Over the lagoon, and puffing from it, the mists, daily encrimsoned by sunrise and sunset, continually rise and disperse.
The character and the peculiarities of this landscape Browning has seized and enshrined in verse.

But his descriptions are so arranged as to reflect certain moments of crisis in the soul of Sordello.

He does not describe this striking landscape for its own sake, but for the sake of his human subject.

The lines I quote below describe noon-day on the lagoon, seen from the golden woods and black pines; and the vision of the plain, city and river, suddenly opening out from the wood, symbolises the soul of Sordello opening out from solitude "into the veritable business of mankind." Then wide Opened the great morass, shot every side With flashing water through and through; a-shine, Thick-steaming, all-alive.

Whose shape divine Quivered i' the farthest rainbow-vapour, glanced Athwart the flying herons?
He advanced, But warily; though Mincio leaped no more, Each footfall burst up in the marish-floor A diamond jet.
And then he somewhat spoils this excellent thing by a piece of detail too minute for the largeness of the impression.