1 68 The Poets and Nature. 



Take heed lest fortune change the scene : 



Some of thy brethren, I remember 

 In June have mighty princes been, 



But begged their bread before December.' " 



But Charlotte Smith, as always, swings the matter back 

 into proper grooves : 



" Beneath some leaf of ample shade 

 Thy pearly eggs shall then be laid, 

 Small rudiments of many a fly : 

 While thou, thy frail existence past, 

 Shall shudder in the chilly blast 

 And fold thy wings and die. 



Soon fleets thy transient life away, 

 Yet short as is thy natal day 

 Like flowers that form thy fragrant food ; 

 Thou, poor Ephemeron shalt have filled 

 The little space thy Maker willed, 

 And all thou know'st of life be good." 



But to descend from great to small, from the general to 

 the specific. I am afraid, much afraid, that poets thought 

 that ants made mole-hills. I tremble while I write it, but 

 did Wordsworth himself (one of the most inaccurate and 

 unsympathetic of observers) think so? 



' ' So the emmet gives 

 Her foresight and intelligence that makes 

 The tiny creatures strong by social league, 

 Supports the generations, multiplies 

 Their tribes, till we behold a spacious plain 

 Or grassy bottom, all, with little hills 

 Their labour covered, as a lake with waves 

 Thousands of cities, in the desert place 

 Built up of life, and food and means of life." 



Or, at any rate, that ants were naturally associated with 

 them. Curious theories of zoological relativity are not 

 uncommon with poets, as, for instance, among birds, the 

 connection between doves and vultures, or among beasts, 

 between the wolf and the bear, or among reptiles, between 



