r appear to touch
I' the moment's transport,--that an interchange
Of function, far with near, seemed scarce too much;

And had the rooted plant aspired to range
With the snake's licence, while the insect yearned
To glow fixed as the flower, it were not strange--

No more than if the fluttery tree-top turned
To actual music, sang itself aloft;
Or if the wind, impassioned chantress, earned

The right to soar embodied in some soft
Fine form all fit for cloud companionship,
And, blissful, once touch beauty chased so oft.

Thamuris, marching, let no fancy slip
Born of the fiery transport; lyre and song
Were his, to smite with hand and launch from lip--

The next thing to touch on is his drawing of landscape, not now of
separate pieces of Nature, but of the whole view of a land seen under a
certain aspect of the heavens. All the poets ought to be able to do this
well, and I drew attention to the brief, condensed, yet fan-opening
fashion in which Tennyson has done it. Sometimes the poets describe what
they see before them, or have seen; drawing directly from Nature.
Sometimes they invent a wide or varied landscape as a background for a
human subject, and arrange and tone it for that purpose. Shelley did
this with great stateliness and subtlety. Browning does not do it,
except, perhaps, in _Christmas-Eve_, when he prepares the night for the
appearance of Christ. Nevertheless, even in _Christmas-Eve_, the
description of the lunar rainbow is of a thing he has seen, of a
not-invented thing, and it is as clear, vivid and natural as it can be;
only it is heightened and thrilled through by the expectancy and the
thrill in Browning's soul which the reader feels and which the poet,
through his emotion, makes the reader comprehend. But there is no
suggestion that any of this feeling exists in Nature. The rainbow has no
consciousness of the vision to come or of the passion in the poet (as it
would have had in Wordsworth), and therefore is painted with an accuracy
undimmed by any transference to Nature of the soul of the poet.

I quote the piece; it is a noble specimen of his landscape work:

But lo, what think you? suddenly
The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky
Received at once the full fruition
Of the moon's consummate apparition.
The black cloud barricade was riven,
Ruined beneath her feet, and driven
Deep in the West; while, bare and br