72 INDOOE STUDIES 



Himself but brutal, waged a pigmy war, 

 Unclad as they, and witli them housed in caves, 

 Nor knew that sea retired or mountain rose." 



Whether the science in this and similar passages, 

 with which Mr. Nichols's epic abounds, has met 

 with a change of heart and become pure poetry, may 

 be questioned. There is a more complete absorp- 

 tion of science and the emotional reproduction of it 

 in Whitman, as there is also in Tennyson. "In 

 Memoriam " is full of science winged with passion. 



Tennyson owes a larger debt to physical science 

 than any other current English poet; Browning, the 

 largest debt to legerdemain, or the science of jug- 

 glery. Occasionally Tennyson puts wings to a fact 

 of science very successfully, as in his "The Two 

 Voices : " — 



" To-day I saw the dragon-fly 

 Come from the wells where he did lie. 



" An inner impulse rent the veil 

 Of his old husk : from head to tail 

 Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 



4 



" He dried his wings: like gauze they grew: 

 Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew 

 A living flash of light he flew." 



Keats's touches are often accurate enough for sci- 

 ence, and free and pictorial enough for poetry. 



"Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight; 

 With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 

 And taper fingers catching at all things, 

 To bind them all about with tiny rings." 



Or this by a "streamlet's rushy banks: " — 



" Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, 

 Staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, 



