ificent passage--the
quintessence of the poet's conception of the rapture of life:--

"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
And the earth changes like a human face;
The molten ore bursts up among the rocks,
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask--
God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
With foam, white as the bitten lip of hate,
When in the solitary waste, strange groups
Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like,
Staring together with their eyes on flame--
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost,
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews
His ancient rapture."

In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest the influence
of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period that
Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight the simple but
lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this
Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks. There is an anecdote
of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more
probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his
right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair
around his head like a nimbus: so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn
sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following
consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling
stump-oratory. He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax
genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory with something more
tangible than an address.

The poet-