treatment of the cause of political liberty is in "Strafford," to be considered in the third chapter, but many are the hints strewn about his verse that bring home with no uncertain touch the fact that Browning lived man's "lover" and never man's "hater." Take as an example "The Englishman in Italy," where the sarcastic turn he gives to the last stanza shows clearly where his sympathies lie:

—"Such trifles!" you say?

Fortù, in my England at home,

Men meet gravely to-day

And debate, if abolishing Corn-laws

Be righteous and wise!

—If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish

In black from the skies!

More the ordinary note of patriotism is struck in "Home-thoughts, from the Sea," wherein the scenes of England's victories as they come before the poet arouse pride in her military achievements.