Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine, and could
take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that
deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools,
almost all things under the sun and moon, and the sun and moon, were not
less divine and changeable. They saw in the rainbow the still bent bow of
a god thrown down in his negligence; they heard in the thunder the sound
of his beaten water-jar, or the tumult of his chariot wheels; and when a
sudden flight of wild duck, or of crows, passed over their heads, they
thought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest; while they
dreamed of so great a mystery in little things that they believed the
waving of a hand, or of a sacred bough, enough to trouble far-off hearts,
or hood the moon with darkness. All old literatures are full of these or
of like imaginations, and all the poets of races, who have not lost this
way of looking at things, could have said of themselves, as the poet of
the _Kalevala_ said of himself, 'I have learned my songs from the music of
many birds, and from the music of many waters.' When a mother in the
_Kalevala_ weeps for a daughter, who was drowned flying from an old
suitor, she weeps so greatly that her tears become three rivers, and cast
up three rocks, on which grow three birch-trees, where three cuckoos sit
and sing, the one 'love, love,' the one 'suitor, suitor,' the one
'consolation, consolation.' And the makers of the Sagas made the squirrel
run up and down the sacred ash-tree carrying words of hatred from the
eagle to the worm, and from the worm to the eagle; although they had less
of the old way than the makers of the _Kalavala_, for they lived in a more
crowded and complicated world, and were learning the abstract meditation
which lures men from visible beauty, and were unlearning, it may be, the
impassioned meditation which brings men beyond the edge of trance and
makes trees, and beasts, and dead things talk with human voices.
The old Irish and the old Welsh, though they had less of the old way than
the makers of the _Kalavala_, had more of it than the makers of the Sagas,
and it is this that distinguishes the examples Matthew Arnold quotes of
their 'natural magic,' of their sense of 'the mystery' more than of 'the
beauty' of nature. When Matthew Arnold wrote it was not easy to know as
much as we know now of folk song and folk belief, and I do not think he
understood that our 'natural magic' is but the ancient religion of the
world, the ancient worship of nature and that troubled ecstasy before her,
that certainty of all beautiful places being haunted, which it brought
into men's minds. The ancient religion is in that passage of the
_Mabinogion_ about the making of 'Flower Aspect.' Gwydion and Math made
her 'by charms and illusions' 'out of flowers.' 'They took the blossoms of
the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the
meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden the fairest and most
graceful that man ever saw; and they baptized her, and called her Flower
Aspect'; and one finds it in the not less beautiful passage about the
burning Tree, that has half its beauty from calling up a fancy of leaves
so living and beautiful, they can be of no less living and beautiful a
thing than flame: 'They saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half
of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was
green and in full leaf.' And one finds it very certainly in the quotations
he makes from English poets to prove a Celtic influence in English poetry;
in Keats's 'magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in faery
lands forlorn'; in his 'moving waters at their priest-like task of pure
ablution round earth's human shore'; in Shakespeare's 'floor of heaven,'
'inlaid with patens of bright gold'; and in his Dido standing 'on the wild
sea banks,' 'a willow in her hand,' and waving it in the ritual of the old
worship of nature and the spirits of nature, to wave 'her love to come
again to Carthage.' And his other examples have the delight and wonder of
devout worshippers among the haunts of their divinities. Is there not such
delight and wonder in the description of Olwen in the _Mabinogion_: 'More
yellow was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter
than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than
the blossoms of the wood-anemone amidst the spray of the meadow
fountains.' And is there not such delight and wonder in--
'Meet we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margent of the sea'?
If men had never dreamed that fair women could be made out of flowers, or
rise up out of meadow fountains and paved fountains, neither passage could
have been written. Certainly, the descriptions of nature made in what
Matthew Arnold calls 'the faithful way,' or in what he calls 'the Greek
way,' would have lost nothing if all the meadow fountains or paved
fountains were meadow fountains and paved fountains and nothing more. When
Keats wrote, in the Greek way, which adds lightness and brightness to
nature--
'What little town by river or sea-shore
Or mountain built with quiet citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn';
when Shakespeare wrote in the Greek way--
'I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows';
when Virgil wrote in the Greek way--
'Muscosi fontes et somno mollior herba,'
and
'Pallentes violas et summa papavera carpens
Narcissum et florem jungit bene olentis anethi';
they looked at nature without ecstasy, but with the affection a man feels
for the garden where he has walked daily and thought pleasant thoughts.
They looked at nature in the modern way, the way of people who are
poetical, but are more interested in one another than in a nature which
has faded to be but friendly and pleasant, the way of people who have
forgotten the ancient religion.