The Commonplace 27 



It is doubtful whether the great nature poet 

 will be taught in the formal curricula of the 

 schools. His spirit and his method will be as 

 unconfined as the farm lands, the inaccessible 

 mountains, the great plains, or the open sea. 



The old-time short nature poem was wont 

 only to point a moral, usually dubious and 

 far-fetched and factitious, having little vitality 

 of its own. It really was not a nature poem, 

 for the real nature poem is its own moral. The 

 poems and stories of the Old Testament are 

 always interesting because they have something 

 to say, they are direct, not heavy with adjectives 

 or with rhetoric, and they are moral because 

 they tell the truth. 



Persons still like poetry. 



I am constantly surprised at the poems that 

 busy and practical men know ; and also at the 

 poetry that many busy men can write. There 

 is reason to believe that there were never so 

 many poets in the world as now. Poetry-mak- 

 ing is not an occupation, but the incidental 

 spark that strikes off from useful labor; it is 



