We do not need to be as well-read or erudite as Browning to appreciate the range and breadth of Elizabeth’s powerful imagery. In his first ever letter to her, Jan. 10th 1845 he writes: "I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,- ... the fresh strange music, the affluent language...". And the very next night she wrote to a friend about her letter from "Browning the poet ... king of the mystics". She suddenly finds, not the death she waits for, but a whole new world to live for, as her reply next day already hints: "Winters shut me up as they do dormouse’s eyes; in the spring, we shall see."

I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old and young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery while I strove, . . .
‘Guess now who holds thee?’ - ‘Death,’ I said. But there,
The silver answer rang . . ‘Not Death, but Love.’

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pagentries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With looking from the lattice-lights at me,
A poor, tired, wandering singer,  .  .  . singing through
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree?
The chrism is on thine head, ­ on mine, the dew, -
And Death must dig the level where these agree.

She would later write to Robert about those earlier days "Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there seemed no room even for the tears". But here for a moment we may share in her unrestrained and unconfined joy.

The face of all the world is changed, I think,
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul
Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole
Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole
God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink,
And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear.
The names of country, heaven, are changed away
From where thou art or shalt be, there or here;
And this  . . this lute and song . . loved yesterday,
(The singing angels know) are only dear,
Because thy name moves right in what they say.

Musically they are set to run together, without break, the middle setting an echo of the previous, unaccom-panied one with its desperate, plaintive questioning.

What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, -  but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run
The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.