into a bottle, cannot cabin a Hockomock marsh, nor 

 cage a December storm in a laboratory. And when, 

 in such a place, did a scientist ever overturn a "wee 

 bit heap o' weeds an' stibble " ? Yet it is out of 

 dawns and marshes and storms that the revelations 

 come ; yes, and out of mice nests, too, if you love all 

 the out-of-doors, and chance to be ploughing late in 

 the fall. 



But there is the trouble with my professor. He 

 never ploughs at all. How can he understand and 

 believe ? And is n't this the trouble with many of 

 our preacher poets, also ? Some of them spend their 

 summers in the garden ; but the true poet and 

 the naturalist must stay later, and they must 

 plough, plough the very edge of winter, if they would 

 turn up what Burns did that November day in the 

 field at Mossgiel. 



How amazingly fortunate were the conditions of 

 Burns's life ! What if he had been professor of Eng- 

 lish literature at Edinburgh University? He might 

 have written a life of Milton in six volumes, a 

 monumental work, but how unimportant compared 

 with the lines "To a Mouse " ! 



We are going to live real life and write real poetry 

 61 



