orning! How he sets his bones
To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet
For the ripple to run over in its mirth;
Listening the while, where on the heap of stones
The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.

The smile, the mirth, the listening, might be said to impute humanity to
Nature: but the Earth and the Sea are plainly quite distinct from us.
These are great giant creatures who are not ourselves: Titans who live
with one another and not with us; and the terms of our humanity are used
to make us aware of their separate existence from us, not of their being
images only of our mind.

Another passage will illustrate the same habit of Browning's mind with
nature. He describes, for the purpose of his general thought, in _Fifine
at the Fair_, the course of a stormy sunset. The clouds, the sun, the
night, act like men, and are written of in terms of humanity. But this
is only to explain matters to us; the mighty creatures themselves have
nothing to do with us. They live their own vast, indifferent life; and
we see, like spectators, what they are doing, and do not understand what
we see. The sunset seems to him the last act of an ever-recurring drama,
in which the clouds barricade the Sun against his rest, and he plays
with their opposition like the huge giant he is; till Night, with her
terrific mace, angry with them for preventing the Sun from repose,
repose which will make her Queen of the world, beats them into ruin.
This is the passage:

For as on edifice of cloud i' the grey and green
Of evening,--built about some glory of the west,
To barricade the sun's departure,--manifest,
He plays, pre-eminently gold, gilds vapour, crag and crest
Which bend in rapt suspense above the act and deed
They cluster round and keep their very own, nor heed
The world at watch; while we, breathlessly at the base
O' the castellated bulk, note momently the mace
Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with every blow,
Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico
I' the structure; heights and depths, beneath the leaden stress
Crumble and melt and mix together, coalesce,
Reform, but sadder still, subdued yet more and more
By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need pore
No longer on the dull impoverished decadence
Of all that pomp of pile in towering evidence
So lately.

_Fifine, cvi_.

It is plain that Browning separates u