He turns the quiet vicissitudes of nature into dexterous achievements of art.

If he does not paint or dye the meads, he turns the sunset clouds into a feudal castle, shattered slowly with a visible mace; the morning sun pours into Pippa's chamber as from a wine-bowl; and Fifine's ear is "cut Thin as a dusk-leaved rose carved from a cocoanut."[122] [Footnote 122: _Fifine at the Fair_, ii.

325.] Sordello's slowly won lyric speech is called "a rude Armour ...

hammered out, in time to be Approved beyond the Roman panoply Melted to make it."[123] [Footnote 123: _Sordello_, i.

135.] And thirty years later he used the kindred but more recondite simile of a ring with its fortifying alloy, to symbolise the welded _Wahrheit_ and _Dichtung_ of his greatest poem.
Between _Dichtung_ and _Wahrheit_ there was, indeed, in Browning's mind, a closer affinity than that simile suggests.