den, made beautiful by fine old trees,
with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to the
river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the
noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit
for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a
poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give
shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves
sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he
had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her
language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones,
colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at
the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all
things in comparison with the spirit of man.

In the pitching and tossing of his 'ships of thought' he never lost
the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds to
carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven. He
loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was
meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet,
which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the
glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true
freedom; rays of sunshine, rays of divine glory; the setting sun,
eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring.

His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was free
from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He did
not paint Nature entirely for her own sake; man was always her
master[16] in his poems, and he sometimes, very finely, introduced
himself and his affairs at the close, and represented Nature as
addressing himself.

His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds
onomato-poetically.

This is from his ode, _Quiet Life_[17]:

O happy he who flies
Far from the noisy world away--
Who with the worthy and the wise
Hath chosen the narrow way.
The silence of the secret road
That leads the soul to virtue and to God!...
O streams, and shades, and hills on high,
Unto the stillness of your breast
My wounded spirit longs to fly--
To fly and be at rest.
Thus from the world's tempestuous sea,
O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee....
A garden by the mountain side
Is mine, whose flowery blossoming
Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride,
What Autu