"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. Music was the "burst of pillared cloud by day and
pillared fire by night," starting up miraculously from the barren
wilderness of mechanical expedients,[111] and poetry "the sudden
rose"[112] "breaking in" at the bidding of a "brace of rhymes." That in
such transmutations Browning saw one of the most marvellous of human
powers we may gather from the famous lines of _Abt Vogler_ already
quoted:--

"And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star."

[Footnote 110: _Sordello_ (Works, i. 123).]

[Footnote 111: _Fifine_, xlii.]