We are not surprised when he looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross And recross till they weave a spider web (Meshes of fire some great fish breaks at times) though the phrase is full of a poet's imagination, for so the living earth would see and feel the sea.

It belongs also to Caliban's nearness to the earth that he should have the keenest of eyes for animals, and that poetic pleasure in watching their life which, having seen them vividly, could describe them vividly.

I quote one example from the poem; there are many others: 'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain word when she finds her prize, But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks About their hole-- There are two more remarks to make about this poem.

First, that Browning makes Caliban create a dramatic world in which Miranda, Ariel, and he himself play their parts, and in which he assumes the part of Prosper.

That is, Caliban invents a new world out of the persons he knows, but different from them, and a second self outside himself.