The Development Of The Feeling For Nature In The Middle Ages And Modern Times Part 20

To tell thee of the dangers of the sea At length, which human understanding scare, Thunder-storms, sudden, dreadful in degree, Lightnings, which seem to set on fire the air, Dark floods of rain, nights of obscurity, Rollings of thunder which the world would tear, Were not less labour than a great mistake, E'en if I had an iron voice to speak.

He describes the electric fires of St Elmo and the gradual development of the waterspout:

I saw, and clearly saw, the living light Which sailors everywhere as sacred hold In time of storm and crossing winds that fight, Of tempest dark and desperation cold; Nor less it was to all a marvel quite, And matter surely to alarm the bold, To observe the sea-clouds, with a tube immense, Suck water up from Ocean's deep expanse....

A fume or vapour thin and subtle rose, And by the wind begin revolving there; Thence to the topmost clouds a tube it throws, But of a substance so exceeding rare....

But when it was quite gorged it then withdrew The foot that on the sea beneath had grown, And o'er the heavens in fine it raining flew, The jacent waters watering with its own.

The storm at sea reminds us of aeschylus in splendour:

The winds were such, that scarcely could they shew With greater force or greater rage around, Than if it were this purpose then to blow The mighty tower of Babel to the ground....

Now rising to the clouds they seem to go O'er the wild waves of Neptune borne on end; Now to the bowels of the deep below; It seems to all their senses, they descend; Notus and Auster, Boreas, Aquila, The very world's machinery would rend; While flas.h.i.+ngs fire the black and ugly night And shed from pole to pole a dazzling light....

But now the star of love beamed forth its ray, Before the sun, upon the horizon clear, And visited, as messenger of day, The earth and spreading sea, with brow to cheer....

And, as it subsides:

The mountains that we saw at first appeared, In the far view, like clouds and nothing more.

Off the coast of India:

Now o'er the hills broke forth the morning light Where Ganges' stream is murmuring heard to flow, Free from the storm and from the first sea's fight, Vain terror from their hearts is banished now.

His magic island, the Ilha of Venus, could only have been imagined by a poet who had travelled widely. All the delights of the New World are there, with the vegetation of Southern Europe added. It is a poet's triumphant rendering of impressions which the discoverers so often felt their inability to convey:

From far they saw the island fresh and fair, Which Venus o'er the waters guiding drove (E'en as the wind the canvas white doth bear)....

Where the coast forms a bay for resting-place, Curved and all quiet, and whose s.h.i.+ning sand Is painted with red sh.e.l.ls by Venus' hand....

Three beauteous mounts rise n.o.bly to the view, Lifting with graceful pride their sweeling head, O'er which enamelled gra.s.s adorning grew.

In this delightful lovely island glad, Bright limpid streams their rus.h.i.+ng waters threw From heights with rich luxuriant verdure clad, 'Midst the white rocks above, their source derive, The streams sonorous, sweet, and fugitive....

A thousand trees toward heaven their summits raise, With fruits odoriferous and fair; The orange in its produce bright displays The tint that Daphne carried in her hair; The citron on the ground its branches lays, Laden with yellow weights it cannot bear; The beauteous melons, which the whole perfume The virgin bosom in their form a.s.sume.

The forest trees, which on the hills combine To enn.o.ble them with leafy hair o'ergrown, Are poplars of Alcides; laurels s.h.i.+ne, The which the s.h.i.+ning G.o.d loved as his own; Myrtles of Cytherea with the pine Of Cybele, by other love o'erthrown; The spreading cypress tree points out where lies The seat of the ethereal paradise....

Pomegranates rubicund break forth and s.h.i.+ne, A tint whereby thou, ruby, losest sheen.

'Twixt the elm branches hangs the jocund vine, With branches some of red and some of green....

Then the refined and splendid tapestry, Covering the rustic ground beneath the feet, Makes that of Achemeina dull to be, But makes the shady valley far more sweet.

Cephisian flowers with head inclined we see About the calm and lucid lake's retreat....

