and fro with them by the wind.

This shews careful observation of detail; but, for the most part,
such idyllic feeling was checked by lofty religious thoughts.

'Man,' he cries, 'should rule over Nature, over all that it contains,
over all earth offers in fruit, flowers, and verdure that tree and
vine, sea and spring, can give.' He summons all creation to praise
the Creator--stars and seasons, hail-storm and lightning, earth, sea,
river and spring, cloud and night, plants, animals, and light; and he
describes the flood in bold flights of fancy.

In the three books of Avitus[27] we have 'a complete poem of the lost
Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the
Bible,'[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling
here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon
the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the
cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds the
marriage of our first parents with the sympathy of Nature:

And angel voices joined in harmony and sang to the chaste and
pure; Paradise was their wedding-chamber, earth their dowry, and
the stars of heaven rejoiced with gladsome radiance.... The
kindness of heaven maintains eternal spring there; the tumultuous
south wind does not penetrate, the clouds forsake an air which is
always pure.... The soil has no need of rains to refresh it, and
the plants prosper by virtue of their own dew. The earth is
always verdant, and its surface animated by a sweet warmth
resplendent with beauty. Herbs never abandon the hills, the trees
never lose their leaves, etc.