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SPRING AND THE POETS. 



The lusty Spring, now in his timely hour 

 Is ready to come forth. 



Arise, I say, do May some observance. 



WE are lovers of Nature that is, of Nature for her own sake, 

 as we have no pretensions to call ourself either botanist, geologist, 

 ornithologist, nor any thing of the sort. Not that we quarrel, be 

 it understood, with other people for indulging a whim of counting 

 stamens and petals, or of breaking stones, or speculating upon bird's 

 nests, bird's notes, or bird's food. We allow every body free lati- 

 tude, reserving to ourself the privilege of always shunning a scientific 

 companion, when we shake the dust from our feet, and look Nature 

 in the face. 



If we do not love Nature, seen through the glass of science, 

 neither do we love her according to the rules of the Lake and the 

 Cockney schools of poetry. Mr. Leigh Hunt is a very clever man, 

 and a very pleasant writer; but before he penned the following brief 

 and piquant summary of Wordsworth's poetic feelings, he should 

 have looked for the mote in his own eye : 



" some lines he had made on a straw, 



Showing where he found it, and what it was for ; 



And how when 'twas balanced, it stood like a spell 



And how when 'twas balanced, no longer it fell : 



A wild thing of scorn he described it to be, 



But said it was patient to heaven's decree ; 



Then he gazed upon nothing, and, looking forlorn, 



Dropt a natural tear for that wild thing of scorn." 



This, as a caricature, is excellent; but " lawny fields" and " greeny 

 lanes " are hardly equal to its originals. 



Our old poets are absolutely filled with little gems on Nature in 

 general, and on Spring in particular. In the absence of the cant of 

 sensibility, which renders so large a portion of modern descriptive 

 poetry mere milk-and-water trash they speak of the sights and the 

 sounds which fill the world with harmony and beauty, as if they had 

 felt their influence, and thus their descriptions come warm from the 

 heart. It is one thing to sit in a suburban villa or in a lake cottage, 

 and manufacture prettinesses ; and it is another to walk forth amidst 

 the works of the omnipotent and beneficent Author of nature with a 

 mind properly attuned to receive their influences. The man whose 

 mind has this quality, has within him one very important element of 

 happiness ; as it is impossible for him to move without meeting with 

 a multitude of things that strike some responsive chord of enjoyment 



M.M. No. 5. 3 N 



