of the place, resuming his description with Ankerwyke Priory :

But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays,
Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late

A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate

The adjoining abbey fell.

Again he digresses into reflections on the sacrilege
involved in the destruction of the religious houses, re-
covering not ungracefully the thread of description:-
Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and fear,
These for what's past and this for what's too near,
My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays:
Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs ;

Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet Eternity.

Other reflections on the river follow, and then, inserted in the second edition of the poem, comes the justly famous apostrophe and aspiration :—

O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full.

He then goes on to describe and comment on the curious contrasted features of the scene-the shaggy tree-thronged hill, the calm water flowing at its foot, and Runnymede, and how Nature harmonises all :

Wisely she knew the harmony of things,

As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.
Such was the discord, which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty through the universe;

While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
All that we have, and what we are, subsists;
While the steep, horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite,
Wonder from thence results, from thence delight.
The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear,
That had the self-enamoured youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceived he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face had seen.
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat:
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his feet a spacious plain is plac'd,
Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd,
Which shade and shelter from the hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives.

Then follows a very animated description of a staghunt at the foot of the hill in Runnymede. The great transaction of which this meadow was the scene is next referred to, and with some reflections very pertinent to the critical time at which the poem' was composed, it concludes.

Nothing could illustrate more strikingly the treatment of Nature by the poets of the Critical school, soon to culminate in Dryden and Pope, than this poem with its thin perception of the picturesque, its insensibility to colour and charm, its absence of enthusiasm, its complete subordination of the beauties of Nature to ethical and political reflection.

WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN

WE must go forward to Dryden to find a poet so utterly indifferent to Nature and Nature's works as Waller. There is scarcely a natural image, except of the most commonplace character, to be found in his poetry. Though he has twice celebrated Penshurst, he says not a word about its scenery beyond the ridiculous remark that the trees, when Dorothea sits down, crowd bowing in a circle round her. There is a touch of

sentiment in his

Fade, flowers! fade, Nature will have it so;

'Tis but what we must in our autumn do!

And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground,
The loss alone by those who lov'd them found;
So in the grave shall we as quiet lie.

But this, commonplace as it is, is paraphrased from the French. His only descriptive poem is St. James's Park, which, like Ben Jonson's Penshurst and Marvell's Bilborow and Appleton House, Dr. Johnson seems to have forgotten when he attributed to Denham the introduction of the "local poem" into English literature.

The whole poem is as artificial as the scene it describes, and Waller characteristically avoids dwelling on natural objects, what he says about them being practically confined to the

Young trees upon the banks
Of the new stream appear in even ranks;

to the fact that it is

and to the

With a border of rich fruit-trees crown'd,
Whose loaded branches hide the lofty mound;

Living gallery of aged trees;

Bold sons of earth, that thrust their arms so high,
As if once more they would invade the sky.

Perhaps his instincts as a sportsman led him to the only vivid natural touch in the whole poem, the startled flight of some wild-fowl :

Overhead a flock of new-sprung fowl
Hangs in the air, and does the sun control,
Dark'ning the sky; they hover o'er, and shroud
The wanton sailors with a feather'd cloud.

What applies to Waller most certainly does not apply to his younger contemporary. A prominent place among English poets who have felt the power and charm of Nature must certainly be assigned to Cowley. This, indeed, is no more than might be expected from the author of those delightful prose essays on Solitude, Agriculture, and The Garden. In his Elegy on the death of his Cambridge friend, William

Hervey, we have something approaching to the note of Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis anticipated by more than two centuries :

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two?

Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade,
Or your sad branches darker join,

And into darksome shades combine,
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid!

No tuneful birds play with their wonted cheer,
And call the learned youth to hear;

No whistling winds through the glad branches fly:
But all, with sad solemnity

Mute and unmoved be,

Mute as the grave wherein my friend does lie.

His Liber Plantarum, which being in Latin does not concern us, shows with what minute attention he had studied flowers, and how he delighted in the retreats where they were to be found. The greater part of his poetry treats of themes into which natural description could not very well enter, and like all poets whose taste had been formed on the Latin classics, he did not intrude such descriptions. But in the second of his Odes he gives the rein to his enthusiasm :

Give me a river which doth scorn to show

An added beauty; whose clear brow

May be my looking-glass to see

What my face is, and what my mind should be!