"He bears history,/the lakes/he dives under …" These lines will take us into the first poem in Scott's [Selected Poems,] "Lakeshore," one of the finest and most characteristic pieces in the collection…. [Its theme is] Man's history, which extends back into pre-history and before man. Its unifying symbol is water as the source of life. The poem establishes through a specific concrete personal experience a contact in awareness with biological history, stretching back to the primordial beginnings of life and all around to the earthbound mechanical now of "a crowded street."

By the edge of a lake, the poet—or, better, the sensuous mind that is the protagonist of so many of Scott's metaphysical lyrics—contemplates water, earth, and sky….

          Floating upon their broken sky
          All netted by the prism wave
          And rippled where the currents are….

This is exact, clear, and elegant. There is a seventeenth-century...