“The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
      And the earth changes like a human face;
      The molten ore bursts 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 bitten lip of hate,
      When in the solitary waste, strange groups
      Of young volcanoes 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-rests and the cracks of frost,
      Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
      The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
      Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
      The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
      Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
      Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
      Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
      Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
      Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
      Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
      Their loves in wood and plain—­and God renews
      His ancient rapture.”

In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest the influence of the noble Hebraic poetry.  It must have been at this period that Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight the simple but lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets, preferring this Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks.  There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park (I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimbledon Common) with his hat in his left hand and his right waving to and fro declamatorily, while the wind blew his hair around his head like a nimbus:  so rapt in his ecstasy over the solemn sweep of the Biblical music that he did not observe a small following consisting of several eager children, expectant of thrilling stump-oratory.  He was just the man, however, to accept an anti-climax genially, and to dismiss his disappointed auditory with something more tangible than an address.

The poet-precursor of scientific knowledge is again and again manifest:  as, for example, in

     “Hints and previsions of which faculties
      Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
      The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
      All shape out dimly the superior race,
      The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
      And man appears at last."[10]

[Footnote 10:  Readers interested in Browning’s inspiration from, and treatment of, Science, should consult the excellent essay on him as “A Scientific Poet” by Mr. Edward Berdoe, F.R.C.S., and, in particular, compare with the originals the references given by Mr. Berdoe to the numerous passages bearing upon Evolution and the several sciences, from Astronomy to Physiology.]