Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/143

 into an image of the spiritual life of man; and with an imagination and force which, by their passion, reach splendour of thought and diction. This is a frequent way of his with nature, and no one has done it better in English poetry. I quote it:

Always it is the same in his poetry of nature. He describes the thing he sees, flower or bird, stream or hill, exactly as they are, without humanising them, without veiling them with any sentiment of their own, without having concerning nature any philosophy that spiritualises nature as the form of thought or love, any belief that she is alive or dwelt in by living beings. Nature to Arnold is frequently the nature that modern science has revealed to us—matter in motion, taking an inconceivable variety of form, but always, in its variety, acting rigidly according to certain ways, which, for want of a wiser term, we call laws. For the first time this view of nature enters into English poetry with Arnold. He sees the loveliness of her doings, but he also sees their terror and dreadfulness and their relentlessness. But what in his poetry he