ich the created universe is but the symbol and
shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the
visible and the tangible, there is a _personal, living Power_, which is
the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its
light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the
Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of
an _overshadowing Presence_ which "compasseth man behind and before, and
lays its hand upon him."

This wonderful presentiment of an invisible power and presence pervading
and informing all nature is beautifully described by Wordsworth in his
history of the development of the Scottish herdsman's mind:

So the foundations of his mind were laid
In such communion, not from terror free.
While yet a child, and long before his time,
Had he perceived the presence and the power
Of greatness; and deep feelings had impressed
So vividly great objects, that they lay
Upon his mind like substances, whose presence
Perplexed the bodily sense.
... In the after-day
Of boyhood, many an hour in caves forlorn,
And 'mid the hollow depths of naked crags,
He sat, and even in their fixed lineaments,
Or from the power of a peculiar eye,
Or by creative feeling overborne,
Or by predominance of thought oppressed,
Even in their fixed and steady lineaments
He traced an ebbing and a flowing mind....
Such was the Boy,--but for the growing Youth,
What soul was his, when, from the naked top
Of some bold headland, he beheld the sun
Rise up, and bathe the world in light! He looked:
Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth
And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay
Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched.
And in their silent faces could he read
Unutterable love. Sound needed none,
Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank
The spectacle: sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life,
In such access of mind, in such high hour
Of visitation from the living God.[125]

But it may be said this is all mere poetry; to which we answer, in the
words of Aristotle, "Poetry is a thing more philosophical and weightier
than history."[126] The true poet is the interpreter of nature.