, as
well as we know, that a cloud is but moisture evaporated from the earth,
that there is no Valkyrie in it. But that does not hinder him from
making such a cloud a thing of life, and causing it to sing--

I wield the flail of the lashing hail
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Neither his studies in natural science, nor his economic and moral
readings in Godwin and Condorcet could repress, or even tended to
repress, the flight of Shelley's imagination. Nor did Goethe's original
and almost professional scientific work in botany, anatomy, and optics
prevent the creation of his _Faust_ or the singing of his touching
ballads. And when we question the compatibility of historical knowledge
with the poetry of epic or romantic creations, do we suppose that
Tennyson, while writing the _Idylls of the King_, believed in the
stories of Arthur, of Lancelot, of Galahad, or of the Holy Grail? When
Morris composed the _Earthly Paradise_, had his imagination no freedom
of flight because stubborn facts of history and geography clipped its
pinions?

The truth is that there are two ways of looking at existing things, two
ways of handling them; and neither way is false. The scientist's way we
all understand. It is the way of the microscope and the crucible. It
arrives at definite physical facts. It sets forth the material
constitution and physical laws of objects. But to the poet, says Mrs.
Browning--

Every natural flower which grows on earth
Implies a flower on the spiritual side.

And what is true of flowers is true of suns and stars and living
creatures and all that science contemplates. Science is knowledge, while
poetry, asserts Wordsworth, is "the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge"; it is "the impassioned expression which is in the
countenance of all science." There is a poetic truth, and there is a
scientific truth, compatible one with the other, complementary one to
the other. Perhaps the most prosaic mind that ever existed was that of
Jeremy Bentham, and "poetry," said that worthy, "is misrepresentation."
One may be pardoned for a passing impatience when the poetical side of
man is treated as a kind of amiable delusion; when one hears the shallow
argument, containing a