BROWSING AND NIBBLING. 99 



" But in my heart I feel the life of the wood and the 

 meadow." 



And when Keats forgets the Greek myths and 

 turns to pastoral memories, how true and fresh 

 and fine his note ; 



" I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 



Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs ; 

 But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

 Wherewith the seasonable month endows 

 The grass, the thicket, the fruit-tree wild." 



But we poor clay mortals, who have never 

 been able to get within the charmed life of the 

 poets, can have our sip of honey-dew, and our 

 morsel of wild balsamic resin, our mouthful of 

 pungent buds, and our taste of aromatic roots, 

 notwithstanding our coarse natures, just as 

 well as these successors of the gods. Still, I 

 fancy that it is the literary man and the artist 

 who get the most out of our out-door browsing 

 and nibbling. Wild plums and haws and ber- 

 ries, papaws, nuts, grapes, and all the fruits of 

 ungardened nature, have something in them to 

 feed originality. One cannot chew a bit of 

 slippery-elm bark without acknowledging the 

 racy charm of nature at first hand. Children 

 like all these things, because their tastes are 

 pure and natural. Poets like them, because 

 poets are grown-up children. Painters like 

 them, because painters affect to interpret 

 poetry and nature. Clods, like you and me, 

 reader, like them, because they are racy and 

 good ; because they take out of our mouths 

 the taste of artificial food, and because they 

 seem to strengthen our connection with un- 

 trimmed and uncultured nature. They are, in 

 their way of laying hold on our taste, like the 

 poetic myths of the Greeks. They cloy for a 



