Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/281

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In Wordsworth's mind nature is so absolute that her skies and mountains are just as plainly imaged as in the sheen of Derwentwater; and thence they passed into his verse. He wanders,—

He says of Milton:—

A primeval sorrow, a cosmic pain, is in the expression of his dead love's reunion with the elements:—

The souls of the Hebrew bards, inheritors of pastoral memories, ever consorted with the elements, invoking the "heavens of heavens," "the waters that be above the heavens," "fire and hail; snow, and vapor: stormy wind fulfilling His word." Of the Greeks, Æschylus is more elemental than Pindar, even than Homer. Among our moderns, a kindred quality strengthened the imaginations of Byron and Shelley; Swinburne too, whom at his best the Hebraic feeling and the Grecian sway by turns, is most self-forgetful and exalted when giving it full play.