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.] [Footnote 112: _Transcendentalism_.] VII. 4. JOY IN SOUL.