Birthday for Browning

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

-- from “Meeting at Night” by Robert Browning

The poet Robert Browning was born in London on this day in 1812. He secretly married Elizabeth Barrett in 1846 and died in Venice in 1889.