On poetic interpretation of nature

by John Campbell Shairp

“As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence;

Wonder to all who do the same espy

By what means it hath hither come, and whence;

So that it seems a thing endued with sense;

Like a sea-beast crawled forth, that on a shelf

Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun itself.”

But no doubt the truths of geology, if known to a poet, will in some measure enter into his description of scenery. For as the geological structure of a country powerfully moulds and determines its features, the knowledge of this, if possessed, must enter into the poet’s eye as it ranges over the landscape. How powerfully geological causes are to modify scenery is well set forth in a passage of the same Preface of Mr. Ruskin’s from which I have already quoted.

The new light which the discovery of these fads throws upon scenery cannot now well be neglected by the poet. And it is impossible to divine how many new facts and farther vistas into the recesses of Nature future discovery may open up, which, when they have passed into the educated mind, poets must in their own way find expression for. But one thing is clear, the poet, however he may avail himself of scientific truth, must not himself merge the Poet in the investigator or analyst. That function he must leave to the physicist, and be content to employ the material with which the physicist furnishes him to enrich and enlarge his vision of beauty. Moreover, the scientific facts he uses must not be those which are still abstruse and difficult, but those with which educated men at least have already become familiar. But, above all, the poet, if he is not to abdicate his function, must retain that freshness of eye, that childlikeness of heart, which looks forth with ever-young delight and wonder and awe on the great spectacle which Nature spreads before him. Most men have lost this gift, their spirits being crushed beneath the dead weight of custom. Our boasted civilization and education have done their best to destroy it; so that now it has come about that to the dull mechanic mind this marvelous earth is but a black ball of mud, painted here and there with some streaks of green and gold. To the drily scientific mind, which fancies itself educated, it is merely a huge piece of mechanism, like some great mill or factory, worked by forces which he proudly tabulates and calls Laws of Nature. But to the true poet the earth and sky have not yet lost all their original brightness. His eye still sees them with the dew upon them, in inspired moments still catches sight of the visionary gleam. His gift it is, his peculiar function, seeing this himself, to make others see and feel it, to make his fellow-men sharers in his perceptions and in the joy they bring. He purges our dulled eyes as with euphrasy and rue, and opens them to partake of the vision which he himself beholds. For after all the sciences have said their say, and propounded their explanations of things, as far as they go, the poet feels that there is in this visible Universe, and the spectacle it presents, something more than all the sciences have as yet grasped or ever will grasp—feels that there is in and through and behind all Nature a mysterious life, which he “cannot compass, cannot utter,” but which he must still bear witness to. This great truth which lay at the bottom of the old mythologies, which gives meaning to many forms of mysticism, but which our dull mechanic philosophies have long discredited, still haunts the soul of the poet, and, feeling it profoundly himself, he longs to express and make others feel it.