It follows from this idea of Browning's that he was capable of describing Nature as she is, without adding any deceiving mist of human sentiment to his descriptions; and of describing her as accurately and as vividly as Tennyson, even more vividly, because of his extraordinary eye for colour. And Nature, so described, is of great interest in Browning's poetry.
But, then, in any description of Nature, we desire the entrance into such description of some human feeling so that it may be a more complete theme for poetry. Browning does this in a different way from Tennyson, who gives human feelings and thoughts to Nature, or steeps it in human memories. Browning catches Nature up into himself, and the human element is not in Nature but in him, in what he thinks and feels, in all that Nature, quite apart from him, awakens in him. Sometimes he even goes so far as to toss Nature aside altogether, as unworthy to be thought of in comparison with humanity. That joy in Nature herself, for her own sake, which was so distinguishing a mark of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Keats, is rarely, if ever, found in Browning. This places him apart. What he loved was man; and save at those times of which I have spoken, when he conceives Nature as the life and play and wrath and fancy of huge elemental powers like gods and goddesses, he uses her as a background only for human life. She is of little importance unless man be present, and then she is no more than the scenery in a drama. Take the first two verses of A Lovers' Quarrel,
Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
That is well done—he has liked what he saw. But what is it all, he thinks; what do I care about it? And he ends the verse:
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey.