"The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

Or this of the seashore and hamlet where Enoch Arden lived:

"Long lines of cliff, breaking, have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sand;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf,

In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; a hazelwood,
By Autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cuplike hollow of the down."

This is a minute and pre-Raphaelite piece of landscape work, but uninteresting until we come to the last three lines. It describes very realistically the scene in which the story is laid, but clearly the poet's interest is elsewhere and this is merely the setting.

More poetical is the account of the home of the mysterious lady who dwelt near Camelot, but it still only describes the island and the obvious view of the country road through fields of grain, though the second stanza gives

"Elegy in a

Country

Church

yard." Thomas

Gray.

"Enoch Arden." Tennyson.

"The Lady of Shalott." Tennyson.

a hint that nature is vaguely apprehensive of the impending catastrophe:

'On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And through the field the road runs by

To many tower'd Camelot;

And up and down the people go,

Gazing where the lilies blow,

Round an island there below,

The Island of Shalott.

"Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs forever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott."

These are all like the artists' backgrounds in which the subject is set. But the poets, like the painters, also hold very strongly the view that nature is intimately associated with the joys and sorrows of men, and for showing this their medium, the use of words, gives them greater opportunities. In this, the higher

form of their art, they appeal to the feelings
and the imagination, and their most affecting
passages are those in which the human ele-
ment is bound up with the natural, and nature
seems to be in sympathy with their feelings.
Cowper realizes this:

"When all within is peace
How nature seems to smile!
Delights that never cease
The livelong day beguile.
It is content of heart

Gives nature power to please;
The mind that feels no smart

Enlivens all it sees.

"The vast majestic globe,

So beauteously array'd

In nature's various robe,
With wondrous skill display'd,

Is to a mourner's heart

A dreary wild at best;

It flutters to depart,

And longs to be at rest.”

But he does not see that the painter should

be similarly affected:

"Strange! there should be found,

Who, self imprison'd in their proud saloons,
Renounce the odours of the open field

"A Song." Cowper.

"The Sofa."

Cowper.

For the unscented fictions of the loom;

Who, satisfied with only pencill'd scenes,
Prefer to the performance of a God

The inferior wonders of an artist's hand!
Lovely indeed the mimic works of art;

But nature's works far lovelier. I admire,
None more admires, the painter's magic skill,

But imitative strokes can do no more
Than please the eye sweet nature every sense.
The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales,
And music of her woods no works of man
May rival these; these all bespeak a power
Peculiar and exclusively her own.

Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast;
'Tis free to all — 'tis every day renew'd."

Nothing could show more clearly the confusion that exists in so many minds as to what painting really is than this passage. It is a beautiful piece of poetry and a charming description of nature, and it is all perfectly true as regards anyone who would prefer such an art to nature, or even compare nature and art at all. But painting is not a "mimic" art, produced by "imitative strokes"; it is something far higher, and there should be no comparison like this made. It shows the necessity of clearly understanding that nature and art are entirely different things, and that the

Medici."

artist does not try merely to copy nature. Sir Thomas Browne saw further: "Nature "Religio is not at variance with art, nor art with nature. Art is the perfection of nature. Nature hath made one world, and art another." Coleridge puts forward the subjective view very strongly:

"It were a vain endeavour

Though I should gaze forever

On that green light that lingers in the West;

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within,
O lady! we receive but what we give

And in our life alone does nature live;

Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!

And would we aught behold of higher worth
Than that inanimate cold world allow'd
To the poor loveless, ever anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the earth . . .

And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element."

And again he tells us in his wonderful poem how the personality is affected by

nature:

"Beyond the shadow of the ship
I watch'd the water snakes;

"Ode on Dejection.'

"The

Ancient

Mariner."