inous moment and no more.

_Paracelsus_, though written in dialogue, is not intended to be a drama.
This was clearly stated in the preface to the first edition, an
important document, never afterwards reprinted. "Instead of having
recourse," wrote Browning, "to an external machinery of incidents to
create and evolve the crisis I desire to produce, I have ventured to
display somewhat minutely the mood itself in its rise and progress, and
have suffered the agency by which it is influenced to be generally
discernible in its effects alone, and subordinate throughout, if not
altogether excluded."[12] The proportions of the work are epical rather
than dramatic; but indeed it is difficult to class, so exuberant is the
vitality which fills and overflows all limits. What is not a drama,
though in dialogue, nor yet an epic, except in length, can scarcely be
considered, any more than its successors, and perhaps imitators,
_Festus_, _Balder_, or _A Life Drama_, properly artistic in form. But it
is distinguished from this prolific progeny not only by a finer and
firmer imagination, a truer poetic richness, but by a moderation, a
concreteness, a grip, which are certainly all its own. In few of
Browning's poems are there so many individual lines and single passages
which we are so apt to pause on, to read again and again, for the mere
enjoyment of their splendid sound and colour. And this for a reason. The
large and lofty character of Paracelsus, the avoidance of much external
detail, and the high tension at which thought and emotion are kept
throughout, permit the poet to use his full resources of style and
diction without producing an effect of unreality and extravagance. We
meet on almost every page with lines like these:--

"Ask the gier-eagle why she stoops at once
Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
What full-grown power informs her from the first,
Why she not marvels, strenuously beating
The silent boundless regions of the sky."

Or again, lines like these, which have become the watch-word of a
Gordon:--

"I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first,
I ask not: but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time!"

At times the brooding splendour bursts forth in