“That light whose smile kindles the universe,
  That beauty in which all things work and move,”

was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning it was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, and held in the sober moments when the heart is silent.  “The heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world” was lightened for Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free from the “dreary intercourse of daily life”; but Browning weaved his song of hope right amidst the wail and woe of man’s sin and wretchedness.  For Wordsworth “sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration,” and issued “in a serene and blessed mood”; but Browning’s poetry is not merely the poetry of the emotions however sublimated.  He starts with the hard repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart.  The greatness of Browning’s poetry is in its perceptive grip:  and in nothing is he more original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and assumes his artistic function.  In his postponement of feeling to thought we recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot estimate as yet.  But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning of the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which is not less striking, that the region from which he quarries his material is new.

And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors.  His kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature, is everywhere evident.  We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed by any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with the supernaturalism of nature.

  “The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
  And the earth changes like a human face;
  The molten ore burst up among the rocks,
  Winds into the stone’s heart, outbranches bright
  In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask—­
  God joys therein.  The wroth sea’s waves are edged
  With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,
  When, in the solitary waste, strange groups
  Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,
  Staring together with their eyes on flame—­
  God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride. 
  Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod: 
  But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
  Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
  Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
  The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
  Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.

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