EVERY DAY
THEMENTOR
NUMBER 9
NATURE AND THE POET
There are those who look at Nature from the standpoint of conventionaland artificial life—from parlor windows and through gilt-edgedpoems—the sentimentalists. At the other extreme are thosewho do not look at Nature at all, but are a grown part of her, and lookaway from her toward the other class—the backwoodsmen and pioneers,and all rude and simple persons. Then there are those in whom thetwo are united or merged—the great poets and artists. In them thesentimentalist is corrected and cured, and the hairy and taciturn frontiersmanhas had experience to some purpose. The true poet knows moreabout Nature than the naturalist because he carries her open secret inhis heart. Eckerman could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but couldnot Goethe instruct Eckerman in the meaning and mystery of the bird?
It is the soul the poet interprets, not Nature. There is nothing inNature but what the beholder supplies. Does the sculptor interpret themarble or his own ideal? Is the music in the instrument, or in the soulof the performer? Nature is a dead clod until you have breathed uponit with your own genius. You commence with your own soul, not withwoods and waters; they furnish the conditions, and are what you makethem. Did Shelley interpret the song of the skylark, or Keats that ofthe nightingale? They interpreted their own wild, yearning hearts.You cannot find what the poets find in the woods until you take thepoet's heart to the woods. He sees Nature through a colored glass,sees it truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureoleof the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a sunset, have no hidden meaningthat the art of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet shallinterpret them differently, and interpret them rightly, because thesoul is infinite. Nature is all things to men. The "light that neverwas on sea or land" is what the poet gives us, and is what wemean by the poetic interpretation of Nature.
The poet does not so much read in Nature's book—though he doesthis too—as write his own thoughts there; Nature is the page and hethe type, and she takes the impression he gives. Of course the poetuses the truths of Nature also, and he establishes his right to them bybringing them home to us with a new and peculiar force—a quickeningor kindling force. What science gives is melted in the ferventheat of the poet's passion, and comes back supplemented by his qualityand genius. He gives more than he takes, always.
JOHN BURROUGHS.
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