Embattel'd in her field; and th' humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last
Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruits, or gemm'd
Their blossoms; with high woods the hills were crown'd;
With tufts the valleys and each fountain side;
With borders long the rivers."
Only to learn, and be made to understand, these twelve lines thoroughly would teach a youth more of true botany than an entire Cyclopædia of modern nomenclature and description: they are, like all Milton's work, perfect in accuracy of epithet, while consummate in concentration. Exquisite in touch, as infinite in breadth, they gather into their unbroken clause of melodious compass the conception at once of the Columbian prairie, the English cornfield, the Syrian vineyard, and the Indian grove. But even Milton has left untold, and for the instant perhaps unthought of, the most solemn difference of rank between the low and lofty trees, not in magnitude only, nor in grace, but in duration.
8. Yet let us pause before passing to this greater subject, to dwell more closely on what he has told us so clearly,—the difference in Grace, namely, between the trees that rise 'as in dance,' and 'the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush form is essentially one taken by vegetation in some kind of distress; scorched by heat, discouraged by darkness, or bitten by frost; it is the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant life stay
the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation.