Imbribus et ripas radentia flumina rodunt.[509]
The changing face of Nature is to his spirit so full of power and wonder, that it needs no poetical adornment, but is left to tell its own tale in the plainest language. If words are a true index of feeling, it would be difficult to name any poet by whom the living presence and full being of Nature were more immediately apprehended, nor has any one caught with more fidelity the intimations of her hidden life, as they betray themselves in her outward features and motions.
With similar fidelity and directness of language he communicates to his reader the spell of awe and wonder by which his own spirit is possessed in presence of the impressive facts of human life. No subtlety of reflection nor grandeur of illustrative imagery could enhance the effect of the thought of the dead produced by the austere plainness of the words,—
Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa,
and,
Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset.
By no pomp of description could a deeper sense of religious solemnity be created than by the lines describing the silent influence of the procession of Cybele on the minds of her devotees,—
Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis
Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute.[510]
The undying pain of a great sorrow,—the paralysis of all human effort in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,—the blessedness and pathos of the purest human affections,—the ecstatic delight derived from the revelation of great truths—imprint themselves permanently on the imagination through the august simplicity of the phrases,—