OUTDOOR LIFE IN LITERATURE. 5 
the thinker, the gods disappear from the earth and then 
from the sky, and law takes their place; and yet, some- 
how, the sense of beauty still animates the whole and 
the soul feels that the divine is still near.” Contempla- 
tion of Nature becomes again the worship of God, but 
only after all the ungodly and human has been separated 
from it, and naught remains but an ineffable goodness 
and justice and beauty. 
The exigencies of an advancing civilization which 
tend to draw us away from the close contact with, and 
contemplation of, Nature rob us of a part, and that not 
a small one, of our lawful inheritance. It is Words- 
worth, the Christian poet, who, observing this tendency, 
strongly expresses his feelings in a well-known sonnet: 
“The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 
Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
We've given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the Moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at’all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, 
For this, for everything, we’re out of tune ; 
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be 
.A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.” 
