The prologue to that book is poetry; and Nature (though he only describes an old stone wall in Italy covered with straying plants) is interwoven with his sorrow and his love.

Then, all through the book, even in its most fantastic humour, Nature is not altogether neglected for humanity; and the poetry, which Browning seemed to have lost the power to create, has partly returned to him.

That is also the case in _La Saisiaz_, and I have already spoken of the peculiar elements of the nature-poetry in that work.

In the _Dramatic Idyls_, of which he was himself fond; and in _Jocoseria_, there is very little natural description.

The subjects did not allow of it, but yet Nature sometimes glides in, and when she does, thrills the verse into a higher humanity.