FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  
re-worshiper; and he appears to have walked as many, or more, hours each day, in all seasons, as did Thoreau; but he was hunting for no lost paradise of the wild; nor waging a war against the arts and customs of civilization. Man and life were at the bottom of his interest in Nature. Wordsworth never knew the wild as we know it in this country--the pitilessly savage and rebellious; and, on the other hand, he never knew the wonderfully delicate and furtive and elusive nature that we know; but he knew the sylvan, the pastoral, the rustic-human, as we cannot know them. British birds have nothing plaintive in their songs; and British woods and fells but little that is disorderly and cruel in their expression, or violent in their contrasts. Wordsworth gathered his finest poetic harvest from common nature and common humanity about him--the wayside birds and flowers and waterfalls, and the wayside people. Though he called himself a worshiper of Nature, it was Nature in her half-human moods that he adored--Nature that knows no extremes, and that has long been under the influence of man--a soft, humid, fertile, docile Nature, that suggests a domesticity as old and as permanent as that of cattle and sheep. His poetry reflects these features, reflects the high moral and historic significance of the European landscape, while the poetry of Emerson, and of Thoreau, is born of the wildness and elusiveness of our more capricious and unkempt Nature. The walker has no axe to grind; he sniffs the air for new adventure; he loiters in old scenes, he gleans in old fields. He only seeks intimacy with Nature to surprise her preoccupied with her own affairs. He seeks her in the woods, the swamps, on the hills, along the streams, by night and by day, in season and out of season. He skims the fields and hillsides as the swallow skims the air, and what he gets is intangible to most persons. He sees much with his eyes, but he sees more with his heart and imagination. He bathes in Nature as in a sea. He is alert for the beauty that waves in the trees, that ripples in the grass and grain, that flows in the streams, that drifts in the clouds, that sparkles in the dew and rain. The hammer of the geologist, the notebook of the naturalist, the box of the herbalist, the net of the entomologist, are not for him. He drives no sharp bargains with Nature, he reads no sermons in stones, no books in running brooks, but he does see good in everything. The
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Nature
 

streams

 

common

 

British

 

Wordsworth

 
season
 
nature
 

wayside

 
fields
 

poetry


worshiper

 

Thoreau

 
reflects
 

landscape

 
elusiveness
 

wildness

 
Emerson
 
swamps
 

sniffs

 

adventure


loiters

 

hillsides

 

gleans

 

scenes

 

affairs

 

unkempt

 

preoccupied

 

surprise

 

intimacy

 

walker


capricious

 
imagination
 

entomologist

 

drives

 

herbalist

 
hammer
 

geologist

 
notebook
 

naturalist

 
running

brooks
 

bargains

 
sermons
 
stones
 

bathes

 

persons

 
intangible
 

European

 
drifts
 

clouds