The Poetry Of Nature

"The poetry of eartb is never dead," wrote Eeats, and thongh the sta.tem.ent sounds at first thougíit a dangerously sweepir.g ons there is uo doubt tbat if he liad been called upou to argne the point he vould have successfully ïnaintained bis thesis. Regarded subjectively, the poetry of eartb, or, in otber words, the quality which niakes for poetry in exterual nature, is that power in nature which moves us by suggestion, which excites in us emotion, imagination or poiguant association, which plays upon the teuse stringsof our sympatl)ie. with the iingers of memory or desne. ïhis power uiay reside not loss iu a bleak pasture lot thau in a paradisal close of blooni and verdure, not less in a roadside thistle patch than in a peak that soars into the suuset. It works through sheer beauty or sheer sublimity, but it mar work with equal effect through austerity or reticence or limita tion or chauge. It may use the most commou sceues, the most familiar faces and forms, as the vehicle of its most penetrating and most illuminating message. Jt is apt to make the drop of dew ou a grass blade as significant as the starred sphere cf the sky. Merely descnptive poetry is not very far removed trom the work of the reporter and the photographer. Lacking the selective quality of creative art, it is in reality little more than a representation of some of the raw materiuls of poetry. It leaves the reader nnmoved, because little emotion has gone to its