112 PEPACTON 



clod until you have breathed upon it with your 

 genius. You commune with your own soul, not 

 with woods or waters; they furnish the conditions, 

 and are what you make them. Did Shelley inter- 

 pret the song of the skylark, or Keats that of the 

 nightingale? They interpreted their own wild, 

 yearning hearts. The trick of the poet is always 

 to idealize nature, — to see it subjectively. You 

 cannot find what the poets find in the woods until 

 you take the poet's heart to the woods. He sees 

 nature through a colored glass, sees it truthfully, 

 but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole 

 of the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a bird, a sunset, 

 have no hidden meaning that the art of the poet is 

 to unlock for us. Every poet shall interpret them 

 difierently, and interpret them rightly, because the 

 soul is infinite. Milton's nightingale is not Cole- 

 ridge's; Burns's daisy is not Wordsworth's; Emer- 

 son's bumblebee is not Lowell's; nor does Turner 

 see in nature what Tintoretto does, nor Veronese 

 what Correggio does. Nature is all things to all 

 men. "We carry within us," says Sir Thomas 

 Browne, "the wonders we find without." The 

 same idea is daintily expressed in these tripping 

 verses of Bryant's: — 



" Yet these sweet sounds of the early season 

 And these fair sights of its early days, 

 Are only sweet when we fondly listen, 

 And only fair when we fondly gaze. 



" There is no glory in star or blossom, 

 Till looked upon by a loving eye ; 

 There is no fragrance in April breezes, 

 Till breathed with joy as they wander by ; " 



