the other hand, if he tries to content himself with the merely
physical aspects of things, he finds that he cannot crush out of his
nature a mysticism quite as intense as that of the most ascetic saint.
Only a religion which maintains the all-pervasive oneness of both
elements in his nature can wholly satisfy him.

Not infrequently, poets have given this instinctive faith of theirs a
conscious formulation. Coleridge, with his indefatigable quest of the
unity underlying "the Objective and Subjective," did so. Shelley devoted
a large part of _Prometheus Unbound_ and the conclusion of _Adonais_ to
his pantheistic views. Wordsworth never wavered in his worship of the
sense world which was yet spiritual,

The Being that is in the clouds and air,
That is in the green leaves among the groves,
[Footnote: _Hart Leap Well._]

and was led to the conclusion,

It is my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
[Footnote: _Lines Written in Early Spring._]

Tennyson, despite the restlessness of his speculative temper, was ever
returning to a pantheistic creed. The same is true of the Brownings.
Arnold is, of course, undecided upon the question, and now approves, now
rejects the pessimistic view of pantheism expressed in _Empedocles on
AEtna,_ in accordance with his change of mood putting the poem in and
out of the various editions of his works. But wherever his poetry is
most worthy, his worship of nature coincides with Wordsworth's
pantheistic faith. Swinburne's _Hertha_ is one of the most thorough
going expressions of pantheism. At the present time, as in much
of the poetry of the past, the pantheistic feeling is merely implicit.
One of the most recent conscious formulations of it is in Le Gallienne's
_Natural Religion,_ wherein he explains the grounds of his faith,

Up through the mystic deeps of sunny air
I cried to God, "Oh Father, art thou there?"
Sudden the answer like a flute I heard;
It was an angel, though it seemed a bird.

On the whole the poet might well wax indignant over the philosopher's
charge. It is hardly fair to accuse the poet of being indifferent to the
realm of ideas, when, as a matter of fact, he not only tries to
establish himself there, but to carry everything else in the universe
with him.

The charge of the puritan appears no more just to the poet than that of
the philosopher. How can it be true, as the puritan maintains it to be,
that the poet lacks the spirit of rever