e found in the stanzas called
_Zueignung_[285], prefixed to Goethe's poems; the morning walk, the
mist, the dew, the sun, are as faithful as they can be, they are given
with the eye on the object, but there the merit of the work, as a
handling of nature, stops; neither Greek radiance nor Celtic magic is
added; the power of these is not what gives the poem in question its
merit, but a power of quite another kind, a power of moral and spiritual
emotion. But the power of Greek radiance Goethe could give to his
handling of nature, and nobly too, as any one who will read his
_Wanderer_,--the poem in which a wanderer falls in with a peasant woman
and her child by their hut, built out of the ruins of a temple near
Cuma,--may see. Only the power of natural magic Goethe does not, I
think, give; whereas Keats passes at will from the Greek power to that
power which is, as I say, Celtic; from his

"What little town, by river or seashore--"

to his

"White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine,
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves--"[286]

or his

"... magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn--"[287]

in which the very same note is struck as in those extracts which I
quoted from Celtic romance, and struck with authentic and unmistakable
power.

Shakespeare, in handling nature, touches this Celtic note so
exquisitely, that perhaps one is inclined to be always looking for the
Celtic note in him, and not to recognize his Greek note when it comes.
But if one attends well to the difference between the two notes, and
bears in mind, to guide one, such things as Virgil's "moss-grown springs
and grass softer than sleep:"--

"Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba--"[288]

as his charming flower-gatherer, who--

"Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi--"[289]

as his quinces and chestnuts:--

" ... cana legam tenera lanugine mala
Castaneasque nuces ..."[290]

then, I think, we shall be disposed to say that in Shakespeare's

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine--"[291]

it is mainly a Greek note which is struck. Then, again in his

" ... look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!"[292]

we are at the very point of transition from the Gree