+8 fe) BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
and artist. Thoreau is a striking example of 
a poet spoiled by this direct study. Compare 
his poetry with that of Keats or Tennyson or 
Emerson, and it will be discovered that his ob- 
vious attitudinizing before Nature prevents 
him from appearing sincere, simple, and fresh 
in his conceits. It seems that the available 
material which one gets from Nature, save 
for scientific purposes, must be received aslant, 
so to speak—must be discovered by indirect 
vision—and while one is looking for some- 
thing else. Thus while Thoreau was _ besieg- 
ing Nature for her poetic essences, he failed to 
find them, though Keats had stumbled upon 
them apparently by accident, 
““ What melodies are these? 
They sound as through the whispering of trees.” 
If ever the songs of a poet 
“Come as through bubbling honey,” 
and 
“In trammels of perverse deliciousness,’ 
the songs of Keats did, and in them we may 
find in the best measure the influences of the 
indirect study of Nature. 
Now, there are few persons who, like Keats, 
will absorb these influences without some stim- 
ulus other than the poet’s love of solitude; 
nor is solitude for its own sake wholesome. 
On the contrary, it is inimical to healthy phys- 
ical and mental development. Keats might 
‘have lived to finish all his “ divine fragments ” 
if he had been an enthusiastic canoeist, archer, 
or bicyclist. He died of consumption at the 
age of twenty-five years! If William Cullen 
