The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 445 pages of information about The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times.

The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 445 pages of information about The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times.

He turned to her first through disdain of his kind and love of introspection, and later on, when he was spurned by the London world which had been at his feet, and disdain grew into hatred and disgust, from a wish to be alone.  But, as Boettger says: 

Though this heart, in which the whole universe is reflected, is a sick one, it has immeasurable depths, and an intensified spirit life which draws everything under its sway and inspires it, feeling and observing everything only as part of itself.

The basis of Byron’s feeling for Nature was a revolutionary one—­elementary passion.  The genius which threw off stanza after stanza steeped in melody, was coupled with an unprecedented subjectivity and individualism.  When the first part of Childe Harold came out, dull London society was bewitched by the music and novelty of this enthusiastic lyric of Nature, with its incomparable interweaving of scenery and feeling: 

  The sails were fill’d, and fair the light winds blew,
  As glad to waft him from his native home.... 
  But when the sun was sinking in the sea,
  He seized his harp... 
  Adieu, adieu! my native shore
  Fades o’er the waters blue;
  The night winds sigh, the breakers roar,
  And shrieks the wild sea-mew;
  Yon sun that sets upon the sea
  We follow in his flight;
  Farewell awhile to him and thee,
  My native land, good-night!

He says of the beauty of Lusitania: 

  Oh Christ! it is a goodly sight to see
  What Heaven hath done for this delicious land. 
  What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree! 
  What goodly prospects o’er the hills expand!... 
  The horrid crags, by toppling convent crown’d,
  The cork trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
  The mountain moss, by scorching skies imbrown’d,
  The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep. 
  The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
  The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
  The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
  The vine on high, the willow branch below,
  Mix’d in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.

Yet his spirit drives him away, ’more restless than the swallow in the skies.’

The charm of the idyllic is in the lines: 

  But these between, a silver streamlet glides.... 
  Here leans the idle shepherd on his crook,
  And vacant on the rippling waves doth look,
  That peaceful still ’twixt bitterest foemen flow.

The beauty of the sea and night in this: 

  The moon is up; by Heaven a lovely eve! 
  Long streams of light o’er dancing waves expand.... 
  How softly on the Spanish shore she plays,
  Disclosing rock, and slope, and forest brown
  Distinct....

  Bending o’er the vessel’s laving side
  To gaze on Dian’s wave-reflected sphere.

He reflects that: 

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and Modern Times from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.