224 BIRDS AND POETS 
“Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me.”’ 
One seems to see those huge Brocken shadows of 
the past sinking and dropping below the horizon 
like mountain peaks, as he presses onward on his 
journey. Akin to this absorption of science is 
another quality in my poet not found in the rest, 
except perhaps a mere hint of it now and then in 
Lucretius, — a quality easier felt than described. It 
is a tidal wave of emotion running all through the 
poems, which is now and then crested with such 
passages as this: — 
“T am he that walks with the tender and growing night; 
I call to the earth and sea, half held by the night. 
“Press close, bare-bosom’d night! Press close, magnetic, noure 
ishing night! 
Night of south winds! night of the large, few stars! 
Still, nodding night! mad, naked, summer night. 
“Smile, O voluptuous, cool-breath’d earth! 
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! 
Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains, misty 
topt! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon, just tinged with 
blue! 
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds, brighter and clearer for my 
sake! 
Far-swooping, elbow’d earth! rich, apple-blossom’d earth! 
Smile, for your lover comes!’? 
Professor Clifford calls it ‘‘cosmie emotion,”? — 
a poetic thrill and rhapsody in contemplating the 
earth as a whole,—its chemistry and vitality, its 
bounty, its beauty, its power, and the applicability 
of its laws and principles to human, esthetic, and 
art products. It affords the key to the theory of art 
