122 NATURE AND THE POETS. 



or to gather this image : 



" He has a solid base of temperament; 

 But as the water-lily starts and slides 

 Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 

 Though anchor'd to the bottom, such is he; " 

 or this : 



"Arms on which the standing muscle sloped, 

 As slopes a wild brook o'er a little stone, 

 Running too vehemently to break upon it," 



and many other gems that abound in his poems. He 

 does not cut and cover in a single line, so far as I 

 have observed. Great caution and exact knowledge 

 underlie his most rapid and daring flights. A lady told 

 me that she was once walking with him in the fields 

 when they came to a spring that bubbled up through 

 shifting sands in a very pretty manner, and Tenny- 

 son, in order to see exactly how the spring behaved, 

 got down on his hands and knees and peered a long 

 time into the water. The incident is worth repeating 

 as showing how intently a great poet studies nature. 



Walt Whitman says he has been trying for years 

 to find a word that would express or suggest that 

 evening call of the robin. How absorbingly this poet 

 must have studied the moonlight to hit upon this de- 

 scriptive phrase : 



"The vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue;'* 



how long have looked upon the carpenter at his bench 

 to have made this poem : 



" The tongue of his fore-plane whistles its wild ascending lisp j" 

 or how lovingly listened to the nocturne of the mock 



