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instinct with personality (or what resembled it), but the spirit or 

 soul of nature, animating and informing it everywhere, was 

 recognisable and realisable in detail. It was not always, nor 

 indeed usually recognisable, as one vast all-comprehending Force : 

 but to our vision, was divided into many single forms and phases. 

 Each separate object, every flower, every mountain, every star, had 

 its spiritual essence or informing soul, which was vitally related to 

 the larger soul of the world, the poet could not tell how. It was 

 for the speculative philosopher to say, — if he could, — what were 

 the relations between the separate objects, and the universe as a 

 whole. The poet might occasionally refer to the underlying unity, 

 which he realised as vividly as the philosopher, or more so. But 

 his special function was to interpret the detail, or the specialisation 

 of nature ; its variety, rather than its unity. 



Thus, the soul of nature, localised here and there, — ^just as 

 humanity is individualised in separate men and women — has, to 

 the poet, its own peculiar life and changing moods. Not only has 

 each mountain or stream ks ge/ims loci; but that genius is fully as 

 changeful as man — now bright and radiant, again depressed and 

 dull. It is alternately glad and festive, mourning and bereaved. 

 Nature is seen toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, just as we toil, rejoice, 

 and sorrow. And this is not the polytheistic notion of separate 

 beings, as tutelary gods, oreads, dryads, etc, inhabiting distinct 

 localities. These were detached from nature, spirits that came 

 and went, and were as capricious in their comings and goings, as 

 fairies are alleged to be. But there is a wide interval between a 

 belief in ghosts and fairiae, and a recognition of those ' souls of 

 lonely places,' or the 'spirit of the woods', mountains and floods, of 

 which Wordsworth speaks. In the latter case, the inner spirit ot 

 the Univefse is recognised, revealing itself to us, in this way, as the 

 breathing life of the place, — a portion of the infinite Existence, not 

 really cut off from the rest, but only seeming to be so, to our finite 

 imagination. The link connecting part with part may be too 

 subtle for us to trace, but it exists, and is felt to exist, at the very 

 moment when our perception of difference in the parts is keenest. 



Thus 'the mighty being' of Nature, ever 'awake,'* manifests itself 

 * Miscellaneous Sonnets, part i. Sonnet 30 (vol. ii. p. 275). 



