160 LITEKARY VALUES 



The landscape that is written over with human his- 

 tory, how it holds us and draws us ! All phases of 

 modern industrial life — the miner, the lumberman, 

 the road-builder, the engineer, the factory-hand, are 

 available for poetic treatment to him who can bring 

 the proper fund of human association, who can make 

 the human element in these things paramount over 

 the mechanical element. The more of nature you get 

 in, the more the picture has a background of earth 

 and sky, or of great human passions and heroisms, 

 the more the imagination is warmed and moved. 

 The railroad is itself a blotch upon the earth, but it 

 has a mighty background. In itself it is at war 

 with every feature of the landscape it passes through ; 

 it stains the snows, it befouls the water, it poisons 

 the air, it smuts the grass and the foliage, it expels 

 the peace and the quiet, it puts to rout every rural 

 divinity. It adapts itself to nothing ; it is as arbi- 

 trary as a cyclone and as killing as a pestilence. 

 Yet a train of cars thundering through storm and 

 darkness, racing with winds and clouds, is a sub- 

 lime object to contemplate ; it is sublime because 

 of its triumph over time and space, and because of 

 the danger and dread that compass it about. It has 

 a tremendous human background. The body-kill- 

 ing and soul-blighting occupations peculiar to our 

 civilization are not of themselves suggestive of po- 

 etic thoughts ; but if Dante made poetry out of hell, 

 would not a nature copious and powerful enough 

 make poetry out of the vast and varied elements of 

 our materialistic civilization ? 



