SCIENCE AND POETRY. 363 



Universe, but to another order of thought, to Poetry, to 

 Philosophy, and to Theology. And," concludes Principal 

 Shairp, " the light thrown from these regions on this marvel- 

 lous outward framework, while it contradicts nothing in the 

 body of truth which Science has made good, permeates the 

 whole with a higher meaning, and transfigures it with a 

 splendour which is Divine." 



Now the simple meaning, as I take it to be, of the ex- 

 pressions thus eloquently conveyed to us, is that poetry 

 allies itself to philosophy and theology in seeking to connect 

 the phenomena of the universe with a cause and origin. With 

 Principal Shairp, we may say that the mind which contem- 

 plates earnestly the face of nature is, sooner or later, bound 

 to inquire concerning the origin and beginnings of the things 

 of the universe and of the universe itself. But it seems to 

 me at the same time, that the queries which Professor Shairp 

 puts as those of such an inquiring mind, may be fully answered 

 by philosophy alone, or by philosophy and theology, if you 

 will, but in either case without the aid of poetry at all. The 

 "poetic interpretation of nature," in its simplest, in its 

 most typical phase, reveals itself to us as a particular way of 

 looking at things, as a special means of reading what nature 

 is saying to us, and less as an explanation of nature in any 

 sense. To make my meaning clear, let us select the rain- 

 bow as a common phenomenon of nature, and try to discover 

 if the poetic aspects of the subject account for its causation 

 or not. 



In Milton's " Comus," for instance, occurs the passage : 



" I took it for a faery vision 

 Of some gay creatures of the element, 

 That in the colours of the rainbow live 

 And play i' th' plighted clouds. " 



Here there is an admiration of the hues of the bow, and 

 the suggestion of exceeding brilliance in the "gay creatures 

 of the element" is implied by the comparison of their 

 colours with those of the bow. This, so far as I can judge, 

 is a legitimate enough example of a poetic thought, of a 



