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But before his Bells and Pomegranates were brought to a close Browning had discovered in the short monodrama, lyrical or reflective, the most appropriate vehicle for his powers of passion and of thought.
We rode for an hour through the gardens before entering the gate. The fruit-trees, of whatever variety -walnut, olive, apricot, or fig were the noblest of their kind. Roses and pomegranates in bloom starred the dark foliage, and the scented jasmine overhung the walls.
What delight it was to press these delicious fruits to our lips, and to bite at grapes and pomegranates fresh from the vine. Not far off, near some fresh and mossy grass, under the delicious shade of some trees, I discovered a spring of fresh water, in which we voluptuously laved our faces, hands, and feet.
These fond attendant nymphs carried me into gardens twain, in each two gushing springs, in each fruit, and palms, and pomegranates. There were the blessed reclining, precisely as the Prophet has declared, "on beds the linings whereof are brocade, and the fruit of the two gardens within reach to cull."
The pomegranates, aflower above the ripening corn, had finer blossoms than any I had seen before, the fig-trees were Biblical in their glossy splendour. Mules were footsore, the Susi men were tired, the weather was perfect, time was our own for a day or two, and I was aching to take my gun down the long glades that seemed to stretch to the horizon.
And of this wonderful Italy the Englishmen of the days of Elizabeth and of James knew yet another side; were familiar, whether travelled or untravelled, with yet other things besides the buffoons and singers and dancers, the scholars and learned ladies, the pomegranates, and cypresses and roses and nightingales; were fascinated by something besides the green lagoons, the clear summer nights, the soft spring evenings of which we feel as it were the fascination in the words of Jessica and Portia and Juliet.
When it was time for the last course, after the service-boys had slid the third-course tray off the table, I was amazed to see my four strongest table slaves enter fairly staggering under the load put upon them by Grandfather's biggest dinner-tray heaped with fruit, among which I descried African pomegranates and other exotics.
"Now for some of our best blood-oranges!" she said; "old Jocunda says they put her in mind of pomegranates. And here are some of these little ones, see here, grandmamma!" she exclaimed, as she turned and held up a branch just broken, where five small golden balls grew together with a pearly spray of white buds just beyond them.
There were nectarines and plums, and pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes of plump strawberries-raised in pots. There were quail which had come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan.
The beams across the rooms, which are very high, are hung with onions, dates, and pomegranates; the houses are nearly all of one story. Some of the women are pretty, with large long black eyes and lashes; they colour the lower lid black, which does not add to their beauty, though it shows the bewitching orb more fully and boldly.
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