d hangs herself up for the winter than I am in
this lesson. I had rather see a worm cast its skin than see a king
crowned. I had rather see Phoebe building her mud nest than the
preacher writing his sermon. I had rather see the big moth emerge from
her cocoon--fresh and untouched as a coin that moment from the
die--than the most fashionable "coming out" that society ever knew.
The first song sparrow or bluebird or robin in spring, or the first
hepatica or arbutus or violet, or the first clover or pond-lily in
summer--must we demand some mystic password of them? Must we not love
them for their own sake, ere they will seem worthy of our love?

To convert natural facts into metaphysical values, or into moral or
poetic values--in short, to make literature out of science--is a high
achievement, and is worthy of Emerson at his best, but to claim that
this is their sole or main use is to push idealism to the extreme. The
poet, the artist, the nature writer not only mixes his colors with his
brains, he mixes them with his heart's blood. Hence his pictures
attract us without doing violence to nature.

We will not deny Emerson his right to make poetry out of nature; we
bless him for the inspiration he has drawn from this source, for his
"Wood-notes," his "Humble-Bee," his "Titmouse," his "May-Day," his
"Sea-Shore," his "Snow-Storm," and many other poems. But we must
"quarrel" with him a little, to use one of his favorite words, for
seeming to undervalue the facts of natural science, as such, and to
belittle the works of the natural historian because he does not give
us poetry and lessons in morals instead of botany and geology and
ornithology, pure and simple. "Everything," he says, "should be
treated poetically--law, politics, housekeeping, money. A judge and a
banker must drive their craft poetically, as well as a dancer or a
scribe. That is, they must exert that higher vision which causes the
object to become fluid and plastic." "If you would write a code, or
logarithms, or a cook-book, you cannot spare the poetic impulse." "No
one will doubt that battles can be fought poetically who reads
Plutarch or Las Casas."

We are interested in the wild life around us because the lives of the
wild creatures in a measure parallel our own; because they are the
partakers of the same bounty of nature that we are; they are fruit of
the same biological tree. We are interested in knowing how they get on
in the world. Bird and bee, fish and