ON
POETIC INTERPRETATION
OF NATURE
BY
J. C. SHAIRP, LL. D.
PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE OF ST. SALVATOR AND ST. LEONARD,
ST. ANDREWS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1900
PREFACE.
This small book is the result of some lectureswhich I had occasion to give to a large popularaudience more than a year ago. I have sincere-written and re-cast them into their presentshape. Yet the book still bears the impress ofthe peculiar object with which the lectures werecomposed, and of the circumstances under whichthey were delivered. That object was to add akind of literary supplement to several longer andmore systematic courses of lectures on physicalsubjects, such as Chemistry, Geology, and Physiology,which were delivered at the same timeby Professors who are my colleagues in this College.It seemed to me that some good mightbe done, if I could succeed in bringing before ourhearers the truth that, while the several physicalsciences explain each some portion of Nature’smysteries, or Nature considered under onespecial aspect, yet that after all the physical scienceshave said their say, and given their explanations,[vi]there remains more behind—anotheraspect of Nature—a further truth regarding it,with which, real and interesting though it is, Sciencedoes not intermeddle. The truth on whichespecially I wished to fix attention is the relationwhich exists between Nature and the sensitiveand imaginative soul of man, and the result orcreation which arises from the meeting of thesetwo. That is a true and genuine result, whichit does not fall within the province of Science toinvestigate, but which it is one peculiar functionof Poetry to seize, and, as far as may be, to interpret.That the beauty which looks from thewhole face of Nature, and is interwoven withevery fibre of it, is not the less, because it requiresa living soul for its existence, as real atruth as the gravitation of the earth’s particles orthe composition of its materials,—that carefulnoting and familiar knowledge of this beauty revealsa new aspect of the world, which will amplyrepay the observer,—and that the Poets are, ina special way, kindlers of sensibility, teacherswho make us observe more carefully, and feelmore keenly the wonders that are around us:these are some of the truths which I wished tobring before my hearers, and which, if I could inany measure succeed in doing so, would, I feltsure, not be without mental benefit.
As the audience whom I addressed consistedmainly of young persons whose chief employmentslay elsewhere than in libraries, I felt thatI had no right to reckon on any wide acquaintancewith English literature. This will accountfor the occurrence in the later chapters of manywell-known passages of English Poetry, which topersons at all conversant with letters may seemtoo familiar even