32 
NATURE NOTES. 
we must turn as chief among poets who display this rapture ; his 
poem on the “ West Wind,” and his “Ode to the Skylark,” have 
never been equalled till the appearance of Swinburne, on whom, 
in this respect, his mantle seems to have fallen. Swinburne’s 
Nature-lyrics, from the choruses in “ Atalanta” down to his latest 
poems, display this rapture in its fullest form. Keats displayed 
some of this rapture in his odes to the “ Nightingale,” to “ Psyche,” 
and to “ Autumn ” ; and other poets have at times described sensa- 
tions of themselves or their heroes, which seem akin to what has 
been claimed to belong to the primaeval religion of the Aryan 
race. Tennyson portrayed a trance-like state of his own to Mr. 
Knowles, who reproduced the description in an article on “Aspects 
of Tennyson ” in the Nineteenth Century ; and the poet himself 
describes some such state in this passage of his “ Ancient Sage” : — 
“ More than once when I 
Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
The word that is the symbol of myself. 
The naortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
And passed into the nameless, as a cloud 
Melts into Heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs 
Were strange, not mine, and yet no shade of doubt. 
But utter clearness, and thro’ loss of self 
The gain of such large life as matched with ours. 
Were sun to spark — unshadowable in words, 
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world.” 
Wordsworth was full of this rapture ; and he gave e.vpression 
to his views in the following verses of what has been sometimes 
humorously called the “ Wordsworthian creed,” where, after 
describing some aspects of natural scenery, he says, 
“These beauteous forms 
Through a long absence have not been to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye : 
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din 
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them. 
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet. 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart. 
And passing even into my purer mind 
With tranquil restoration ; feelings, too. 
Of unremembered pleasure ; such perhaps 
As have no slight or trivial induence 
On that best portion of a good man’s life. 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust. 
To them I may have owed another gift 
Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood 
In which the burden of the mystery. 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world 
Is lightened, — that serene and blessed mood 
In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
And even the motion of our human blood. 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We sec into the life of things.” 
