The "metamorphoses of plants,"[108] which fascinated Goethe by their inner continuity, arrest Browning by their outward abruptness: that the flower is implicit in the leaf was a fact of much less worth for him than that the bud suddenly passes into something so unlike it as the flower.

The gradual coming on of spring among the mountains concentrates itself for him in one instant of epic sublimity,--that in which the mountain unlooses its year's load of sound, and "Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously down to his feet."[109] [Footnote 108: _Metamorphose der Pflanzen_.] [Footnote 109: _Saul_.] Even in the gradual ebb of day he discovers a pregnant instant in which day dies:-- "For note, when evening shuts, A certain moment cuts The deed off, calls the glory from the grey." Hence his love of images which convey these sudden transformations,--the worm, putting forth in autumn its "two wondrous winglets,"[110] the "transcendental platan," breaking into foliage and flower at the summit of its smooth tall bole; the splendour of flame leaping from the dull fuel of gums and straw.

In such images we see how the simple joy in abrupt changes of sensation which belonged to his riotous energy of nerve lent support to his peremptory way of imagining all change and especially all vital and significant becoming.

For Browning's trenchant imagination things were not gradually evolved; a sudden touch loosed the springs of latent power, or an overmastering energy from without rushed in like a flood.

With all his connoisseur's delight in technique, language and sound were only spells which unlocked a power beyond their capacity to express.