82 
NATURE NOTES. 
Notes. In spite of very numerous calls upon his time, he has 
most kindly consented to do so, and we have the pleasure of 
laying before our readers this month the first instalment of his 
paper on that subject. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff writes as 
follows : — 
“ In accordance with your wish, I have looked through Mr. 
Matthew Arnold’s poems, with a view to collect for the benefit 
of your readers the principal passages in which he deals with 
the vegetable creation. I have had great pleasure in doing so, 
for there is not one amongst our singers whose allusions to it 
are more appropriate. The most convenient course will be to 
take the last edition of his poems, as arranged by himself, and to 
go through it in order. There are few references to flowers or 
plants save of the most general kind in the Early Poems, Narra- 
tive Poems and Sonnets, which are contained in the first volume. 
Here is one from Resignation : — 
“ ‘ The solemn wastes of heathy hill 
Sleep in the July sunshine still ; 
The self-same shadows now, as then, 
Play through this grassy upland glen ; 
The loose dark stones on the green way 
Lie strewn, it seems, where then they lay ; 
On this mild bank above the stream, 
(You crush them !) the blue gentians gleam. 
Still this wild brook, the rushes cool, 
The sailing foam, the shining pool ! 
These are not changed ; and we, you say, 
Are scarce more changed, in truth, than they.’ 
“ Here is another from Solirab and Rustirn : — 
. . . . “ ‘ And he saw that Youth, 
Of age and looks to be his own dear son, 
Piteous and lovely, lying on the sand, 
Like some rich hyacinth which by the scythe 
Of an unskilful gardener has been cut, 
Mowing the garden grass-plots near its bed. 
And lies, a fragrant tower of purple bloom, 
On the mown, dying grass — so Sohrab lay, 
Lovely in death, upon the common sand.’ 
“ The following is in the same poem : — 
. . . “ ‘all down his cold white side 
The crimson torrent ran, dim now and soil’d, 
Like the soil’d tissue of white violets 
Left, freshly gather’d, on their native bank, 
By children whom their nurses call with haste 
Indoors from the sun’s eye ; ’ . 
“ The holly and the juniper are delightfully introduced at page 
224, in the beautiful description in Tristram and Iseult which 
begins with the words : — 
“ ‘ The young surviving Iseult, one bright day, 
Had wander’d forth.’ 
