Then begins his demand that his tomb be made of “peach-blossom marble”:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe 

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 

—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,                  30

Put me where I may look at him! True peach, 

Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! 

Things to note in this short section. First, note how Browning ties the passage together by sound, here, the use of “R” and “P” ending with the word “prize”:

Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe 

As fresh-poured red wine of a mighty pulse. 

—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,                  30

Put me where I may look at him! True peach, 

Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize! 

Second, his choice of stone is meant to be more valuable than Gandolf’s tomb.

Third, there is the absurdity of his desire: “Put me where I may look at him!” If he were alive, he would not be able to some beneath the tomb. But being dead, he could see nothing no matter where his body was stationed.

Fourth, it is an interesting play on concept that the peach marble is called “ripe”; which would be correct for a fruit but not the stone. This section will then lead into another section on the stone ornamentation for his tomb.