ose Love_ he finds the reflection of love in everything:

In whom does not Love's spirit plant his flame?
One sees the oil of love burn in the starry lamps,
That pleasant light can nothing be but love,
For which the dew from Phoebus' veil doth fall.
Heaven loves the beauteous globe of earth,
And gazes down on her by night with thousand eyes;
While earth to please the heaven
Doth clover, lilies, tulips in her green hair twine,
The elm and vine stock intertwine,
The ivy circles round the almond trees,
And weeps salt tears when they are forced apart.
And where the flowers burn with glow of Love,
It is the rose that shews the brightest flame,
For is the rose not of all flowers the queen,
The wondrous beauty child of sun and earth?

Artificiality and bombast reached its highest pitch in these poets,
and feeling for Nature was entirely absent.

CHAPTER IX

SYMPTOMS OF A RETURN TO NATURE

It is refreshing to find, side by side with these mummified
productions, the traces of a pure national poetry flowing clear as
ever, 'breaking forth from the very heart of the people, ever
renewing its youth, and not misled by the fashion of the day.'[1]

The traces prove that simple primitive love for Nature was not quite
dead. For instance, this of the Virgin Mary: 'Mary, she went across
the heath, grass and flowers wept for grief, she did not find her
son.' And the lines in which the youth forced into the cloister asks
Nature to lament with him: 'I greet you all, hill and dale, do not
drive me away--grass and foliage and all the green things in the wild
forest. O tree! lose your green ornaments, complain, die with
me--'tis your duty.'

Then the Spring greetings:

Now we go into the wide, wide world,
With joy and delight we go;
The woods are dressing, the meadows greening,
The flowers beginning to blow.
Listen here! and look there! We can scarce trust our eyes,
For the singing and soaring, the joy and life everywhere.

And:

What is sweeter than to wander in the early days of Spring
From one place to another in sheer delight and glee;
While the sun is shining brightly, and the birds exult around
Fair Nightingale, the foremost of them all?

This has the pulse of true and naive feeling (the hunter is starting
for the hunt in the early morning):

When I come into the forest, still and silent everywhere,
There's a look of slumber in it, but the air is fresh and