like a faun. When Sordello climbs the
ravine, thinking of himself as Apollo, the wood, "proud of its
observer," a mocking phrase, "tried surprises on him, stratagems and
games."

Or, our life is too small for her greatness. When we are unworthy our
high lineage, noisy or mean, then we

quail before a quiet sky
Or sea, too little for their quietude.

That is a phrase which might fall in with Wordsworth's theory of Nature,
but this which follows from _The Englishman in Italy_, is only
Browning's. The man has climbed to the top of Calvano,

And God's own profound
Was above me, and round me the mountains,
And under, the sea,
And within me, my heart to bear witness
What was and shall be.

He is worthy of the glorious sight; full of eternal thoughts. Wordsworth
would then have made the soul of Nature sympathise with his soul. But
Browning makes Nature manifest her apartness from the man. The mountains
know nothing of his soul: they amuse themselves with him; they are even
half angry with him for his intrusion--a foreigner who dares an entrance
into their untrespassed world. Tennyson could not have thought that way.
It is true the mountains are alive in the poet's thought, but not with
the poet's life: nor does he touch them with his sentiment.

Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement
Still moving with you;
For, ever some new head and heart of them
Thrusts into view
To observe the intruder; you see it
If quickly you turn
And, before they escape you surprise them.
They grudge you should learn
How the soft plains they look on, lean over
And love (they pretend)--
Cower beneath them.

Total apartness from us! Nature mocking, surprising us; watching us
from a distance, even pleased to see us going to our destruction. We may
remember how the hills look grimly on Childe Roland when he comes to the
tower. The very sunset comes back to see him die:

before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay.--

Then, as if they loved to see the death of their quarry, cried, without
one touch of sympathy:

"Now stab and end the creature--to the heft!"

And once, so divided from our life is her life, she pities her own case
and refuses our pity. Man cannot help her. The starv