Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.
In the poem _Respectability_ Browning gives us a more vulgar, but
none the less vital aspect of love. This is no peaceful twilit
harmony; this scene is set on a windy, rainy night in noisy Paris,
on the left bank of the Seine, directly in front of the Institute of
France. Two reckless lovers--either old comrades or picked-up
acquaintances of this very night, it matters not which--come
tripping along gaily, arm in arm. The man chaffs at worldly
conventions, at the dullness of society, at the hypocrisy of
so-called respectable people, and congratulates himself and his fair
companion on the fun they are having. What fools they would have
been had they waited through a long, formal courtship for the
sanction of an expensive marriage! The world, he says, does not
forbid kisses, only it says, you must see the magistrate first.
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