NATURE IN THE NATURE POETS. 
41 
■school of Dryden and of Pope. And we will not do this 
without a parting salutation in which is mingled no small 
measure of regret. 
Gladly would we tread the fields of the old English spring 
with Chaucer : 
" Whan that Aprile with his schovvres svvote 
The drought of March hath perced to the rote 
And bathed every veine in swich licour, 
Of which vertue engendred is the flour ; 
"Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe, 
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe 
The tender croppes, and the younge sonne 
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, 
And smale foules maken melodie, 
That slepen alle night with open eye, 
So priketh hem nature in hir corages," 
But we must not linger. It is but a parting glance of the 
eye that we can give to Shakespeare, rapidly but devoutly 
thanking him for such poetic gems as this : 
"Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell; 
It fell upon a little Avestern flower 
At first milk-white, now purpled with love's wound. 
And maidens call it ' Love-in-idleness.' " 
We can but devote a rapid heart-beat to Milton, with his 
" Silver cloud [that] 
Turns back her silver lining on the night," 
and all the other exquisite passages in the Comus, the 
Allegro and Penseroso, and in Paradise Lost. 
Neither must what is called the artificial or formal school, 
or shall we say the school which sums itself up in the words 
" The proper study of mankind is man," 
be passed entirely over as unworthy of notice, even in regard 
of nature. Dryden and Pope had their own stately way of 
admiring (unless indeed words mean nothing) and of noting 
