Rapture dying along its verge.
Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge,
Whose, from the straining topmost dark,
On to the key-stone of that arc?
This is only a piece of sky, though I have called it landscape work. But then the sky is frequently treated alone by Browning; and is always present in power over his landscapes—it, and the winds in it. This is natural enough for one who lived so much in Italy, where the scenery of the sky is more superb than that of the earth—so various, noble and surprising that when Nature plays there, as a poet, her tragedy and comedy, one scarcely takes the trouble of considering the earth.
However, we find an abundance of true landscapes in Browning. They are, with a few exceptions, Italian; and they have that grandeur and breadth, that intensity given by blazing colour, that peculiar tint either of labyrinthine or of tragic sentiment which belong to Italy. I select a few of them:
The morn when first it thunders in March
The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say;
As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch
Of the villa gate this warm March day,