Under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt,
Grew like the summer grass, fastest by night,
Unseen, yet crescive in his faculty.[41]
Contrasts in Nature
The co-existence of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow, met the poet even among the tender creatures in whose songs he delighted. He saw that the grief or suffering of one single songster in no perceptible degree quieted the carolling of the rest of the choir.
All thy fellow-birds do sing,
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee,
None alive will pity me.[42]
He realised, as many another poet has also found, that there are times in which the joyous songs of birds may even sound harshly to human ears when the heart is bowed down with affliction. Thus he wrote of Lucrece: