108 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
In a bit of verse I once tried to express my 
idea of the true poet :— 
“ He is a poet strong and true 
Who loves wild thyme and honey-dew, 
Who, like a brown bee, works and sings, 
With morning freshness on his wings, 
And a gold burden on his thighs, 
The pollen-dust of centuries.” 
This pollen-dust is to be found in the old 
woods as well as in the old books. The 
flowers of poesy are but impressionist sketches 
of the flowers of Nature. ‘The little bloom of 
the partridge-berry has sweeter perfume than 
any lyric of Theocritus or Horace. From the 
proper point of view the big, vigorous flower 
of the tulip-tree is as full of racy, unused sug- 
gestions asit is of stamens. Virgil and Ten- 
nyson, Theocritus and Emerson, Sappho and 
Keats, have filled their songs with the most 
delicately elusive elements of Nature caught 
from out-door life. They are the half-dozen 
poets of the world who have come near in 
their work to the methods of the bee. The 
honey-cell and the poem are of divine art—the 
honey and the idea of the poem are of divine 
nature. Rossetti and Poe builded lovely cells, 
but they had no wild-flower honey with which 
to fill them; theirs was a marvellous nectar, 
but it was gathered from books and art. ‘ Vol- 
umes of forgotten lore ” served them, instead 
of brooks, and fields, and woods, and birds, 
and flowers. 
Now, literature is not the whole of life, 
nor is the study of Nature the whole secret of 
literary inspiration. But recreation of body 
and mind is drawn from obscure and various 