'Twas difficult to fancy which was true, Seeing on heaven and earth all tints the same, If fair Aurora gave the flowers their time, Or from the lovely flowers to her it came; Flora and Zephyr there in painting drew The violets tinted, as of lovers' flame, The iris, and the rose all fair and fresh E'en as it doth on cheek of maiden blush....

Along the water sings the snow-white swan, While from the branch respondeth Philomel....

Here, in its bill, to the dear nest, with care, The rapid little bird the food doth bear.

Subjective feeling for Nature is better displayed in the lyric than the epic.

The Spaniard, Fray Luis de Leon, was a typical example of a sixteenth-century lyrist; full of mild enthusiasm for Nature, the theosophico-mystical att.i.tude of the Catholic.

A most fervid feeling for Nature from the religious side breathed in St Francis of a.s.sisi--the feeling which inspired his hymn to Brother Sun (_Cantico del Sole_), and led his brother Egidio, intoxicated with love to his Creator, to kiss trees and rocks and weep over them[12]:

Praised by His creatures all, Praised be the Lord my G.o.d By Messer Sun, my brother above all, Who by his rays lights us and lights the day-- Radiant is she, with his great splendour stored, Thy glory, Lord, confessing.

By Sister Moon and Stars my Lord is praised, Where clear and fair they in the heavens are raised By Brother Wind, etc....

His follower, Bonaventura, too, in his verses counted--

The smallest creatures his brothers and sisters, and called upon crops, vineyards, trees, flowers, and stars to praise G.o.d.

Bernard von Clairvaux made it a principle 'to learn from the earth, trees, corn, flowers, and gra.s.s'; and he wrote in his letter to Heinrich Murdach (Letter 106):

Believe me, I have proved it; you will find more in the woods than in books; trees and stones will teach you what no other teacher can.

He looked upon all natural objects as 'rays of the G.o.dhead,' copies of a great original.

His contemporary, Hugo von St Victor, wrote:

The whole visible world is like a book written by the finger of G.o.d. It is created by divine power, and all human beings are figures placed in it, not to shew the free-will of man, but as a revelation and visible sign, by divine will, of G.o.d's invisible wisdom. But as one who only glances at an open book sees marks on it, but does not read the letters, so the wicked and sensual man, in whom the spirit of G.o.d is not, sees only the outer surface of visible beings and not their deeper parts.

German mystics wrote in the same strain; for instance, the popular Franciscan preacher, Berthold von Regensburg (1272),

Whose sermons on fields and meadows drew many thousands of hearers, and moved them partly by the unusual freshness and vitality of his pious feeling for Nature,

in spite of many florid symbolical accessories, such as we find again in Ekkehart and other fifteenth-century mystics, and especially in Tauler, Suso, and Ruysbroek.

The northern prophetess and foundress of an Order Birgitta (1373) held that the breath of the Creator was in all visible things: 'We feel it pervading us in her visions,' says Hammerich,[13]

Whether by gurgling brook or snow-covered firs. It is with us when the prophetess leads us along the ridges of the Swedish coast with their surging waves or down the shaft of a mine, or to wander in the quiet of evening through vineyards between roses and lilies, while the dew is falling and the bells ring out the Ave Maria.

Vincentius von Beauvais (1264) in his _Speculum Naturae_ demonstrates the value of studying Nature from a religious and moral point of view; and the Carthusian general, Dionysius von Rickel (1471), in his paper _On the beauty of the world and the glory of G.o.d (De venustate mundi et de pulchritudine Dei)_ says in Chapter xxii.: 'All the beauty of the animal world is nothing but the reflection and out-flow of the original beauty of G.o.d,' and gives as special examples:

Roses, lilies, and other beautiful and fragrant flowers, shady woods, pine trees, pleasant meadows, high, mountains, springs, streams and rivers, and the broad arm of the immeasurable sea ... and above all s.h.i.+ne the stars, completing their course in the clear sky in wonderful splendour and majestic order.

Raymundus von Sabieude, a Spaniard, who studied medicine and philosophy at Toulouse, and wrote his _Theologia Naturalis_ in 1436, considered Nature, like Thomas Aquinas, from a mystical and scholastic point of view, as made up of living beings in a graduated scale from the lowest to the highest; and he lauded her in terms which even Pope Clement VII. thought exaggerated. Piety in him went hand in hand with a natural philosophy like Bacon's, and his interest in Nature was rather a matter of intellect than feeling.

