But as all these subjects in nature affect
our hearts or our understanding in proportion to the heart and
understanding we have to apprehend and to love them, those will
excite us most intensely which we know most of and love most. But as
we may learn to know them all and to love them all, and what is dark
to-day may be luminous to-morrow, and things, dumb to-day, to-morrow
grow voiceful, and the strange voice of to-day be plain and reproach
us to-morrow; who shall adventure to say that this or that is the
highest? And if it appear that all these subjects in nature _may_
affect us with equal intensity, and that the artist's representations
affect as the subjects affect, then it follows, with all these
subjects, Fine Art may affect us equally; but the subjects may all be
high; therefore, all Fine Art may be High Art.
The Seasons
The crocus, in the shrewd March morn,
Thrusts up its saffron spear;
And April dots the sombre thorn
With gems, and loveliest cheer.
Then sleep the seasons, full of might;
While slowly swells the pod,
And rounds the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.
The winter falls: the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;
The white drift heaps against the hut;
And night is pierced with stars.
Dream Land
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep;
Awake her not.
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