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[35] eloquence. Its language is in high mountains, and in the pleasant valleys scooped out between them, in the garniture which the fields put on, and in the blue lake asleep in the hollow of the hills. There is an inspiration, too, in the rich sky that ‘brightens and purples’ o'er our earth, when lighted up with the splendor of morning, or when the garment of the clouds comes over the setting sun. Our poetry is not in books alone. It is in the hearts of those men, whose love for the world's gain,—for its business and its holiday, —has grown cold within them, and who have gone into the retirements of Nature, and have found there that sweet sentiment and pure devotion of feeling can spring up and live in the shadow of a low and quiet life, and amid those that have no splendor in their joys, and no parade in their griefs. Thus shall the mind take color from things around us,—from them shall there be a genuine birth of enthusiasm,—a rich development of poetic feeling, that shall break forth in song. Though the works of art must grow old and perish away from earth, the forms of nature shall keep forever their power over the human mind, and have their influence upon the literature of a people. We may rejoice, then, in the hope of beauty
Boston and New York, Hougton, Mifflin and company, 1902.
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