54 
NATURE IN THE NATURE POETS. 
looks to a time when she also shall experience the deeper and 
more humanized affection. 
" When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 
Into a sober pleasure ; Avhen thy mind 
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, 
Thy memory be as a dwelling place 
For all sweet sounds and harmonies." 
I venture to say that the commerciiim mentis et rerum, 
the poetic communing with the beautiful sights and sounds 
of earth, can go no farther than in the lines of this exquisite 
poem. 
Follow these two nature poets now only once more. Let 
them end for us in the empyrean, like Dante, in each part 
of the Divine Comedy, among the stars. Take two passages 
from Wordsworth; one, well known, from that beautiful 
fourth book of the Excursion, " Despondency Corrected " : 
" Chaldean shepherds, ranging trackless fields. 
Beneath the concave of unclouded skies 
Spread like a sea, in boundless solitude, 
Looked on the polar star, as on a guide 
And guardian of their course, that never closed 
His steadfast eye. The planetary Five 
With a submissive reverence they beheld : 
Watched, from the centre of their sleeping flocks, 
Those radiant Mercuries, that seemed to move 
Carrying through ether, in peri)etual round. 
Decrees and resolutions of the gods ; 
And by their aspects, signifying works 
Of dim futurity, to man revealed." 
And one, not perhaps so well known, from the fourth book of 
the Prehide, " Summer Vacation " : 
" Nor less do I remember to have felt 
Distinctly manifested at this time 
A human-heartedness about my love 
For objects hitherto the absolute wealth 
Of my own private being and no more-, 
Which I had loved, even as a blessed spirit 
