J23<5 THROUGH LIBRARY WINDOWS 



ties of feeling. He fixes the joy of the passing 

 moment and makes the evasive emotion a min- 

 istry of untold pleasure. 



The poet is optimistic and preserves the 

 optimism of the race. His utterances are the 

 world's best ideas and purest ideals. Thought 

 is not created in the market-places, emotion is 

 not cultured in the crowded thoroughfares, nay, 

 but alone and apart, with Nature and God, and 

 soul laid bare to every possible influence. Here 

 is where the human spirit touches life and takes 

 on power to think and love, and necessarily be- 

 comes a part of the beautiful, the true and the 

 good. And so the real poet opens the eye and 

 ear to the loveliest in earth and sky and sea and 

 forest and flower. He dowers the race with 

 his peerless and priceless gifts. 



What lovers of Nature the poets are ! What 

 insight into its wondrous arcana is theirs I 

 What revelations of its riches of beauty are 

 made, and what loyal and loving testimony of 

 the Creator's kindly care of it all F 



Wordsworth called poetry "the breath and 

 finer spirit of all knowledge^ immortal as the 

 heart of man." Poetry is the blossom and 

 fragrance of all human thoughts and passions. 

 It ever contemplates three objects: Man, Na- 

 ture and God. Nature first arouses the poetic 



