"Tintern Abbey."

They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they rear'd the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

"Within the shadow of the ship

I watch'd their rich attire;

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black
They coil'd and swam, and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

"O happy living things! No tongue
Their beauty might declare;

A spring of love gush'd from my heart,

And I bless'd them unaware;

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I bless'd them unaware.

"The selfsame moment I could pray;

And from my neck so free

The Albatross fell off, and sank

Like lead into the sea."*

Wordsworth shows us how nature moved

him:

"For I have learn'd

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,

*"Just between the third and fourth stanzas the thing has occurred in the mind, which makes all nature and external phenomena part of the history of the personality. It is reality passing into higher reality, the world being minted by the soul." Dr. F. W. Gunsaulus.

Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,

And in the blue sky, and in the mind of man.”

What a world is lost to the man typified

by the same poet:

"He rov'd among the vales and streams,

In the green wood and hollow dell.

They were his dwellings night and day,
But nature ne'er could find the way
Into the heart of Peter Bell.

"In vain through every changing year
Did nature lead him as before.

A primrose by the river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more."

Well might such a lover of nature as Words

worth cry out in irony:

"Great God! I'd rather be

A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

"Peter

Bell."

"The

World."

"As You Like it."

"The Merchant of Venice."

Examples of the suggestive power of nature are found in the works of nearly all the great poets. This view is not developed to any great extent by the earlier poets, yet it is hinted at by Shakespeare, Herrick, and Milton, and others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But from the latter part of the eighteenth century the idea of finding our own feelings reflected in nature grows and develops into the modern subjective way of looking at the outside world. Thus we find in Shake

speare:

And

"Blow, blow, thou wintry wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen

Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.”

"Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims,

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.”

And in Milton:

"But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glittering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild, nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon,
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.'

When we come to the modern poets, the subjective view is much more strongly developed. Thus Byron tells us what bitter feelings oppressed him when he looked on the loveliness of Greece:

"The Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal Summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
"The mountains look on Marathon,
And Marathon looks on the sea,

And musing there an hour alone,

I dream'd that Greece might still be free;

For standing on the Persians' grave,

I could not deem myself a slave.

"What! silent still? and silent all?
the voices of the dead

Ah no,
Sound like a distant torrent's fall,
And answer, 'Let one living head,
But one arise we come, we come!'
'Tis but the living who are dumb."

"Paradise Lost." Book IV.

"Don Juan." Canto III.

"Quentin Durward."

In a fine chapter on the poetry of Sir Walter Scott, Ruskin, while recognizing the sadness in his writings, tries to prove that his habit was not of looking at nature as changed by his own feelings in this way, but as having an animation and pathos of its own, wholly irrespective of human presence or passion. He paints nature as it is in itself, bright, serene, or gloomy. But we think few people can agree with Ruskin in this. Scott's descriptions of nature are very beautiful, but like other great artists he very often, and in his finest passages descriptive of nature, reflects the moods of man, as the following instances will show. In the touching song:

"Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh,

The sun has left the lea,

The orange flower perfumes the bower,

The breeze is on the sea.

The lark his lay, who trill'd all day,

Sits hush'd his partner nigh,

Bird, breeze, and flower proclaim the hour,
But where is County Guy?"

what matters it, the beauty and loveliness
of the night? Nature is not in sympathy
with the feelings of the lover, and it is all a