48 Hartley Burr Alexander 



parable only to the pathetic rapture of the lone Greenland Esqui- 

 maux at the Phoenix-birth of the sun after the dead winter 

 months. The token of the Spring set free was the greening turf ; 

 and just as the Esquimaux greet the new sun with hymns, so the 

 old Teuton sang springtime in. Nature's kindlier England has 

 but fostered the ancient paganism, till it has come to pass that not 

 any poet of the mother-tongue begins his pilgrimage of minstrelsy 

 save he prologue it with April and with May, some hymn to 

 Spring which is his heart's libation to his native Muse. 



And throughout, English poetry is mainly a nature poetry. At 

 the beginning spring and meadow-green, but the whole year 

 gathered into the final song. Storm is there with bird-trill, the 

 doming blue of the sky with the sheltered violet. And all nature 

 is alive, too, — this perhaps from the Celt. The life is not a 

 pantheistic world-vitalism, as with the Brahman, nor anthropo- 

 morphic embodiment, as with the classic peoples. The Oriental, 

 realizing human impotence, seeks peace in the tropic seductive- 

 ness of spiritual slumber, losing self and its desires in the waste 

 waters of a cosmic sea. The Greek, though well aware of his 

 mortality, effects an ideal conquest of nature; she is no longer 

 mistress, but is ruled by myriad human-like gods and demi-gods, 

 by nymphs and dryads who make her their habitat, by mortals who 

 have conquered mortality; the very vividness of Greek desire 

 compels the seeing of nature enslaved and ruddy flesh tri- 

 umphantly enthroned. But with our less sunny temper it is 

 otherwise. We have beheld a great vision, — from this our rest- 

 lessness; but we have found nature jealous of our wish and 

 potent to thwart it, — from this our sadness. Because of our dual 

 derivation, we achieve no contentment. The Celt passionately 

 worships beauty; the Goth clings invulnerably to his personality. 

 Yet without abnegation of self and personal right, beauty cannot 

 be attained. Here is that fundamental contradiction of tempera- 

 ment which gives a sense of tragedy underlying even our gaiety. 

 Especially since Puritanism and Science have in turn cast sober- 

 ing pall upon the merry-making instinct of the robuster England 

 of the Middle time, the chill and the dread have lain heavy upon 



390 



