to his thoughts is more poetical and the treatment more that of a mystic. Matthew Arnold has not the tolerance of the older poet nor his gentle outlook on the world, and his verse lacks somewhat of skill in construction, though it has a strength and charm of its own, and goes very straight to the mark. But both poets see clearly that the feelings and thoughts that arise in the mind from intercourse with nature are personal to the observers, and depend upon the temperament, the constitution, and the environment of each one.

"Fools that these mystics are
Who prate of nature! For she
Hath neither beauty, nor warmth,
Nor life, nor emotion, nor power.
But man has a thousand gifts,
And the generous dreamer invests
The senseless world with them all.
Nature is nothing; her charm

Lives in our eyes which can paint,

Lives in our hearts which can feel."

And we find, as we would expect in one whose poetry is full of the restlessness of modern life, numerous references to the effects of nature on the feelings:

"The

Youth of
Man."

"Dover Beach."

"Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in."

"Thyrsis." "He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!
What matters it? Next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet spring days,
With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,
And bluebells trembling by the forest-ways,
And scent of hay new-mown.

But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see.

"Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle draws her shade.

I see her veil draw soft across the day,

I feel her softly chilling breath invade

The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;

I feel her finger light

Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train;

The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,

The heart less bounding at emotions new,

And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again."

One of the modern great poets writes in a very remarkable ode to Autumn, full of imagination and suggestion, and felicitously worded phrases, these stanzas:

"Still'd is the virgin rapture that was June,
And cold is August's panting heart of fire;
And in the storm-dismantled forest choir
For thine own elegy thy winds attune
Their wild and wizard lyre:

And poignant grows the charm of thy decay,
The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting,

Thou parable of greatness vanishing!

For me, thy woods of gold, and skies of grey,
With speech fantastic ring.

"For me to dreams resign'd, there come and go, Twixt mountains drap'd and hooded night and morn, Elusive notes in wandering wafture borne,

From undiscoverable lips that blow

An immaterial horn;

And spectral seem thy winter-boding trees,

Thy ruinous bowers, and drifted foliage wet,
O Past and Future in sad bridal met,
O voice of everything that perishes,
And soul of all regret!"

Very fine also is Andrew Lang's song of harvesting time. The flowing classic metre has a very soothing effect, and its rhythm is admirably adapted to produce the feeling of rest that is desired, and very gently are our thoughts led on to the time when "our little life is rounded with a sleep."

"Mowers weary and brown and blythe,
What is the word methinks ye know,

"Autumn."

William

Watson.

"Scythe

Song."

"Job."

Endless over word that the Scythe
Sings to the blades of the grass below?
Scythes that swing in the grass and clover,
Something still they say as they pass;
What is the word that, over and over,
Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?

"Hush, ah hush, the scythes are saying,
Hush and heed not and fall asleep;
Hush, they say to the grasses swaying,
Hush, they sing to the clover deep!

Hush, 'tis the lullaby time is singing,

Hush and heed not, for all things pass,

Hush, ah hush! And the Scythes are swinging
Over the clover, over the grass."

And the dramatist of old says: "There is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep."

Shelley epitomises thus the whole matter, and explains the use the poet makes of the materials supplied by Nature:

"He will watch from dawn to gloom

The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,

Nor heed nor see what things they be;
But from these create he can

Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!"

This is what poet and painter alike should try to do, and expel forever the idea that art is the imitation of nature, and so create a new world of art, like yet very unlike, the world they see.

It is important to consider this subjective view of nature in the poets; for the painter in words and the painter in colours work toward the same end, both seeking to inspire the thoughts and move the feelings of the people they appeal to in their different ways. The poets have the advantage of being able to relate a story, and are not limited to one action, or one period of time. The painters have the powerful attraction of colour and form. But both must strive to give the spirit if they would

"The Poet's Dream."