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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 47, September, 1861 by Various
page 116 of 295 (39%)
is exceedingly good company while you can keep him beyond scent of the
tavern. Any intelligent farmer's boy can give you some narrative
of out-door observation which, so far as it goes, fulfils Milton's
definition of poetry, "simple, sensuous, passionate." He may not write
sonnets to the lake, but he will walk miles to bathe in it; he may not
notice the sunsets, but he knows where to search for the black-bird's
nest. How surprised the school-children looked, to be sure, when the
Doctor of Divinity from the city tried to sentimentalize, in addressing
them, about "the bobolink in the woods"! They knew that the darling of
the meadow had no more personal acquaintance with the woods than was
exhibited by the preacher.

But the preachers are not much worse than the authors. The prosaic
Buckle, to be sure, admits that the poets have in all time been
consummate observers, and that their observations have been as valuable
as those of the men of science; and yet we look even to the poets
for very casual and occasional glimpses of Nature only, not for any
continuous reflection of her glory. Thus, Chaucer is perfumed with early
spring; Homer resounds like the sea; in the Greek Anthology the sun
always shines on the fisherman's cottage by the beach; we associate the
Vishnu Purana with lakes and houses, Keats with nightingales in forest
dim, while the long grass waving on the lonely heath is the last
memorial of the fading fame of Ossian. Of course Shakspeare's
omniscience included all natural phenomena; but the rest, great or
small, associate themselves with some special aspects, and not with the
daily atmosphere. Coming to our own times, one must quarrel with Ruskin
as taking rather the artist's view of Nature, selecting the available
bits and dealing rather patronizingly with the whole; and one is tempted
to charge even Emerson, as he somewhere charges Wordsworth, with not
being of a temperament quite liquid and musical enough to admit the full
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