152 FRESH FIELDS 



by a certain phase of nature, the nature of those 

 sombre, quiet, green, far-reaching mountain soli- 

 tudes. There is a shepherd quality about him; he 

 km* the floeka, the heights, the tain, the tender 

 herbage, the sheltered dell, the fold, with a kind 

 of poetized shepherd instinct. Lambs and sheep 

 and their haunts, and those who tend them, recur 

 in his poems. How wefl his Terse 

 with those high, green, and gray soli- 

 tudes, where the silence is broken only by the bleat 

 of lamb* or sheep, or just stirred by the roke 

 of distant waterfalls! Simple, elemental yet pro- 

 iNBdry tender and human, he bad 



WKeh, kmig bee*, f* erer be." 



He brooded upon nature, bat it was nature mirrored 

 in bis own heart In his poem of "The Brothers" 

 be says of bis hero, who bad gone to sea: 



and, leaning over the vessel's side and gazing into 

 the "broad green ware and sparkling foam," be 

 '8**m m*tmt, mw fke torn* t Aeep OH* ggmxed 



was what bis own heart told him; every expe- 

 ealkd those beloved images to 



when the son seemed likely to 



