the sky
in _Pippa Passes_, the vivid descriptions of fruits and flowers in "An
Englishman in Italy," the remarkable studies of small animal life in
"Saul" and "Caliban upon Setebos," of birds in "Home-Thoughts, from
Abroad," of insects in the first part of _Paracelsus_ and in many later
poems, suffices to show that in mature life he did not lose the keenness
of observation and interest characteristic of his youth. Yet it is also
evident that his use of nature by way of direct description, or even as
illustrative material, is far less in amount than that of other notable
nineteenth century poets. He cares much less for "the river's line, the
mountains round it and the sky above" than for the "figures of man,
woman, and child these are frame to." Where nature is drawn upon, it is
almost invariably in complete subordination to some human interest, and
its literary form is almost always that of casual mention, background,
or similitude, and the first of these is the most frequent. Furthermore,
nearly all these passages are a mere statement of observed fact without
comment or interpretation. There is one great passage in _Paracelsus_
where the joy of God in the act of creation is depicted; there are
occasional references to the delight of man in the external world; and
now and then, as in "By the Fireside," man and nature are intimately
fused; but such conceptions rarely occur. In Browning's poetry the
boundary lines between man and nature are clearly marked. In
_Paracelsus_ he definitely protests against man's way of reading his own
moods into nature, and of attributing to her his own qualities and
emotions. He also always accounts man, if he has truly entered into his
spiritual heritage, as consciously superior to nature. The troubadour
Eglamour, in _Sordello_, says that man shrinks to naught if matched with
a quiet sea or sky, but Browning calls that Eglamour's "false thought."
To Browning, nature was to be studied, enjoyed, and used, but it was not
as to Keats a realm of enchantment; or as to Wordsworth the realm where
alone the divine and the human could pass the boundaries of sense and
meet; or as to Matthew Arnold a refuge from pain and disillusionment.
Browning regards the world about him more in the sane, unsentimental,
straightforward, intelligible way of Chaucer or of Shakespeare. The
mystical elements in Wordsworth's feeling for nature were foreign to
Browning's mind. An instructive comparison might be made betwee