Bi? a MooManb Spring 



final test of art is when you lay it upon 

 nature ; and its triumph is when it reaches 

 beyond the unsatisfying limits of nature 

 into the dreamy yet real distances of imagi- 

 nation. The bird intuitively makes avail 

 of this, when it sings, by laying its voice in 

 a film of ventriloquial deceit, so that oft- 

 times the listener is scarcely able to decide 

 from what direction the song comes. 

 Lyric poetry of the highest sort leaves 

 you in a tremulous, twilight doubt be- 

 tween the real and the ideal. This doubt at 

 once arises when you begin to read Keats's 

 matchless ode in^some wild, rank nook, deep 

 amid the undergrowth of a primitive wood. 

 In the study, among books, where the 

 atmosphere is artificial, one does not real- 

 ize the elementary ancestral trick of genius 

 with which Keats, the divine boy, manip- 

 ulated language so as to make his thoughts 

 seem naturally suggested by a nightingale 

 singing. But when 'jead in the presence 

 of facts thrust up by the actual heave of 

 nature, these melodious minors of the 

 poet's harp betray the artful fingering of 

 a divinely sophisticated musician. 



185 



