128 NATURE AND THE POETS. 



daintily expressed in these tripping verses of Bry 

 ant's: 



44 Yet these sweet sounds of the early season 



And these fair sights of its early days, 

 Are only sweet when we fondly listen, 

 And only fair when we fondly gaze. 



" There is no glory in star or blossom, 

 Till looked upon by a loring eye; 

 There is no fragrance in April breezes, 

 Till breathed with joy as they wander by ; " 



and in these lines of Lowell : 



" What we call Nature, all outside ourselves, 

 Is but our own conceit of what we see, 

 Our own reaction upon what we feel." 



" I find my own complexion everywhere." 

 Before either, Coleridge had said : 



" We receive but what we give, 

 And in our life alone doth Nature live ; 

 Ours is the wedding-garment, ours the shroud ; " 



and Wordsworth had spoken of 



" The light that never was on sea or land, 

 The consecration and the poet's dream." 



That light that never was on sea or land is what the 

 poet gives us, and is what we mean by the poetic in- 

 terpretation of nature. The Oxford professor strug- 

 gles against this view. " It is not true," he says, 

 * that nature is a blank, or an unintelligible scroll 

 with no meaning of its own but that which we put 

 into it from the light of our own transient feelings." 

 Not a blank, certainly, to the scientist, but full of 



