SCIENCE AND MODERN POETRY 745 



mere sight of the object. The poets themselves realise this ; 

 when Tennyson said, 



Flower in the crannied wall, 

 I pluck you out of the crannies ; — 

 Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 

 Little flower — but if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

 I should know what God and man is, 



it was not the mere sight of the beauty of the flower that touched 

 him, but the thought that that same little flower was an integral 

 part, however small a one, in a more wondrous whole we call 

 Nature ; it was the innumerable beauties laid bare by thought 

 and reflection founded on investigation and knowledge that 

 touched the poet's nature and enriched our language with a 

 poetic gem of such surpassing beauty ; and it is the same know- 

 ledge in us, likewise based on a study of Nature's laws and 

 processes, that alone enables us to recognise its beauty. 



But enough of the general nature of the influence of the 

 scientific movement on poetry. One comes naturally to 

 inquire into some of the more direct effects of scientific 

 ideas on the form and expression adopted in modern poetry. 

 Such an inquiry can only be carried out by an appeal to the 

 poets themselves and by a study of their works. For this 

 purpose we will take Tennyson as our chief example, since it is 

 better to make a detailed examination of one poet than a diffusive 

 and cursory glance at many. Moreover, besides being one 

 of the greatest and one of the most typical of modern poets, 

 Tennyson was a scientific observer of no mean order and his 

 scientific knowledge, if not profound, was at least exact and of 

 unusual width ; while he enjoyed the extra advantage (for our 

 present purpose, at any rate) of being a friend of Darwin's — of 

 all modern scientists the one most deficient in, I had almost said 

 devoid of, poetic feeling ; a defect which no one deplored more 

 than he did himself. 



Perhaps the first real scientific idea introduced into poetry 

 was the idea of vastness — vastness of space, and later still the 

 vastness of time. One might at first think that the conception 

 of mere immensity is, emotionally speaking, a barren one ; it is 

 not so in reality. Who does not know, who has not felt the awe 

 and wonderment, the subdued reverence with which we gaze up 

 at the starry heavens in the darkness and silence of the night ! 