G.o.d has given us two books--the book of all living beings, or Nature, and the Holy Scriptures. The first was given to man from the beginning when all things were created, for each living being is but a letter of the alphabet written by the finger of G.o.d, and the book is composed of them all together as a book is of letters ... man is the capital letter of this book. This book is not like the other, falsified and spoilt, but familiar and intelligible; it makes man joyous and humble and obedient, a hater of evil and a lover of virtue.

Among the savants of the Renaissance who applied the inductive method to Nature before Bacon,[14] we must include the thoughtful and pious Spaniard Luis Vives (1540), who wrote concerning the useless speculations of alchemists and astrologers about occult things: 'It is not arguing that is needed here, but silent observation of Nature.' Knowledge of Nature, he said, would serve both body and soul.

The tender religious lyrics of the mystic, Luis de Leon, followed next.[15] His life (1521-1591) brings us up to the days of the Inquisition. He himself, an excellent teacher and man of science, was imprisoned for years for opinions too openly expressed in his writings; but with all his varied fortunes he never lost his innate manliness and tenderness. His biographer tells us, that as soon as the holidays began, he would hurry away from the gloomy lecture rooms and the noisy students at Salamanca, to the country, where he had taken an estate belonging to a monastery at the foot of a hill by a river, with a little island close by.

It had a large uncultivated garden, made beautiful by fine old trees, with paths among the vines and a stream running through it to the river, and a long avenue of poplars whose rustle blended with the noise of the mill-wheel. Beyond was a view of fields. Leon would sit for hours here undisturbed, dipping his feet in the brook under a poplar--the tree which was reputed to flourish on sand alone and give shelter to all the birds under heaven--while the rustle of the leaves sang his melancholy to sleep. His biographer goes on to say that he had the Spaniard's special delight in Nature, and understood her language and her secrets; and the veiled splendour of her tones, colours, and forms could move him to tears. As he sat there gazing at the clouds, he felt lifted up in heart by the insignificance of all things in comparison with the spirit of man.

In the pitching and tossing of his 's.h.i.+ps of thought' he never lost the consciousness of Nature's beauty, and would pray the clouds to carry his sighs with them in their tranquil course through heaven. He loved the sunrise, birds, flowers, bees, fishes; nothing was meaningless to him; all things were letters in a divine alphabet, which might bring him a message from above. Nature was symbolic; the glow of dawn meant the glow of divine love; a wide view, true freedom; rays of suns.h.i.+ne, rays of divine glory; the setting sun, eternal light; stars, flowers of light in an everlasting spring.

His love for the country, especially for its peacefulness, was free from the folly and excess of the pastoral poetry of his day. He did not paint Nature entirely for her own sake; man was always her master[16] in his poems, and he sometimes, very finely, introduced himself and his affairs at the close, and represented Nature as addressing himself.

His descriptions are short, and he often tries to represent sounds onomato-poetically.

This is from his ode, _Quiet Life_[17]:

O happy he who flies Far from the noisy world away-- Who with the worthy and the wise Hath chosen the narrow way.

The silence of the secret road That leads the soul to virtue and to G.o.d!...

O streams, and shades, and hills on high, Unto the stillness of your breast My wounded spirit longs to fly-- To fly and be at rest.

Thus from the world's tempestuous sea, O gentle Nature, do I turn to thee....

A garden by the mountain side Is mine, whose flowery blossoming Shews, even in spring's luxuriant pride, What Autumn's suns shall bring: And from mountain's lofty crown A clear and sparkling rill comes tumbling down; Then, pausing in its downward force The venerable trees among, It gurgles on its winding course; And, as it glides along, Gives freshness to the day and pranks With ever changing flowers its mossy banks.

The whisper of the balmy breeze Scatters a thousand sweets around, And sweeps in music through the trees With an enchanting sound That laps the soul in calm delight Where crowns and kingdoms are forgotten quite.