DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52538#0070
6o
“ Birds and beasts
And the mute fish that
Glances in the stream
he loved them all,
Their rights acknowledging,
He felt for all.” *
Shelley, too, undoubtedly influenced by this passage in
the Excursion, expresses the same idea in Alastor.f
“If no bright bird, insect or gentle beast I consciously
have injured, but still loved and cherished these my kindred.”
Thoreau is sensible of the closest relationship to all mani-
festations of the Universal, not only to this earth, but to those
other worlds so high above him, the stars :
‘ ‘ What a consolation the stars are to men 1 It is surely
some encouragement to know that the stars are my fellow
creatures.
Byron thus expresses the reaching out of the human soul
over the confines of its finiteness to claim oneness with the
Universal:
” Ye stars—’tis to be forgiven
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o’er leap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred, with you." §
3.—LOVE OF NATURE A PASSION.
The sense of affinity with the earth may bear almost the
character of an appetite. Thus Wordsworth writes of his
early love for nature :
“ Nature then
To me was all in all—
I cannot paint what then I was ; the tall rock
The mountains and the deep and gloomy rock
Their colors and their forms were to me an appetite. ”||
Thoreau uses the simile of human hunger to characterize
his longing for close contact with nature.
*'Excursions, II., p. 433. 41-47.
f Alastor, p. 85. 13-15. v. Ackermann “ Shelley.”
f Excursions, p. 178.
§ Childe Harold, III. LXXXVIII.
|| Tintern Abbey.
“ Birds and beasts
And the mute fish that
Glances in the stream
he loved them all,
Their rights acknowledging,
He felt for all.” *
Shelley, too, undoubtedly influenced by this passage in
the Excursion, expresses the same idea in Alastor.f
“If no bright bird, insect or gentle beast I consciously
have injured, but still loved and cherished these my kindred.”
Thoreau is sensible of the closest relationship to all mani-
festations of the Universal, not only to this earth, but to those
other worlds so high above him, the stars :
‘ ‘ What a consolation the stars are to men 1 It is surely
some encouragement to know that the stars are my fellow
creatures.
Byron thus expresses the reaching out of the human soul
over the confines of its finiteness to claim oneness with the
Universal:
” Ye stars—’tis to be forgiven
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o’er leap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred, with you." §
3.—LOVE OF NATURE A PASSION.
The sense of affinity with the earth may bear almost the
character of an appetite. Thus Wordsworth writes of his
early love for nature :
“ Nature then
To me was all in all—
I cannot paint what then I was ; the tall rock
The mountains and the deep and gloomy rock
Their colors and their forms were to me an appetite. ”||
Thoreau uses the simile of human hunger to characterize
his longing for close contact with nature.
*'Excursions, II., p. 433. 41-47.
f Alastor, p. 85. 13-15. v. Ackermann “ Shelley.”
f Excursions, p. 178.
§ Childe Harold, III. LXXXVIII.
|| Tintern Abbey.