Of young volcanoes come up, cyclops-like,
Staring together with their eyes on flame --
God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
But Spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
The withered tree-rests and the cracks of frost,
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face;
The grass grows bright, the boughs are swoln with blooms
Like chrysalids impatient for the air,
The shining dorrs are busy, beetles run
Along the furrows, ants make their ado;
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plain -- and God renews
His ancient rapture."

In these lines, particularly in their close, is manifest
the influence of the noble Hebraic poetry. It must have been at this period
that Browning conned over and over with an exultant delight
the simple but lordly diction of Isaiah and the other prophets,
preferring this Biblical poetry to that even of his beloved Greeks.
There is an anecdote of his walking across a public park
(I am told Richmond, but more probably it was Wimbledon Common)
with his hat in his left hand and his right waving to and fro declamatorily,
while the wind blew his hair around his head like a nimbus: