feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his
analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these,
his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless."

Yet let us not forget that he possessed the gift which to an artist is
the very root of the matter. He saw Nature truly, he saw her as she
is, and with his own eyes. The critic whom I have just quoted boldly
pronounces him "the keenest eyed of all modern poets for what is deep
and essential in nature." When he describes the daisy, casting the
beauty of its star-shaped shadow on the smooth stone, or the boundless
depth of the abysses of the sky, or the clouds made vivid as fire by
the rays of light, every touch is true, not the copying of a literary
phrase, but the result of direct observation.

It is true that Nature has sides to which Wordsworth was not
energetically alive--Nature "red in tooth and claw." He was not
energetically alive to the blind and remorseless cruelties of life
and the world. When in early spring he heard the blended notes of the
birds, and saw the budding twigs and primrose tufts, it grieved him,
amid such fair works of nature, to think "what man has made of man."
As if nature itself, excluding the conscious doings of that portion of
nature which is the human race, and excluding also nature's own share
in the making of poor Man, did not abound in raking cruelties and
horrors of her own. "_Edel sei der Mensch_," sang Goethe in a noble
psalm, "_Hulfreich und gut, Denn das allein unterscheidet ihn, Von
allen Wesen die wir kennen._" "_Let man be noble, helpful, and good,
for that alone distinguishes him from all beings that we know. No
feeling has nature: to good and bad gives the sun his light, and for
the evildoer as for the best shine moon and stars_." That the
laws which nature has fixed for our lives are mighty and eternal,