own rapture (the word is not too strong) in it appears again and again in his poetry, and when it does, Browning is not a man sympathising from without with Nature.  He is then a part of Nature herself, a living piece of the great organism, having his own rejoicing life in the mightier life which includes him; and feeling, with the rest, the abounding pleasure of continuous life reaching upwards through growth to higher forms of being, swifter powers of living.  I might give many examples, but one will suffice, and it is the more important because it belongs not to his ardent youth, but to his mature manhood.  It is part of the song of Thamyris in Aristophanes’ Apology.  Thamyris, going to meet the Muses in rivalry, sings as he walks in the splendid morning the song of the rapture of the life of Earth, and is himself part of the rejoicing movement.

    Thamuris, marching, laughed “Each flake of foam”
    (As sparklingly the ripple raced him by)
    “Mocks slower clouds adrift in the blue dome!”

    For Autumn was the season; red the sky
    Held morn’s conclusive signet of the sun
    To break the mists up, bid them blaze and die.

    Morn had the mastery as, one by one
    All pomps produced themselves along the tract
    From earth’s far ending to near heaven begun.

    Was there a ravaged tree? it laughed compact
    With gold, a leaf-ball crisp, high brandished now,
    Tempting to onset frost which late attacked.

    Was there a wizened shrub, a starveling bough,
    A fleecy thistle filched from by the wind,
    A weed, Pan’s trampling hoof would disallow?

    Each, with a glory and a rapture twined
    About it, joined the rush of air and light
    And force:  the world was of one joyous mind.

    Say not the birds flew! they forebore their right—­
    Swam, revelling onward in the roll of things. 
    Say not the beasts’ mirth bounded! that was flight—­

    How could the creatures leap, no lift of wings? 
    Such earth’s community of purpose, such
    The ease of earth’s fulfilled imaginings,—­

    So did the near and far 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—­