NATURE AND THE POETS 107 



" 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 know- 

 ledge 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 Tennyson, 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 descriptive 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; " 



or how lovingly listened to the nocturne of the 

 mockingbird to have turned it into words in "A 

 Word out of the Sea " ! Indeed, no poet has stud- 

 ied American nature more closely than Whitman 

 has, or is more cautious in his uses of it. How easy 

 are his descriptions ! 



