where one can find and detach the note of background, the sweet
symbol that will lend point and significance to the scene that one
is labouring at. Instead of being content to gaze, to listen, to
drink in, one thinks only what one can carry away and make one's
own. If one's art were purely altruistic, if one's aim were to
emphasise some sweet aspect of nature which the careless might
otherwise overlook or despise; or even if the sight haunted one
like a passion, and fed the heart with hope and love, it would be
well. But does one in reality feel either of these purposes?
Speaking candidly, I do not. I care very little for my message to
the world. It is true that I have a deep and tender love for the
gracious things of earth; but I cannot be content with that. One
thinks of Wordsworth, rapt in contemplation, sitting silent for a
whole morning, his eyes fixed upon the pool of the moorland stream,
or the precipice with the climbing ashes. It was like a religion to
him, a communion with something holy and august which in that
moment drew near to his soul. But with me it is different. To me
the passion is to express it, to embalm it, in phrase or word, not
for my pride in my art, not for any desire to give the treasure to
others, but simply, so it seems, in obedience to a tyrannous
instinct to lend the thought, the sight, another shape. I despair
of defining the feeling. It is partly a desire to arrest the
fleeting moment, to give it permanence in the ruinous lapse of
things, the same feeling that made old Herrick say to the
daffodils, "We weep to see you haste away so soon." Partly the joy
of the craftsman in making something that shall please the eye and
ear. It is not the desire to create, as some say, but to record.
For when one writes an impassioned scene, it seems no more an act
of creation than one feels about one's dreams. The wonder of dreams
is that one does not make them; they come upon one with all the