FAR AND NEAR 



I cannot conceive of any poetry ever being 

 produced in the tropics. Nature and life there do 

 not make the poetic appeal. There is Uttle that is 

 heroic, or plaintive, or pathetic, or that stimulates 

 the imagination or fosters sentiment. The beak and 

 claw and spine and thorn side of nature is more 

 pronounced than in our zone ; forms are more 

 savage, disease is more deadly. Man cannot take 

 Nature to himself and dominate and tame and hu- 

 manize her, as he can where snow falls and spring 

 comes. Nature moulds and stamps him, and devel- 

 ops his fangs of passion. 



How much our civilization owes to the winter 

 and to the spring! to the tender, to the heroic, to 

 the prophetic moods of Nature. How are our lives 

 enriched and deepened and stimulated by the 

 changes of the seasons : the spring with its yearn- 

 ing and allurements, the summer with its victories 

 and defeats, the autumn with its repose and plenty, 

 the winter with its spur and tonic, — what would 

 our lives be without these things ? 



The leaves of the trees in Jamaica are for the 

 most part thick and stiff and shining, — var- 

 nished by the sun and the heat. The foliage rarely 

 presents the airy, feathery, graceful character of 

 the foliage of our trees. The landscape is rarely 

 impressive. It is deficient in the elements of sim- 

 plicity and dignity. It is too often a jumble of 

 broken and insignificant lines. It was not moulded 



2G4 



