erblumen schauen ihn an mit ihren
bunten sehnsuechtigen Augen; unsichtbare Lippen kuessen seine Wangen mit
neckender Zaertlichkeit; _hohe Pilze, wie goldne Glocken, wachsen
klingend empor am Fusse der Baeume_"; and so on. Now that stroke of the
_hohe Pilze_, the great funguses, would have been impossible to the tact
and delicacy of a born lover of nature like the Celt; and could only
have come from a German who has _hineinstudirt_ himself into natural
magic. It is a crying false note, which carries us at once out of the
world of nature-magic, and the breath of the woods, into the world of
theatre-magic and the smell of gas and orange-peel.[Arnold.]

~Johann Ludwig Tieck~ (1773-1853) was one of the most prominent of the
German romanticists. He was especially felicitous in the rehandling of
the old German fairy tales. The passage quoted above is from Heine's
_Germany_, Part II, book II, chap. II. The following is the translation
of C.G. Leland, slightly altered: "In these compositions we feel a
mysterious depth of meaning, a marvellous union with nature, especially
with the realm of plants and stones. The reader seems to be in an
enchanted forest; he hears subterranean springs and streams rustling
melodiously and his own name whispered by the trees. Broad-leaved
clinging plants wind vexingly about his feet, wild and strange
wonderflowers look at him with vari-colored longing eyes, invisible lips
kiss his cheeks with mocking tenderness, great funguses like golden
bells grow singing about the roots of trees."

[278] _Winter's Tale_, IV, iii, 118-20.

[279] Arnold doubtless refers to the passage in _The Solitary Reaper_
referred to in a similar connection in the essay on Maurice de Guerin,
though Wordsworth has written two poems _To the Cuckoo_.

[280] The passage on the mountain birch-tree, which is quoted in the
essay on Maurice de Guerin, is from Senancour's _Obermann_, letter 11.
For his delicate appreciation of the Easter daisy see _Obermann_, letter
91.

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[281]. Pope's _Iliad_, VIII, 687.

[282] Propertius, _Elegies_, book I, 20, 21-22: "The band of heroes
covered the pleasant beach with leaves and branches woven together."

[283] _Idylls_, XIII, 34. The present reading of the line gives[Greek:
hekeito, mega]: "A meadow lay before them, very good for beds."

[284] From the _Ode to a Grecian Urn_.

PAGE 189

[285] That is, _Dedication_.

[286] From the _Ode to a Nightingale_.

[287] _Ibid._