ENGLISH WOODS: A CONTRAST 43 



as New England. A poor servant, that is to pos- 

 sess but fifty acres, may afford to give more wood 

 for fire, as good as the world yields, than many 

 noblemen in England." In many parts of New 

 England, New York, and Pennsylvania, the same 

 royal fires may still be indulged in. In the chief 

 nature-poet of England, Wordsworth, there is no 

 line that has the subtle aroma of the deep woods. 

 After seeing his country, one can recognize its fea- 

 tures, its spirit, all through his poems — its impres- 

 sive solitudes, its lonely tarns, its silent fells, its 

 green dales, its voiceful waterfalls; but there are no 

 woods there to speak of; the mountains appear to 

 have always been treeless, and the poet's muse has 

 never felt the spell of this phase of nature — the 

 mystery and attraction of the indoors of aboriginal 

 wildness. Likewise in Tennyson there is the breath 

 of the wold, but not of the woods. 



Among our own poets, two at least of the more 

 eminent have listened to the siren of our primitive 

 woods. I refer to Bryant and Emerson. Though 

 so different, there is an Indian's love of forests and 

 forest-solitudes in them both. Neither Bryant's 

 "Forest Hymn " nor Emerson's "Woodnotes " 

 could have been written by an English poet. The 

 "Woodnotes" savor of our vast Northern pine for- 

 ests, amid which one walks with distended pupil, 

 and a boding, alert sense. 



" In unploughed Maine he sought the lumberers' gang, 

 Where from a hundred lakes young rivers sprang; 

 He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 

 The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone ; 



