Man masters it and drives it out.

In _The Ring and the Book_, huge as it is, Nature rarely intrudes; the human passion of the matter is so great that it swallows up all Browning's interest.

There is a little forky flashing description of the entrance to the Val d'Ema in Guido's first statement.
Caponsacchi is too intensely gathered round the tragedy to use a single illustration from Nature.

The only person who does use illustrations from Nature is the only one who is by age, by his life, by the apartness of his high place, capable of sufficient quiet and contemplation to think of Nature at all.

This is the Pope.
He illustrates with great vigour the way in which Guido destroyed all the home life which clung about him and himself remained dark and vile, by the burning of a nest-like hut in the Campagna, with all its vines and ivy and flowers; till nothing remains but the blackened walls of the malicious tower round which the hut had been built.
He illustrates the sudden event which, breaking in on Caponsacchi's life, drew out of him his latent power and his inward good, by this vigorous description: As when a thundrous midnight, with black air That burns, rain-drops that blister, breaks a spell, Draws out the excessive virtue of some sheathed Shut unsuspected flower that hoards and hides Immensity of sweetness.
And the last illustration, in which the Pope hopes that Guido's soul may yet be saved by the suddenness of his death, is one of the finest pieces of natural description in Browning, and reads like one of his own memories: I stood at Naples once, a night so dark I could have scarce conjectured there was earth Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all: But the night's black was burst through by a blaze-- Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, Through her whole length of mountain visible: There lay the city thick and plain with spires, And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea.
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, And Guido see, one instant, and be saved.
After _The Ring and the Book_, poor Nature, as one of Browning's mistresses, was somewhat neglected for a time, and he gave himself up to ugly representations of what was odd or twisted in humanity, to its smaller problems, like that contained in _Fifine at the Fair_, to its fantastic impulses, its strange madnesses, its basenesses, even its commonplace crimes.