NA TURE-POETR 1'. 
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warble of the thrush, the soft cooing of the dove, the rapturous 
song of the skylark, the sweeping flight of the rapid swallow ; 
and thus, bridging the chasm that separates the real from the 
unreal, they clothe the one with the colours and the glamour of 
the other, write down the response of the soul to the phenomena 
of nature, and interpret fully the voice of nature as it speaks to 
the soul of man. 
Of such a poet-naturalist it has been well said that 
“ Divinely thrilled was the man, exultingly full. 
As quick well-waters that come from the heart of earth 
Ere yet they dart in a brook are one bubble-pool 
To light and sound ; wedding both at the leap of birth. 
The soul of light vivid shone, a stream within stream ; 
The soul of .sound from a musical shell outflew ; 
Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam. 
The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.” 
It is by carrying on such work that the poets become the un- 
acknowledged legislators of the world ; and they thereby render 
to us one of the greatest services that we owe to them. And of 
the naturalists who speak to us only in their prose-poetry, we can 
feel that the influence is a real and a growing one. Through 
their writings town dwellers who cannot go to the country can, 
by way of solace and refreshment, have the country brought to 
them. As the desire for an bpen-air life is intensified among the 
prisoners of artificial commercialism, and as the very excess of 
our modern civilisation demands a return to nature, there arises 
day by day a greater interest in the works of those who have 
heralded the change. To one of these poet-naturalists who has 
recently died there are thousands who feel and acknowledge a 
debt of gratitude as the faithful student and interpreter of nature’s 
soul, who has caught and expressed the fleeting moods and 
phenomena of nature, as manifested alike in the humblest and 
the highest of her works. And of him it has been truly said that 
“ He showed the soul within the veil of matter luminous and thin ; 
He heard the old Earth’s undersong piercing the modern din. 
No bird that cleaves the air, but his revealing thought has made more fair; 
No tremulous dell of summer leaves but feels his presence there. 
So though we deem him dead, he speaketh ! and the words are sped 
In grassy whispers o’er the fields, by every wild flower said.” 
The poets who paint pictures of nature for their own sake, 
without reference, explicit or implied, to the human interest that 
may belong to them, are to be found in the modern world alone. 
The poets of old time had always some understood reference to 
the human interest of the story. 
When Homer gives us his beautiful moonlight simile, he 
seems to call the readers’ expectancy to the glorious fighting that 
was to take place with daylight. In the art of HDschylus and 
Sophocles, the scenery is left mainly to those sister-arts which 
the drama calls in to aid the illusion. In the art of Homer the 
descriptive passages always advance the dramatic action ; no 
such passage seems to have been written for its own sake alone. 
