The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 31

May never was the month for love, For May is full of floures, But rather Aprill, wett by kinde, For love is full of showers....

Like winter rose and summer yce, Her joyes are still untymelye; Before her hope, behind remorse, Fayre first, in fyne unseemely.

Edmund Spenser (1598) describes a garden in _The Faerie Queene_:

There the most daintie Paradise on ground It selfe did offer to his sober eye, In which all pleasures plenteously abownd, And none does others' happinesse envye; The painted flowres, the trees upshooting hye, The dales for shade, the hilles for breathing s.p.a.ce, The trembling groves, the christall running by, And, that which all fair workes doth most aggrace, The art which all that wrought appeared in no place.

Mountain scenery was seldom visited or described.

Michael Drayton (1731) wrote an ode on the Peak, in Derbys.h.i.+re:

Though on the utmost Peak A while we do remain, Amongst the mountains bleak Exposed to sleet and rain, No sport our hours shall break To exercise our vein.

It is clear that he preferred his comfort to everything, for he goes on:

Yet many rivers clear Here glide in silver swathes, And what of all most dear Buxton's delicious baths, Strong ale and n.o.ble chear T' a.s.suage breem winter's scathes.

Thomas Carew (1639) sings:

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose, For in your beauties' orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day, For in pure love Heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale, when May is past, For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where these stars s.h.i.+ne That downwards fall in dead of night, For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west The phoenix builds her spicy nest, For unto you at last she flies And in your fragrant bosom dies.

William Drummond (1746) avowed a taste which he knew to be very unfas.h.i.+onable:

Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love.

O how more sweet is birds' harmonious moan Or the soft sobbings of the widow'd dove, Than those smooth whisp'rings near a prince's throne....

O how more sweet is zephyr's wholesome breath And sighs perfum'd, which new-born flowers unfold.

Another sonnet, to a nightingale, says:

Sweet bird, that sing'st away the early hours Of winters past or coming void of care, Well pleased with delights which present are, Fair seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers; To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare, And what dear gifts on thee He did not spare, A stain to human sense in sin that lowers, What soul can be so sick which by thy songs Attir'd in sweetness, sweetly is not driven Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs?

He greets Spring:

Sweet Spring, thou turn'st with all thy goodly train Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flowers; The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain, The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their showers.

Robert Blair (1746) sings in _The Grave_:

Oh, when my friend and I In some thick wood have wander'd heedless on, Hid from the vulgar eye, and sat us down Upon the sloping cowslip-cover'd bank, Where the pure limpid stream has slid along In grateful errors through the underwood, Sweet murmuring; methought the shrill-tongu'd thrush Mended his song of love, the sooty blackbird Mellowed his pipe and soften'd every note, The eglantine smell'd sweeter and the rose a.s.sum'd a dye more deep, whilst ev'ry flower Vied with its fellow plant in luxury Of dress. Oh! then the longest summer's day Seem'd too, too much in haste, still the full heart Had not imparted half; half was happiness Too exquisite to last--Of joys departed Not to return, how painful the remembrance!

The great painter of Nature among the poets was James Thomson. He was not original, but followed Pope, who had lighted up the seasons in a dry, dogmatic way in _Windsor Forest_, and pastoral poems, and after the publication of his _Winter_ the taste of the day carried him on.

His deep and sentimental affection for Nature was mixed up with piety and moralizing. He said in a letter to his friend Paterson:

Retirement and Nature are more and more my pa.s.sion every day; and now, even now, the charming time comes on; Heaven is just on the point, or rather in the very act, of giving earth a green gown.

The voice of the nightingale is heard in our lane. You must know that I have enlarged my rural domain ... walled, no, no! paled in about as much as my garden consisted of before, so that the walk runs round the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till you have sc.r.a.ped together enough to return home and live in some snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect model of the truest happy life.

It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a pa.s.sion with him. He would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine goodness in all. His _Seasons_ were the result.

There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the inner life.

Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings.

The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live, and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not neglect grander scenery; his muse

"Sees Caledonia, in romantic view: Her airy mountains, from the waving main Invested with a keen diffusive sky, Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge, Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand Planted of old; her azure lakes between, Poured out extensive and of watery wealth Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales, With many a cool translucent br.i.m.m.i.n.g flood Washed lovely...."

And in _A Hymn_ we read:

Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound, Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself.

It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many beautiful pa.s.sages. For example:

Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

His most artistic poem is Winter:

When from the pallid sky the sun descends With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet Which master to obey; while rising slow, Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.

Seen through the turbid fluctuating air, The stars obtuse emit a s.h.i.+vering ray; Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom, And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.

s.n.a.t.c.hed in short eddies plays the withered leaf, And on the flood the dancing feather floats.

With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned, The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale....

Retiring from the downs, where all day long They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight And seek the closing shelter of the grove, a.s.siduous, in his bower, the wailing owl Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.

Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies.

Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide And blind commotion heaves, while from the sh.o.r.e, Eat into caverns by the restless wave And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare.

The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence, not only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in Winter:

Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year!

How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!

With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!

Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated the _Seasons_, when he had finished his _Irdisches Vergnugen in Gott_. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fas.h.i.+on in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It treats of fire in 138 verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74, while flowers and fruit are dissected and a.n.a.lyzed at great length; and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together, but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional sort. He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as an amus.e.m.e.nt, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same time.'

So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingrat.i.tude was a wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself and others, and this led at last to the first part of my _Irdisches Vergnugen_. (1721.)

His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois:

The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and almightiness of the Creator s.h.i.+ne forth from this animal?

For the rest, the following lines from _Irdisches Vergnugen in Gott_ will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood:

Lately as I sat on the green gra.s.s Shaded by a lime tree, and read, I raised my eyes by chance and saw Different trees here and there, some far, some near, Some half, some all in light, and some in shade, Their boughs bowed down by leaves.

I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead Were crowned and adorned.

To describe the green grace And the landscape it makes so sweet, And at the same time prolong my pleasure, I took pencil and paper And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme, To the glory of G.o.d their Creator.

Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes, There certainly is none which does not pale Beside green boughs, Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.

The green roofing overhead Makes me feel young again; It hangs there, a living tapestry, To the glory of G.o.d and our delight....

Beyond many trees that lay in shade I often saw one in full light; A human eye would scarce believe How sweetly twilight, light and darkness Meet side by side in leafy trees.